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The history of blackjack

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Shehar Est
The history of blackjack

Looking back, it is difficult to imagine the world as we know it casino roulette. The essence of the game is that the dealer plays his hand against one or several players and everyone is trying to collect the coveted “21” point.

A modern casino would have looked different without blackjack tables. In fact, this is the most popular board game around the world, and has been so since its inception. But when did she appear in the line of casino games?

Title

It is believed that the original name of the game appeared in the American vocabulary after the appearance of the game in the United States in the late 19th century. It was at that time that the gambling houses tried to attract visitors by offering 10-to-1 odds against the casino, for which it was enough for the player to pull out the ace of spades and one club jack or the jack of spades (a black jack) on two initial cards. Players chasing “21” as well as 10-to-1 odds often shouted “Black Jack” loudly. The name was preserved along with the game, and although the gambling houses wisely closed the chances of 10 to 1, blackjack itself was preserved.

Origin

The real origin of the blackjack is still vague. Although most researchers believe that blackjack came from an 18th-century French card game called Vingt-et-un (translated as twenty-one), others claim it comes from an Italian game called One-Thirty, the rules of which something reminiscent of modern blackjack, where the player seeks to be as close as possible to the number "31", but using 3 cards.

The author of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes, who was an avid player himself, wrote a novel about two male gamblers who appeared for the first time in his earlier work, Novelas Ejemplares. These scandalous card sharks were featured in his novel called Riconete y Cortadillo. In this story, two heroes meet to discuss their successes in a card game in Seville, the Spanish colony of Andalusia. But what was the game they played so expertly? Ventiuna, which translates to 21. 

But in reality these are not all coincidences. Cervantes writes that two men played Ventuana. According to the book, players are dealt two cards each, and they should be close to 21, but no more. In the game, an ace counts as one or eleven. While instead of jacks there were dozens numerically equal to 10. Does that sound familiar? Miguel de Cervantes published the book "Riconete y Cortadilla" in 1613, and wrote it back in 1601-1602.

 

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