Black jack is one of the oldest gambling entertainments, which seems to be the most popular casino card game nowadays.

Black jack origin

Black jack history originates in 17th century France where the play was called 'Vingt-En-Un', which is translated as 'twenty one' in French. At present time both names 'black jack' and 'twenty one' are used on the basis of equality to define the game.

The name 'twenty one' is not occasional as the main goal of black jack is to beat the dealer disregarding other players' results and do not go over the crucial quantity of points of 21 at the same time. In case it happens so that gamblers exceed 21 points they are said to bust and are considered as losers.

The second name 'black jack' also referred to the card combination of 21 points worth, which includes an Ace of spades and a Jack and earlier could have brought the lucky player some additional reward.

Black jack rules

The first truth about black jack you should learn by heart is that this is a play of skills, which means that gamblers are able to determine the outcome of the game session in case of smart and well thought-out implementation of certain black jack strategy (like basic strategy or card counting) and some black jack betting system (like Martingale or Parlay betting system).

According to black jack rules the game starts when the dealer and all players are dealt with an initial set of 2 cards each, which could be seen or unseen depending on black jack game variation. However, one of the dealer's cards is always faced down and is called the hole card.

The second step of black jack play is betting, which should be carefully considered by gamblers as exactly their bets determine the final result whether they would be able to hit the house or not.

In order to be a winner you need to learn black jack basic strategy perfectly, which is aimed to help gamblers to make appropriate bets for different players and dealer's card combinations.

The second main strategy is card counting, which is usually considered as quite sophisticated one. Although it could be time-consuming and a little boring to learn black jack card counting, but it is certainly worth to apply some efforts to master the playing method owing to the fact that proper implementation of card counting allows converting the house advantage into players' favor.