blackjack

Blackjack (formerly black jack or vingt-un) is a casino banking game. It is the most widely played casino banking game in the world. It uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as "twenty-one". This family of card games also includes the European games vingt-et-un and pontoon, and the Russian game . The game is a comparing card game where players compete against the dealer, rather than each other.

==History== Blackjack's immediate precursor was the English version of twenty-one called vingt-un, a game of unknown provenance. The first written reference is found in a book by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes was a gambler, and the protagonists of his "Rinconete y Cortadillo", from Novelas Ejemplares, are card cheats in Seville. They are proficient at cheating at veintiuno (Spanish for "twenty-one") and state that the object of the game is to reach 21 points without going over and that the ace values 1 or 11. The game is played with the Spanish baraja deck.