It can be a brave, and sometimes dangerous, move to mess with the classics. We’ve seen it in movies, we’ve seen it in TV shows and we’ve seen it in gaming. Where casino games are concerned, it is extra hazardous. Gamblers can be superstitious and seldom welcome change.
Now, blackjack is one of the oldest and best-loved games, and the traditional version will always remain popular. But that hasn’t stopped developers from risking the wrath of traditionalists by coming up with these new versions. Whisper it, but they are actually worth a look.
Lightning blackjack
Cassio game developer Evolution Gaming has become famous for adding new aspects of gameplay to casino classics with its famous lightning strikes. Lightning roulette is one of its most famous titles, and lightning blackjack works to the same formula. The game plays out in the same way as regular blackjack, but with random lightning strikes that can appear from nowhere and that apply a multiplier between 2x and 25x to a winning score. Many say that the only downside to blackjack is that the biggest win you can get is 3-2. That’s put right with lightning blackjack.
Blackjack switch
This is one of the hottest new blackjack games trending in Australian online casinos at present and its fame is rapidly spreading worldwide. The game starts out like a normal game of blackjack, except for the fact that the player is dealt two hands instead of one and can choose to swich cards from one hand to another. Of course, this puts the player at quite an advantage, so to make up for it, blackjack only pays out at even money, not 3-2, and the dealer busts on 23 instead of 22. A dealer 22 results in a push with all stakes returned.
Double exposure blackjack
We’d like to rename this “fantasy blackjack” as anyone who has ever played has had a moment or two when they’d love to know dealer’s holecard. That’s the setup in double exposure blackjack, and it makes for very interesting gameplay. Obviously, it shifts things massively in the player’s favor, but despite some other rule changes to even things out, this is still a blackjack version with a house edge that drops to almost zero if you play optimum strategy.
Pontoon
You probably know that blackjack is itself a variation on another game. It derives from the French classic, vingt et un, and while blackjack in what we might call the Americanized version, it also spread across the British Empire in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Their version was named Pontoon, apparently a very bad mispronunciation of “vingt et un”. It is very similar to blackjack, but there are two notable differences in the rules. The most important one is that the player initially sees only one upcard, and makes an ante bet on the basis of this alone. He can then bet more as the game progresses. There are also some variations in terminology, as players stick or twist, instead of hitting or standing.