online black jack game
David Parlett is a games inventor, historian and consultant and the author of many books on the subject. He specialises in the history of card games and has also published online article on the history of Poker and Gin Rummy for GameAccount.com.
Introduction Blackjack or Twenty-One is probably the most popular gambling game in the world, and in one form or another has been so for nigh on 300 years. In fact, if you count its immediate ancestor Thirty-One as being essentially the same thing, it goes back more than five centuries. The reasons for its popularity are not hard to find. On the surface it’s a simple game: a child can pick it up in less than a minute. Deep down, it’s one of the few casino banking games that a dedicated punter can join in with something of an edge, so—provided you have the time and patience for complicated card-counting—you can play it at a profit, though for most of us it’s more like hard work than real play.
Despite the punter’s theoretical edge, most people lack the patience or ability to do the calculations, so the game remains equally popular with casinos, who do very nicely out of it, thank you. The advent of on-line gaming can only have expanded its popularity in astronomic proportions. This doesn’t make Blackjack uniquely a casino game. It has long been equally popular in private, domestic and even family circles, with children playing for matchsticks or paper-clips, and in between these levels it is well-known for its popularity with university students and the armed forces of all the western nations.
Let’s start by defining some terms and describing the simplest form of the game.
A banking game is one in which the punters all play against a single player, the banker, who is put up by the house, rather than all against one another, so it’s more like a series of simultaneous two-player games. This distinguishes them from vying games, like Poker, where everyone plays against everyone else and the outcome depends more on player interaction (notably that elusive concept of “bluff”) than on mathematical calculation. In all banking games the banker has an inbuilt advantage, usually in being accorded a win in the case of tied hands. In domestic or informal circles the bank rotates among the players, or is awarded to a player dealt a particular winning hand, or can be purchased by a punter off the current banker. In casinos, of course, the house puts up the banker and so enjoys the relevant advantages.
The best generic name for all variations of this particular banking game is Twenty-One, and the game is indeed first recorded in the 18th century under the name Vingt-Un or Vingt-et-Un, showing it to be of French provenance. In Britain and America it was played under its French name throughout the 19th century, though at some time in England it was pronounced in such a way as to be occasionally spelt Van John. The Oxford English Dictionary describes this as university slang, but it can hardly have survived much into the 20th century, as the name by which it has been best known in Britain since the First World War is “Pontoon”. This also sounds like a corruption of an English pronunciation of Vingt-(et)-un, via something like “vontoon”; but, as there is no normal process by which a V becomes a P, we may suspect the intrusion of some sort of jocular association with a temporary device for crossing a river. In other words, the officers played Bridge, while the “poor bloody infantry” descended to a Pontoon. Pontoon remains the name of the informal and domestic British game, and, as a two-card count of 21 is called a pontoon, the term has come to be used for a prison term of 21 months (or years, if you’re not careful).
In America the name Vingt-(et)-un was replaced by Blackjack around the end of the 19th century. The explanation for this is said to lie with a particular casino that paid extra for a natural consisting specifically of the spade Ace and a black Jack – which sounds plausible and is often repeated, though no one has yet offered any documentary evidence for it.
Variations and varietiesA major problem in describing Blackjack to anyone who doesn’t already know it (such as a Martian emerging from a life-long coma) is that, despite its basic simplicity, it is played in so many different ways. Or perhaps this is not so surprising after all, though, as the hallmark of any simple gaming idea is that its very simplicity allows of creative variations of individual detail.
The basic essentials of the game, albeit subject to elaborations and variations, are as follows.
A 52-card pack is used. Suits are irrelevant; only face values count. For this purpose numerals Two to Ten count at face value, face or court cards count 10 each, and an Ace counts either 1 or 11 at the option of its holder.
