Blackjack

Blackjack is the world's most popular casino banking game. It's played with a standard 52-card deck and is part of a family of card games known as "twenty-one." In this game, players compete against the dealer rather than each other.

History

The game's origins trace back to the early 17th century in Spain, where it was known as "veintiuno" (twenty-one). The first written reference appears in Miguel de Cervantes' "Rinconete y Cortadillo," written between 1601-1602.

The game spread across Europe, appearing in France in 1888 and Britain in the late 1700s. It reached the United States in the early 1800s, where it evolved into its modern form. The name "blackjack" emerged during the Klondike Gold Rush (1896-99), when prospectors used the term to refer to the game's highest-paying hand.

The game's modern strategy was revolutionized in 1956 when Roger Baldwin and his team published "The Optimum Strategy in Blackjack," laying the foundation for mathematical approaches to the game. This work was later expanded by Ed Thorp in his influential 1963 book "Beat the Dealer."