Blackjack is by far the most popular card game in modern casinos
across Europe and North America. Like many well-established games, its
origins are not well documented. Most scholars consider Blackjack to
have some roots in a popular card game found at casino tables in 17th
Century France, called Vingt-et-Un (20 and 1), hence its other common name: "21". There are candidates predating Vingt-et-Un, but most are poorly documented.
The pre-revolutionary French taught the game to English sailors,
soldiers and merchants, who christened it "Blackjack" because of a
special rule regarding what was considered the ideal hand in
Vingt-et-Un: A player who held the Ace of Spades (i.e. a Black spade)
and the Jack of Spades as the first two cards of his hand would be paid
out extra. The English gambler's penchant for easy rhymes took over
(think "chuck-a-luck", "acey-duecy"), and Black Jack was hard to resist.
Soon, Blackjack migrated to North America, where it gained a wide
audience in the 18th Century among the colonists and then spread west
through the 19th Century with the migration of pioneers. When Nevada
legalized gambling in the early 20th Century, Blackjack was a mainstay
of Las Vegas casinos. Since then it has evolved into many variations,
as different casinos and different geographic regions adopted their own
particular sets of rules.
As you would expect from a global online casino, we offer a number of Blackjack variations from all over the world, including:
- European Blackjack
- Vegas Blackjack
- Classic Blackjack
- 6-Deck Blackjack
- Double-Deck Blackjack
- Single-Deck Blackjack
- Surrender Blackjack
- Live-Aces Blackjack
- Anything-Goes Blackjack (Coming Soon!)
- Blackjack Swap (Coming Soon!)
- Barcelona Blackjack (Coming Soon!)
- Super-Play 21 (Coming Soon!)
|