The aim of the game is to acquire a hand of cards with a total face count higher than that of the banker but not over 21. A hand counting more than 21 is “bust”, and loses. A hand containing an Ace is described as “soft” if it can count 11 without busting, otherwise “hard”. For example, an Ace and a Six make a soft 17. This hand can be drawn to without busting, since if the next card dealt you is higher than 4 (which would make 21) you can count the Ace 1 instead of 11. By contrast, a hard hand is one containing no Ace, or an Ace that can count only 1 without busting. Thus a hand consisting of A-6-10 is a hard 17, and is not safe to draw to. A two-card hand counting 21, necessarily consisting of an Ace and a 10-card, is a “natural”, or, in the British private game, a “pontoon”. Some also call it a blackjack, but, strictly speaking, this originally denoted the Ace of spades plus either of the black Jacks. The punters place their initial bets, in accordance with agreed limits, and the banker deals everyone two cards each. Whether they are dealt face up or face down is one of many variables. The banker then asks each punter in turn whether he wants to be dealt additional cards. A player who is satisfied with his hand will “stand” (or “stick”). Otherwise, he may ask for another card (“hit”), and may keep doing so until he either stands or busts. If he busts, he throws his hand in and loses his stake. Unless everyone else has bust, the banker then reveals his cards and also either stands or draws additional cards until he either stands or busts. If he busts, he matches and pays the stakes of those who didn’t. If not, he pays those with a higher count, and wins the stakes of those with a lower. Probably no one actually plays the game in as basic a form as this, but for the purpose of this article there is no point in giving detailed rules of any particular variety: you can find all you want in any current card-game book or relevant online web site. It will be more useful to outline the range of variations and elaborations that you’re likely to come across whether playing online, in a casino, or in a private game.
Cards. While the private game is played with a single 52-card pack, casinos use anything from two to eight such packs, typically six, all shuffled together and dealt from a box or “shoe”. One reason for this is to save time otherwise lost on shuffling; another is to make it more difficult for punters to practise card-casing (counting the appearance of key cards). More often than not, a marker is inserted into the total pack at a point about ten per cent from the end so that not all the cards are dealt before being shuffled again, in order to make card-counting more difficult still. The reverse is the case with online Blackjack games, as cyber-shuffling is so easy that the pack is usually reshuffled after each deal – which makes card-counting completely pointless anyway.
Deal. In casino play, all cards are normally dealt face up, except the banker’s second card, but in the private game they are dealt face down.
Doubling. In most varieties of the game you may double your stake after receiving your second card, but casinos may impose certain restrictions. For example, they may only allow you to double a total of 11 or 10, or sometimes 9; or only on hard hands; or they may only allow you to draw one more card. Similarly, the banker, having privately looked at his second card, may call for all stakes to be doubled.
Splitting. In most varieties of the game a punter (but not the banker) may, if initially dealt two cards of the same rank, split them into two separate hands, placing an equal stake on the second one and calling for a second card to each. This, too, may be subject to various restrictions.
Surrendering. Some casinos may allow you to throw your hand in and retrieve half your stake after receiving two cards.
Standing. After facing his cards, a casino banker has no free choice of play but must follow house rules, which typically require him to hit a soft 17 or under but stand on a hard 18 or over.
Buying and twisting. In the domestic British game of Pontoon, your first two cards are dealt face down, but you may then either “buy” or “twist” additional cards. To buy is to increase your stake and have the next card dealt face down; to twist is to leave your stake intact and have it dealt face up. Once you have started twisting you may not revert to buying.
Ties. A tie or “push” is when you have the same total as the banker. In casino play there is little uniformity as to whether the result is a stand-off or a win for the banker, and a trawl through descriptions of the game from the earliest known times suggest that this has always been the case.
Pay-offs. A punter’s “natural” is typically paid off at 3:2, but the traditional proportion is 2:1, and other variations may be encountered.
Special hands. Many informal games, but few casino variants, pay extra for special hands, such as a five-card trick (five cards totalling 21 or less), or a royal pontoon (a twenty-one consisting of 7-7-7, or 6-7-8).
