What is Soft 17?

A soft 17 is a blackjack hand totalling seventeen that contains an ace still counted as eleven, such as ace-six or ace-two-four. It is called soft because the ace can drop back to a value of one, so drawing another card cannot bust the hand. The rule that matters is what the dealer does with one. Some tables have the dealer stand on all seventeens; others have the dealer hit soft 17 and draw in the hope of improving. Drawing cannot hurt the dealer's hand, because the ace absorbs the first bad card, so the rule works in the house's favour and raises the house edge slightly on every hand played at that table. It is printed on the felt, usually as a short line under the payout notice, and repeated in the rules panel of a live game. Several basic-strategy decisions flip when the dealer hits soft 17, mostly around doubling and surrendering against an ace or a strong upcard, so a chart written for one rule is not quite right for the other. The trap is that this is a table setting rather than a property of the game's name: the same title can run under either rule in different rooms, so trust the felt over the lobby description.