Blackjack Game
Blackjack game originates from such French games as "chemin de fer" and "French Ferme." Its internet equivalent online blackjack is now even more popular. Baccarat, Seven-And-A-Half and a game known to Americans as 21are from the same family with the blackjack game. Today's Blackjack is also thought to originate from these games. Standardized blackjack game decks of cards dates back to 1440, the time when Johann Guttenberg printed the 50-card deck. Several years passed and his cards and the blackjack games played with them became extremely popular among the rich and the royal.
The majority of blackjack games are all about reaching a certain card-count total. In Baccarat the total was of course 9. Baccarat appeared in Italy in the 1490's. Another game, Seven-and-a-half, was played with only Eights, Nines, Tens and face cards, which counted as the Half. Seven-and-a-half appeared to be the first blackjack game with the player "busting" automatically if the cards total over the desired number of 7-1/2.
Among other Blackjack's ancestors is Spanish game One-and-Thirty, first recorded in the book "The Comical History of Rinconete and Cortadillo" dated 1570. Each player antes in and is dealt three cards followed by three community cards dealt to center table. The player takes one community card replacing it with a discard from their hand. It continues until each player is "content" at the point the totals are taken.
The French game Quinze in which the desired total was 15 had become very popular in the 1800's. Just compare today's high society people playing blackjack game with all those Princes, Dukes, Marquees and Prime Ministers gathering around the Quinze tables. Trente-et-Quarante, one more French game, was played with 6 decks of cards, with a croupier dealing out a row of black cards and a row of red cards sequentially after players have bet on either row. When each row amounts to about 30 the hand is closed. Bets on the row closest to 31 win even money and a tie, both rows totaling 31, gets the house to pocket half of all players' bets. Trente-et-Quarante may be alike to Roulette in its play rather than Blackjack. The game is played today as well.
Vingt-Un, also known as "Twenty-One", is one more ancestor to blackjack. The game came from Europe to America in the late 1800's. The game wasn't very popular after the first acquaintance in the US. Gambling houses tried various bonus payouts to get blackjack players to the tables. On such bonus was a 10-to-1 payout if the player's hand consisted of the Ace of Spades and a blackjack (either the Jack of Clubs of the Jack of Spades). The hand was called a "Blackjack" and the name stuck even though the bonus payout was soon abolished. This led to special green-felted Blackjack tables made by 1919.By 1931, blackjack game was the third most popular Nevada casino game after Roulette and Craps. In 1958, the Blackjack hit the records in being popular. Now online blackjack is just as popular as off-line blackjack, making the blackjack community enormous and keeping it multiplying.
