History Of Blackjack

Card Roots

There is no doubt that casino news authority is widely spread. From the news we can find out about the matters in the world of gambling. Such things like news about poker players, the nearest tournaments, eetc.But, were should we look to read about the history of gambling games?
Blackjack game, also known in many countries as 21, is a card game with a long history. Many heard of it, many have seen or even played it, but what do we know about the history of blackjack? Where did it come from? Who invented this game, where it was first played, and who were the first players? Here we will tell you about the history of the most popular card game on the planet – the history of blackjack.
It is believed that first card games were invented in China, same as many other inventions on the planet. We may say that the history of blackjack takes its start around 900 A.D. This is where and when card games began their journey through all of the world.
In Germany around 1440, Johan Gutenberg, the inventor of publishing, printed first deck of cards.
In 1500’s French replaced one of the face cards with the Queen card. Traditionally all face cards where male. This was the first completed deck of cards, as we know it today.

The origin of the number

No one exactly knows where the 21 game was born. There are several theories in several countries, and every country claims its rights to be a parent for the game, and to remain in the history of blackjack.
It is known that first references in history about this game dated back to 17th century. We can find first reference in one of the novels of famous author of Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The author was a gambler himself, as well as some of his book’s heroes. The game he mentions in his book was called ventiuna (21 in Spanish). The novel was written between 1601 and 1602, and it means that the game itself appeared in Spain much earlier than that time.
First number games with the similar idea, but another numbers, appeared at that time and earlier in many other countries in Europe. Games like “Vingt-un”, “Seven and a Half”, “Baccarat”, “Quinze” and so many others where mentioned in many historical books and literature through all of the Europe. All of them had the same idea – to rich a certain number of points to win the game. One of them, the card game called “Thirty-One”, has the oldest references. First mentioning of it appeared in 1440 in Italy. It is a funny fact, that these first references are from an anti-gambling sermon of the Italian Inquisition, allowed the game to live its trace in human’s history, and to be claimed as a very beginning of the history of blackjack.

What is Blackjack?

Most of the information above is about Europe, but what about US, what about the history of blackjack? Today’s blackjack came from France. It, of course, was not exactly the game as we know it today; it was its forefather – French “Vingt-et-un” (21). This game came from France to the shores of North America’s famous New Orleans after French revolution of 1800’s. First time “Vingt-et-un” appeared in gambling houses in 1911 in Indiana. But it was still French “Vingt-et-un”, but not the blackjack. You see, the game was pretty popular, but not popular enough, so the gambling houses needed to make it more interesting for the clients and much profitable for them. So they began to include some bonus combinations to the game. One of those combinations, consist of jack of spades and ace of spades, called blackjack. So these combinations stuck to the game and from that time, with some new rules slightly different from French Vingt-et-un (21), the game evolved into the blackjack game. After the gambling legalization in Nevada the game found its home in every casino of the State.

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