The standard rules are that when a bet is doubled on a hand, the player is only allowed to draw one more card for that hand. Some rules even allow for resplitting until the player has as many as four hands or allow doubling the bet after a split so that each hand has a bet double the original. It also allows the player to double the bet when the dealer busts. Splitting allows the gambler to turn a bad hand into one or two hands with a good possibility of winning. The two hands created by splitting are considered independently in competition against the dealer.

After placing the wager for the split hands the dealer gives the player an additional card for each split card. In blackjack, the standard rule is that if the player is dealt a pair of identically ranked initial cards, known as a pair, the player is allowed to split them into separate hands and ask for a new second card for each while placing a full initial bet identical to the original wager with each. The objective of blackjack is for a player to defeat the dealer by obtaining a sum as close to 21 as possible without accumulating a total that exceeds this number. This is generally the first rule of any splitting strategy. However, regardless of the various situations, the common strategic wisdom in the blackjack community is to 'Always split aces and eights' when dealt either pair as initial cards. Rules vary across gambling establishments regarding resplitting, doubling, multiple card draws, and the payout for blackjack, and there are conditional strategic responses that depend upon the number of decks used, the frequency of shuffling and dealer's cards.

Splitting aces and eights is part of blackjack basic strategy. Two aces and two eights in a standard deck of playing cards. For other uses, see Aces and eights (disambiguation). This article is about the blackjack initial card splitting strategy.

Jack and ace blackjack