Why Hit 16 vs 10 in Blackjack?
Hard 16 is the worst total in blackjack. Dealer 10 is the strongest upcard. Without surrender, basic strategy says hit — by a very thin margin. Here are the actual numbers.
Short answer
If late surrender is available, surrender. If it isn't, hit. Hard 16 against a dealer 10 loses money no matter what you do, and hitting is better than standing by only about 0.1¢ per $1 wagered — this is one of the closest decisions in the whole basic strategy chart.
The probability and EV comparison
These are the same numbers the trainer shows for hard 16 (for example 10 + 6) against a dealer 10, under the site's default rules: dealer stands on soft 17, late surrender allowed. They include the 1-in-13 chance that the dealer turns out to have blackjack, in which case the hand ends before you act and you lose one bet whatever you planned to do.
| Action | Win | Push | Lose | EV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SURRENDER | — | — | — | -0.538 |
| HIT | 18.5% | 5.5% | 76.0% | -0.575 |
| STAND | 21.2% | 0.0% | 78.8% | -0.576 |
Surrender gives back half the bet whenever the dealer doesn't have blackjack, so its EV is a fixed -0.538 rather than a win/push/lose split. Hit's EV of -0.575 and stand's -0.576 are almost identical: both lose more than half the wager on average.
After the dealer checks for blackjack
In a hole-card game the dealer peeks before you decide. Once you know the dealer does not have blackjack, the same decision looks like this. These are conditional values under a different assumption, not a replacement for the table above:
| Action (no dealer blackjack) | Win | Push | Lose | EV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SURRENDER | — | — | — | -0.500 |
| HIT | 20.0% | 5.9% | 74.0% | -0.540 |
| STAND | 23.0% | 0.0% | 77.0% | -0.540 |
The ranking doesn't change: surrender first, then hit by less than 0.001, then stand. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.
Why hitting edges out standing
Standing on 16 can only win when the dealer busts. With a 10 showing (and no blackjack), that happens just 23.0% of the time; every dealer total from 17 to 21 beats you. Hitting is risky: 8 of the 13 card ranks (6 through King) bust a hard 16 immediately, about 61.5%. But the other 5 (Ace through 5) turn your hand into 17–21, which can win or push. Those extra wins and pushes almost exactly cancel the added bust risk, so hit comes out ahead by a hair.
What that difference is worth
Without surrender, choosing stand instead of hit costs about 0.1¢ per $1 wagered. At a $10 bet that's roughly one cent of expected value. Neither choice is a big mistake. If surrender is available, though, hitting costs about 3.7¢ per $1 and standing about 3.8¢ compared with surrendering, which is around $0.37 on a $10 bet. Not surrendering is the costly mistake.
When the answer changes
Whether the dealer hits or stands on soft 17 makes no difference here: a dealer showing 10 can never hold a soft 17. The answer mostly depends on surrender, and on the exact cards in your 16. Because hit and stand are so close, card-composition effects in a real shoe (for example a 16 made of three or more small cards) can tip specific hands toward standing. The numbers above come from the site's probability engine, which uses an infinite-deck approximation of the default 6-deck game.
See the full basic strategy chart for every hard total against every dealer upcard, or read Hit or Stand for the general pattern this hand follows.
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