Blackjack PartyCasino Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment Captain Cooks Casino Australian players Blackjack Blackjack Online Casino Games Media Man Int

Blackjack

PartyCasino.com website Card Games Games Casino

PartyCasino News: PartyCasino VIP Double Up; Palladium online slot; Promotions

VIP Double Up

Starts: 00:00 ET, 21st November
Ends: 23:59 ET, 30th November

Prove you’re a big hitter and win up to $15,000 cash with VIP Double Up.

Earn points playing your favorite slots and jackpot slots, and work your way up the leaderboard to get your hands on your share of the riches.

Double the fun on the VIP Palladium slot

Accelerate your VIP Double Up progress with our exclusive VIP Palladium slot. You’ll earn double points every time you spin!

Have a look at the full list of prizes:

Rank Prize
1 $15,000 cash
2 $10,000 cash
3 $7,500 cash
4 $5,000 cash
5 $4,000 cash
6 $3,000 cash
7 $2,000 cash
8 $1,000 cash
9 $750 cash
10 $500 cash
11 to 15 $300 cash bonus
16 to 50 $150 cash bonus
51 to 100 $75 cash bonus

Find your Jack in the Box surprise...

Starts: 00:00 ET, 14th November
Ends: 23:59 ET, 17th November

We’ve packed our blackjack tables with thousands of cash gifts, bonuses and free points. Our rewards are hidden inside a surprise Jack in the Box. You won’t have to look hard to find it – the Jack in the Box will find you!

Just play any of our blackjack games as normal between 00:00 ET on 14th November and 23:59 ET on 17th November. If the Jack in the Box appears, act fast to claim your fabulous prize. Remember, the more you play blackjack, the better your chance of finding our account-boosting surprises.

Jack in the Box rewards will appear at random in the following games: Blackjack Multi-Hand Pro; Blackjack Single Deck; Blackjack Bonus Pairs; Blackjack High Limit; Blackjack Single Player; Multi-Player Blackjack; Multi-Hand Blackjack

Surprise gifts will only be offered on the download lobby.

PartyCasino.com is one of a number of Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment brands.

The most popular PartyCasino.com games of late include Heist, Circus, Rambo, Palladium Slot, The Godfather, Sinatra, Slotbox, Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Mission: Impossible, The Terminator, Cleopatra, Sinatra, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, The Amazing Spider-Man, Monopoly, Resident Evil, Melon Madness, Wheel Of Fortune and Mega Fortune Wheel.

The PartyCasino.com jackpot is currently approaching the $4 million mark. Players can also compete for The Big One and Marvel Hero Jackpot, playing the Marvel super hero themed online slot games.

PartyCasino's most recent game releases include War Of The Worlds, Atomic Fruit, Aztec Gold, Sin City, Robin Hood, Shaaark! SuperBet, Crocodopolis, Alice's Wonderland, Glamour Puss, Super Cubes, Heist, Palladium Slot and Circus Slot.

Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment Co CEO Jim Ryan has gone on record advising PartyCasino will soon feature more Hollywood blockbuster themed slots. A few in the know journalists and media agents have been recently tipped off that an all time classic movie adaption will be showcased in the PartyCasino portfolio within 1 month. PartyCasino has the world's most impressive line up of Hollywood themed games, and more are just around the corner.

PartyCasino.com and PartyPoker.com customers can also benefit from rewards and bonuses via PartyPoints and the Palladium Lounge. Be certain to check out the PartyCasino selection of promotions this month which are some of the best available in the industry today.

Media Man, Casino News Media and Global Gaming Directory do have a b2b relationship with Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment, as they do with dozens of other companies in the gaming, igaming, media and entertainment industry.

Blackjack in Australia

Captain Cooks Casino website Captain Cooks Casino profile

Australian and Asia Pacific players - play blackjack at Captain Cooks Casino, established since 1999 and most currencies accepted

Blackjack Ballroom

Virgin Blackjack

Vegas Blackjack with 20+ Bonus™

Vegas Blackjack with 20+ Bonus™ - play at Virgin Casino

Enjoy lucrative American Blackjack rules! Avoid risking more money when the Dealer has Blackjack.

