The Best Blackjack Casinos

10 facts about Blackjack Casinos that you might not know

From time to time Blackjack Casinos like to mix up it’s identity, as you may already know a lot of people like to refer to it as ‘21’. It’s made a name for itself in huge Hollywood blockbusters such as Austin Powers, Rain Man, Bond as well as having legions of players all across the globe! Back in the day even Napoleon was known to play Blackjack as a means of celebrating after a battle! Here at Which Casinos we love a bit of trivia so we’ve included below 10 facts that you may not have been aware of! Right before you decide to play the ‘best blackjack casinos‘.

1. The House Edge of BlackJack Casinos is usually as little as 1%

Now we know what you’re thinking, “Less than 1%! That’s easy money!” We hate to be the ones to tell you this, however you are in fact wrong, due to things like card counting (we’ll explain that in more detail later) and other strategies which are aimed at beating the deal, the casinos created a variety of rules to make sure that they didn’t lose out too much. From this, rules are now applied to keep the house edge below 1%, if you want to read up on this a bit more, a breakdown can be found on the Blackjack Wiki page or the Blackjack Casinos guide on which casinos.

2. It’s one of the oldest gambling games in history

The famous Frenchman, Napoleon, used BlackJack as a distraction during his five years in exile on St. Helena. For the history buffs out there, he was placed on the tiny island deep in the South Atlantic after his escape from Elba and which lead to his infamous defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

3. Blackjack was the name given to the game in the USA during the 1920s

After the French Revolution many USA gambling establishments offered special payouts as a way to lure players in and “21” was among the games. One hand featured the ace of spades and 10-1 payout on blackjack. The hand therefore became known as ‘blackjack’ and the name has stuck ever since.

4. The Blackjack Hall of Fame exists

If you’re ever in San Diego at the Barona Casino you’ll come across the Blackjack Hall of Fame. A ‘permanent lifetime comp for food, beverage and a full room’ is awarded to inductees as long as each member promises to never play on Barona’s tables. It’s not hard to see why when you look at a list of the notable inductees, these include Peter Griffin the fellow mathematician (not the Family Guy version!) Ed Thorp the infamous card counter and the former US Army engineers known as ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ who back in the 1950’s discovered the best card playing strategy. It’s not hard to see why Barona make inductees sign this agreement is it!

5. Do you need skill to play (and win) on Blackjack

The majority of slot games rely on random number generation and a large dollop of luck in order to beat the casino whereas Blackjacks needs a bit of skill and strategy. You only have to do a quick Google search to find the countless amount of books that have been written on blackjack all with different strategies and theories to try and give the player an edge over the casino.

6. The card shoe was invented by a magician

It’s likely that you’ll have come across a film or a TV show featuring an online casino, therefore you may have noticed the croupier (the dealer who conducts the game), takes the cards from a box when dealing. The box is known as ‘card shoe’, a term invented by the magician John Scarne. Back when Blackjack just used only one deck of cards, it was John’s proposal to deal out of a shoe to avoid manipulation of the cards or sleight-of-hand. Pretty rich coming from a magician who was an expert at card manipulation! Although never enforced in casinos, they continued to use the shoe and more decks were added which increased the house edge. Oh and the reason why it was called a shoe? The original box device was said to have resembled a woman’s high heeled shoe.

7. The biggest Blackjack win was $15 million

Don Johnson has a bit of a name for himself down in Atlantic City. Between December 2010 and April 2011 he worked his way around three Atlantic City’s casinos and won a whopping $15 million. Interestingly he started with a $500k loss but in order to keep him playing the casino relaxed their house rules so they wouldn’t lose his custom. Safe to safe they paid for it – literally!

8. Card counting was developed by an American mathematician

We mentioned before the infamous card strategist group ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ who were the first to devise a Blackjack strategy back in 1956 that ultimately lead to Ed Thorp to create his own card counting strategy. He wrote a very popular book in 1963 titled “Beat the Dealer” in which he detailed the idea of card counting that enabled players to calculate when to hit or stick based on assigning numbers to different hands. Like all good theories, you need to do some experimenting first, so he set out and tried his method at numerous casinos and of course won! He eventually got caught out when spying on the dealers when using his special computers. Subsequently he was banned from all gambling halls in Las Vegas!

9. You can’t count cards online

Sorry if we’ve got you excited with all of this card counting talk! Card counting only works when the cards are removed from the deck, with online Blackjack, the cards get shuffled back into the deck and the count starts all over again from 0. So although it is easy to learn how to do, it’s not a useful skill for online casino players!

10. 16 is the worst hand in Blackjack

The worst hand in the game is said to be ‘16’, as players are too afraid to risk it all and go bust or stick and have the dealer win. The strategies we mentioned before such as splitting can lead to a potential double loss and although there are various strategies you can try to mitigate your losses, the meer site of ‘16’ can leave the most confident of player puzzling over what to do.

Having had these top tips on Blackjack, we hope you can utilise them as enjoy playing within any one, of our best blackjack casinos listed on site.