Not Your Same Ol’ Blackjack – Double Up and Toss One 21

By John Grochowski on Tuesday November 29, 2016

blackjack, casino, casino-games, casinos, table-games

Blackjack is the most popular casino game, so it’s only natural that new table games shown at Global Gaming Expo would include a healthy portion of blackjack variants.

Take Double Up Blackjack from Score Gaming. After your first two cards, you can Double Up by making a bet equal to or less than your blackjack bet. After that, you receive no more cards. Winners are paid even money, just like your main blackjack and double down bets.

Dealt a 20 vs. a dealer’s 6, a player would never want to double down, which brings one more card and about a 12-in-13 chance of busting. You would want to Double Up, which stops your hand at that 20.

However, if player and dealer hands tie, you lose your Double Up bet.

Also, any dealer total of 16 stops the game. When the dealer has 16, player 21s are paid even money and all other totals push.

Double Up Blackjack comes with an optional 16 Bonus bet that pays off on dealer totals of 16.

Another new blackjack game is Toss One 21 from American Gaming Systems. There are no hits, stands, double downs or pair splits in this blackjack variation. Instead, you start with four cards and choose three to make up your best blackjack hand.

For example, dealt two 10s, a 4 and a 7, you would play one of the 10s along with 4-7 to make up a 21.

You can get a blackjack that pays 3-2 if you have two 10-value cards and an Ace.

If you can’t make up a hand of 21 or less, you bust. So if you’re dealt 10-9-8-7, where your lowest possible hand is 24 for 9-8-7, you lose no matter what the dealer has.

The dealer also must make up a three-card hand from four cards and can bust if there is no three-card total of 21 or less.

If the player and dealer have the same three-card total, then the fourth card is used as a tiebreaker. If the fourth card also is tied, the house wins.

That’s a minor component of the house edge. As in basic blackjack, the house edge derives from the risk that the player will bust before the dealer plays his hand.