What is Hole Card (Blackjack)?

In blackjack the hole card is the dealer's face-down card, dealt alongside the face-up up card. Its value stays unknown to the table until the dealer's turn to act, and the whole structure of the game rests on that missing information: every decision is a judgement made against one visible card and one hidden one. Under peek rules, a dealer showing an ace or a ten-value card checks the hole card immediately and settles the hand at once if it is a blackjack, which caps what players can lose on that round. Under no-hole-card, or European, rules the second card arrives only after players have finished acting, so doubles and splits can be lost to a dealer blackjack. In community-card poker the term hole cards means something different: a player's own private cards.