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The Birth of Blackjack

Gambling scholars have argued for decades about the origins of many modem gambling games. When it comes to the game of blackjack, the most popular house­banked card game in history, many modem texts tell us that the origins of the game are “uncertain.” Hey, just about everything in this universe is uncertain, but the origins of blackjack are not. The game can be traced to a number of popular European card games from as far back as the fifteenth century. That’s right around the time when Gutenberg invented the printing press, and cards themselves became popular (and cheap) enough to play games with. Prior to that, cards were hand-painted by artists and calligraphers for royalty only, and they were primarily used for religious, educational, or ceremonial purposes.

Virtually all card games are based on some specified number of cards being dealt, with a winner determined by some happenstance of rank, suit, match, sequence, or total. In the simple children’s game of war-which in recent years has been modified into a house-banked casino games-the only determining factor of the winner is rank. In more complex card games, like poker, various combinations of rank, suit, match, or sequence may decide the winner. Blackjack is more complex than war, but much simpler than poker. The winner at twenty-one is decided almost entirely on the basis of total, with the cards’ numerical values being added together.