You hold Ace-5 — a soft 16, meaning the ace still counts as 11. Dealer shows 4. The correct basic-strategy play:
| Double ← | +0.0584 |
| Hit | +0.0400 |
| Stand | -0.2111 |
| You bust on the next card | 0.0% |
| Dealer 4 busts | 39.4% |
Double beats Hit by 0.0185 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 152nd by expected value — better than 188 of them, worse than 151. 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 4 (40% bust chance), soft 16 (Ace-5) 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.