The goal is not to beat the other players at the table-whether that's the casino table or the kitchen table-the goal is to beat the dealer's hand. The luck part has to do with the cards you are dealt and the skill has to do with learning some basic strategies-mainly knowing when to hit, stand, split or double-down. When you request a hit in blackjack, you're asking the dealer to give you another card.īlackjack is played with a standard 52-card deck and is a very simple game that requires a certain amount of skill based on a certain amount of luck. In modern versions of the game, any 10-value card with any ace is considered blackjack, but wouldn't it be fun to mix it up a bit when playing at home and give an extra chip or two to the player who gets the jack of clubs/ace of spades combination? Let's Play That's how 21 was renamed blackjack-from the combination of those two cards.

Some gambling houses offered bigger payouts for blackjack hands, while others gave bonuses for certain card combinations-namely an ace of spades with a jack of clubs. If the dealer scores closest to 21, you lose.Īlthough blackjack was played even in early American gambling houses, it was never as popular a game as poker, so gaming houses had to spice it up a bit in order to give it a little more mass appeal. The goal of the game is to beat the dealer's hand by scoring 21 or as close to 21 as you can get without going over.

It's believed that the game of blackjack has its roots in France.

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