You hold Ace-2 — a soft 13, meaning the ace still counts as 11. Dealer shows 5. The correct basic-strategy play:
| Hit ← | +0.1334 |
| Double | +0.1260 |
| Stand | -0.1672 |
| You bust on the next card | 0.0% |
| Dealer 5 busts | 41.6% |
Hit beats Double by 0.0074 per unit staked. Small, but it is the same small edge in every shoe you ever play — and it compounds over a lifetime of hands. Across the 340 situations in this chart it ranks 119th by expected value — better than 221 of them, worse than 118. Expected value is per unit staked, computed for multi-deck, dealer stands on soft 17, double after split allowed. The model and the code are published as data.
Against a weak dealer 5 (42% bust chance), soft 13 (Ace-2) is a doubling machine: you can't bust the draw, and every extra chip is placed while the dealer is in trouble. Double — if the table does not allow it, just hit.
Soft hands are where most casual players leak the most: they play them like hard totals and miss every profitable double. Learning the six soft-total rows of the chart is the fastest win-rate upgrade there is.