Online Blackjack Overview - How to play Online Blackjack

Online blackjack is a form of 21 played on the Internet via a home computer or other web-compatible device. "Blackjack" has been the American name for what Europeans have called "Twenty-One" or "Vingt-et-un", the French word for 21, for centuries. Today, blackjack is the most popular casino table game (excluding poker). The game's popularity is tied to its fast pace, relatively easy rules, and ability of players to affect winning by the use of strategy.

Blackjack is usually played with multiple conventional 52-card decks. The 6 to 8 decks usually used is to discourage card-counting, which can be a major advantage when a smaller number of cards are used. The game has been popular with advantage players and card counters since the 1960s, because you can count the number of a particular cards that have been dealt since the last reshuffle, and reevaluate the odds that a particular card is about to appear, adjusting your bets accordingly.

Once blackjack was offered in online casinos, virtual blackjack quickly became one of the most popular card games online.

The strategy of blackjack hasn't changed for at least four centuries. That's how long the game is known to have been in existence, though blackjack might be a good deal older. The early 17th century is when the first surviving literary reference to blackjack was made. It was Miguel Cervantes, best known for writing the first novel, Don Quixote, who first mentioned blackjack. In Cervantes' Novelas Ejemplares, which was published in the 1601-02 range, the main characters of the Riconete y Cortadillo story are described as cheats at a game named "ventiuna", the Spanish word for 21. Ventiuna is described as a card game where the object is to reach 21 points, and where the ace in the deck can be valued at either 1 or 11. One major different in modern blackjack is that the cards eight, nine, and ten do not appear in the game.

Once you add the 8, 9, and 10 cards, there appears to be little difference between ventiuna in the year 1601 and blackjack in the year 2011. As the story shows, there were even players clever enough and ambitious enough to think they can beat the game. One wonders when the first blackjack card-counter appeared.

Online blackjack is a continuation of the game played all these years in traditional casinos. The rules of online blackjack are no different the traditional online blackjack played in traditional brick and mortar casinos.

You have a French deck of 52 cards (or numerous decks with the traditional 52 cards), and each player is dealt two cards. The dealer faces somewhere between five to nine players positions, though seven blackjack players is a common number. These cards are usually dealt face up for everyone to see.

After the players receive their cards, the dealer deal two cards to himself or herself, with the first card face-up and the hold card facing down. The dealer can peak at the card, but the players have no idea what the second card is, unless the dealer makes a blackjack (a combination of ace and 10, adding up to 21).