You can find a gambling promotion for all casino games. This is true even for casual games like bingo: On a site like Bingobonusfinder.co.uk, you can find many bonuses that will give you free tickets or refund your losses. However, whether you use a bonus or not, it is essential that you know everything about the game you are going to play for an enjoyable and rewarding experience, and this applies mostly to blackjack.
“Blackjack is one of the easiest games to learn but one of the hardest to master,” says Casino Bonuses Finder Product Owner Tony Sloterman. “Theoretically, it is possible to win any game you play with optimal gameplay, but to get to this level you need to know everything about blackjack.” To help with this, we’ll briefly go over the history of this legendary card game below.
It Started as ‘Vingt-Un’
There is no consensus on when blackjack was invented and by whom. But most historians think it started as a card game called ‘Vingt-Un’, invented and played by Spanish sailors. This is a French word that means “twenty-one”. Considering that Spanish sailors invented almost all card games, with the exception of poker, this is quite a reasonable guess. We know that the game was played with this name in the 16th century in France and Spain.
In the book “Rinconete y Cortadillo”, written in 1601, blackjack is referred to as “veintiuna”. This word also means “twenty-one” but in Spanish. The protagonists of the book are card game cheaters, and they are masters of this game. For the same reason, how the game is played is explained in detail: the goal is to reach 21 points in total and the Ace card counts as 1 or 11 points. So, we can say that the basic rules were the same even almost 400 years ago. The only difference is that the “baraja” deck is used during this period: there are only 40 cards in this deck. The author of “Rinconete y Cortadillo” is also a familiar name: Miguel de Cervantes. Known for Don Quixote, the author was one of the most famous gamblers of the time.
United States Meets Blackjack
Blackjack became popular in France and Spain and became widespread in England in the 18th century but is still known as ‘Vingt-Un’ in Europe. The game entered the United States between 1810 and 1820, and it was played with this name until the 1890s too. But during the Gold Rush period, gambling house operators in the United States added a special bonus to attract more attention to the game. This bonus paid out a very high amount if the player reached 21 points with a combination of ‘Ace of Spades’ and ‘Jack of Clubs’. The name of this special hand was “blackjack”.
This bonus made the game so popular that soon every gambler in the United States started calling it “blackjack” for short, and the name Vingt-Un is quickly forgotten. The bonus offered for this special hand is withdrawn after a short time, but the new name that gamblers started to use became permanent. In other words, we owe it to American gamblers and US casino owners that we play this game as ‘blackjack’ today: otherwise, we might still be playing it as Vingt-Un.