Rules
The dealer is required to draw all of the totals of sixteen or lesser & stand on totals of seventeen to twenty one. The players can double down for any beginning hand & split any of the pairs. Also, all of the pairs could be split & drawn like the initial hand, leaving the Aces. The player gets just one card for every split Aces. It is allowed to double after splitting and same is applied for re-splitting. The Blackjack will pay one and a half to one & insurance on the dealer Ace would pay two to one.
The Downtown Vegas Rules:
These rules are same as above mentioned Strip rules only for the part in which a dealer would be drawing to the soft seventeen & would be standing on hard seventeen to twenty one. In addition, almost all the houses are quite restrictive for post split playing. On strip one could usually find the best of the games with maximum player advantage. It is not really important to religiously memorize all the charts; however you must know either of them perfectly.
Condensed & Optimal strategy
It can be considered the easiest of all to use and remember. As hand of the player keeps changing while hits are being taken, when the up card of the dealer does not, it's the focus of dealer' up-card instead of player's hand that gives a lot lesser while the hands are getting played. While pitted against a few low dealer cards on condensed chart, the A7 hand gets recommended twice. So if you're dealt an A7, employ it for the double. But, in place of double, if you get soft draw sort of hand, use the A7 as a softer draw limit in the game.
About Insurance
The casinos may provide you a different reasoning, but in reality insurance in Blackjack is just a side betting which your dealer having an Ace has ten in hole, providing him twenty one. Going with the usual card distribution, it's around 8 percent against you at two to one payoff. It certainly is not a good bet at all. But if you keep a close eye, you will find that while the rest of the deck has lesser than double the non 10s than 10s, in that case, it is a good bet.