You hold Ace-5 — a soft 16, meaning the ace still counts as 11. Dealer shows 3. The correct basic-strategy play:
| Hit ← | +0.0091 |
| Double | -0.0072 |
| Stand | -0.2522 |
| You bust on the next card | 0.0% |
| Dealer 3 busts | 37.4% |
Hit beats Double by 0.0163 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 173rd by expected value — better than 167 of them, worse than 172. 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.
The beauty of soft 16 (Ace-5): you cannot bust — the ace simply drops to 1 if the card is big. Against a dealer 3 (only 37% bust chance), your current total isn't good enough to stand on, and doubling doesn't pay against a card this strong. Free shot at improving: take it.
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.