After Texas Hold ‘Em, blackjack is one of America’s most popular card games. In fact, its popularity spreads across the whole world and even surpasses poker in many regions due to its simplicity and fast-paced, casual play style. However, it may owe its modern name to America, where a story has long persisted about how blackjack got its name.
Blackjack Then And Now
For most of its existence, blackjack was just another game in the twenty-one family. This is a group that included other banking games like pontoon, though vingt-un was its most widespread variant. Vingt-un was the old name for blackjack in England and France in the 1700s, before arriving in America.
Since then, blackjack has come a long way to become a casino favorite. It isn’t just available in casinos across the country and beyond, it’s also available through the internet nowadays. Casino websites host online blackjack with real players, often with live dealers too, allowing users to find card games from the comfort of their home. Complete with digital cards and a chatroom, these games have all the interactivity you’d expect from a table, making the game more accessible than ever before. No longer only available to select groups of people, today blackjack can be played by anyone from anywhere, ensuring it’s legacy continues well into the future.
The Origins Of Blackjack
The origin of blackjack is shrouded in mystery, though many suspect that it was the Spanish who invented the game. This is because some of the first references to the game come from one of Spain’s most famous writers, Miguel de Cervantes, best known for writing Don Quixote. He wrote of veintiuna, a twenty-one game played with Spanish-suited cards.
From this 1600s Castilian reference, vingt-un appears in 1700s Britain and 1800s France. During this time, it would have arrived in America through the English-founded Thirteen Colonies and the Louisiana Purchase from the French.
#OnThisDay in 1803, the Louisiana Purchase, the acquisition of the Louisiana territory by the United States from France, was completed. pic.twitter.com/DF7FIBKdHP
— French Embassy U.S. (@franceintheus) December 20, 2016
It’s natural for rules to shift over time and blackjack was no different. In these older versions of the game, only the dealer could double and there were dedicated betting rounds between card dealings, like in poker.
Where Blackjack Got Its Name
From here, the story behind blackjack’s name becomes murky. Upon hitting the USA, gambling houses sweetened the deal by offering a bonus to any vingt-un hands that included the ace of spades and a jack from either the spades or the clubs. The story claims that the hand became known as the blackjack, even after the bonus fell out of fashion.
Others claim this is a myth, including French historian and card game authority Thierry Depaulis. He insists that the name blackjack was used by Canadians panning for gold along the Yukon River. They, along with other miners, had used blackjack to refer to a material called zinc blende (now sphalerite/marmatite). Being associated with valuable gold deposits, Depaulis theorized that the name was given to vingt-un’s most valuable hand too.
Both seem just as likely, and maybe they both happened independently of each other, but what’s undeniable is that the name caught on. Whether it came from the gambling houses of the American south or the miners of northwestern Canada, blackjack sprung from the American continent and remains one of the world’s most enjoyed card games.
