Blackjack – Why so popular?
Blackjack did not enjoy the widespread popularity it now has in the US when it was first introduced in the gambling houses, and hardly anybody wanted to try it out.
So the gambling house owners thought of offering bonuses to the winners to attract players to the blackjack tables to place their bets.
One of the bonuses they thought up was a 10 to 1 payout when the player got a black jack and an ace of spades. The black jacks are of course the jack of clubs and the jack of spades. That is how the game came to be called blackjack.
The 10 to 1 bonus was soon discontinued as the game became popular, but it continued to be referred as blackjack. According to the present rules, you no longer need a jack or a black card with an ace of clubs to make a “blackjack.” In today’s game any ace and any ten, jack, queen or king can give you a blackjack.
Blackjack’s 3 to 2 payout also added to its popularity. Players automatically win if they get a blackjack. At the same time, they can still win by beating the dealer even if they don’t get a blackjack.
If the players have cards on their hands which total higher than the dealer’s, they can beat him. They just have to take care not to get a sum higher than twenty one because this will cause a bust and they will lose, unless the dealer goes bust also.
Another factor going in blackjack’s favor is that the players have to beat the dealer and not beat one another. So in blackjack it doesn’t matter if your fellow players can see what cards you are holding.
So the simple structure combined with the good advantage enjoyed by the players made blackjack immensely popular in the casinos and gambling houses. It now enjoys the status of being the most popular table casino game, played in casinos across the US, Europe, Asia or Australia.
Blackjack is a relatively easy game to understand and to play, and one can play it with fairly low limits. It enjoys one of the lowest house edges in the casino. Unlike the other casino card games, the blackjack player’s decisions count, and if you know card counting, you can even have an edge over the house. Blackjack is one among a handful of casino games in which a skilled player who has studied the game well, can actually have an advantage over the house.
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