OriginsVingt-et-un (Twenty-One) first appears as an upper class or at least socially respectable game in 18th-century France, perhaps around 1760, as it is not mentioned in earlier editions of the Académie des Jeux. But this is not the earliest appearance of all, for a much earlier literary reference places an almost identical predecessor in Spain at least a century before. In 1613 Miguel Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, published Novelas ejemplares, a collection of twelve short stories about various contemporary characters and social tensions. One such story is entitled Rinconete y Cortadillo, these being the names of a couple of rogues and vagabonds. One of the characters involved says:
“With these (cards) I have gained my living at all the public houses and inns between Madrid and this place, playing at veintiuna (Twenty-One), and though they are dirty and torn, they are of wonderful service to those who understand them, for they shall never cut without leaving an ace at the bottom, which is one good point towards eleven, with which advantage, twenty-one being the game, he sweeps all the money into his pocket”.
There are two points of interest to note here. The first is social, in that the context reveals the character of the game to be distinctly low class. This would explain why no account of its rules appears before the 18th century, as the earliest books entirely devoted to card games were necessarily written for the literate classes. The second is technical, in that an Ace counts only 1, not 11. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we may speculate that what brought the game into social prominence in the 18th century was the novel idea of ascribing to the Ace its alternative higher value of 11. This makes for a much more interesting game, as it becomes possible to reach 21 on just two cards instead of the three implied by Cervantes, which speeds the game up and gives the player an additional chance of drawing without busting.
So what about the game of Veintiuna itself? Do we now credit Spain with its invention and suggest that it dates from, let’s say, the late 16th century? I think not, because Twenty-One itself is clearly a natural evolutionary development of the much earlier game of Thirty-One that seems to have been popular throughout western Europe from the middle of the 15th century, making it one of the oldest gambling card games of all.
The technical identity of these two games, given only the reduction of the target count from 31 to 21, is proved by a description of it dating from the late 17th century. Some time in the 1670s a Nottinghamshire gentleman by the name of Francis Willughby kept a large notebook in which he recorded the descriptions of as many games as came his way, and, being of a mathematical turn of mind, he was particularly interested in card games. Thirty-One, which he calls “the first and most simple games of cards”, heads the list. He explains that each player is dealt three cards from the top of the pack and has the option of either “sticking” or drawing as many more cards as he wishes until he either sticks or busts by exceeding a total face-count of 31 points. For this purpose face cards count 10 each and others their face value, Ace being 1 only (not an optional 11). A count of exactly 31 is called a “hitter” and wins a double stake unless the dealer also has one. As Willughby rightly notes,
All the art is to know when to stick. At 27, 28, 29 or 30 one may stick. But it is better to venture being out than to stick under 27, especially if there be many players.
Thirty-One is first mentioned by name in a 1464 French translation of a sermon preached in 1440 by an Italian monk now known as St Bernadine of Siena (1330-1444), the patron saint of gamblers (and, curiously, of public relations personnel). Bernadine was famed for his preaching against gaming. He is said to have done so at Bologna in 1423 so persuasively that the populace consigned their cards in thousands to a public bonfire.
Thereafter Thirty-One appears in almost every ephemeral list of currently popular games, such lists being contained mostly in sermons preached against gaming and in town ordinances or bye-laws specifying which games were and were not allowed to be played in public. Rabelais cites it as one of the many games played by his literary giant, Gargantua, in 1534 (Book I, chapter 22), and it appears under its German name (einunddreissig) in Fischart’s Geschichtklitterung (1575), which is more of an expanded paraphrase than a literal translation of Gargantua. Rounding up more of the usual suspects in the historical context, we find it mentioned by Berni in his little book on Primiera (1526), and by Cardano in his classic Book on Games of Chance (1564). Cardano, indeed, confuses the issue by separately mentioning a game featuring significant totals ranging from 20 to 22 in increments of one-half, but the relevant passage is somewhat garbled in its original Latin, and the name of the game, Fluxus, suggests that it refers to ways of valuing a flush.
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