Double down and hit split Aces!

Win up to 30:1 on a Blackjack with the new 20+ Bonus™ Award - loved by experts and beginners alike.
Win big on your biggest two-card hands, especially if those hands lose or tie the Dealer.

Game features:

• Our most generous Blackjack game yet
• 20+ Bonus™ bet offers awards of up to 30x
• Double down on any two cards or after splits (including Aces!)
• Win big on Blackjack or 20, especially if those hands lose or tie the dealer

Top Bonus Award:

• Players can win up to 30x (currency units) by betting on the 20+ Bonus™.

Currencies and Coin Sizes:

• GBP: 1p / 2p / 5p / 10p / 20p / 50p / £1 / £2 / £5
• Euro: 1c / 2c / 5c / 10c / 20c / 50c / €1 / €2 / €5
• USD: 1¢ / 5¢ / 10¢ / 25¢ / 50¢ / $1 / $2 / $5

Virgin Casino

Virgin Games Blackjack

Profile

Blackjack (also known as Twenty-one, Vingt-et-un (French for Twenty-one), or Pontoon) is one of the most popular casino card games in the world. Much of blackjack's popularity is due to the mix of chance with elements of skill, and the publicity that surrounds card counting (calculating the probability of advantages based on the ratio of high cards to low cards). The casino version of the game should not be confused with the British card game Black Jack (a variant of Crazy Eights).

Card counting

Basic strategy provides the player with the optimal play for any blackjack situation based on millions of hands played in the long run. However in the short run, as the cards are dealt from the deck, the remaining deck is no longer complete. By keeping track of the cards that have already been played, it is possible to know when the cards remaining in the deck are advantageous for the player.

Card counting creates two opportunities:

* The player can make larger bets when he or she has the advantage. For example, the player can increase the starting bet if there are many aces and tens left in the deck, in the hope of hitting a blackjack.
* The player can use information about the remaining cards to improve upon the basic strategy rules for specific hands played. For example, with many tens left in the deck, the player may double down in more situations since there is a better chance of making a strong hand.

Virtually all card counting systems do not require the player to remember which cards have been played. Rather, a point system is established for the cards, and the player keeps track of a simple point count as the cards are played out from the dealer.

Depending on the particular blackjack rules in a given casino, basic strategy reduces the house advantage to near 0 with some single-deck games, and less than one percent in a multi-deck game. Card counting, if done correctly, can give the player an advantage, typically ranging from 0 to 2% over the house. To counter card counting, many casinos switched from a single deck to multiple decks, with the cards dealt out of a container known as a "shoe".

In most US jurisdictions, card counting is legal and is not considered cheating. However, most casinos have the right to ban players, with or without cause, and card counting is frequently used as a justification to ban a player. Usually, the casino host will simply inform the player that he is no longer welcome to play at that casino. Players must be careful not to signal the fact that they are counting. The use of electronic or other counting devices is usually illegal.

Martingale (betting system)

Composition-dependent strategy

Basic strategy is based on a player's point total and the dealer's visible card. A player's ideal decision may depend on the composition of his hand, not just the information considered in the basic strategy. For example, a player should ordinarily stand when holding 12 against a dealer 4. However, in a single deck game, the player should hit if his 12 consists of a 10 and a 2; this is because the player wants to receive any card other than a 10 if hitting, and the 10 in the player's hand is one less card available to cause a bust for the player or the dealer.

However, in situations where basic and composition-dependent strategy lead to different actions, the difference in expected value between the two decisions will be small. Additionally, as the number of decks used in a blackjack game rises, both the number of situations where composition determines the correct strategy and the house edge improvement from using a composition-dependent strategy will fall. Using a composition-dependent strategy only reduces house edge by 0.0031% in a six-deck game, less than one tenth the improvement in a single-deck game (0.0387%).

Shuffle tracking

Techniques other than card counting can swing the advantage of casino blackjack towards the player. All such techniques are based on the value of the cards to the player and the casino, as originally conceived by Edward O. Thorp. One technique, mainly applicable in multi-deck games, involves tracking groups of cards (aka slugs, clumps, packs) during the play of the shoe, following them through the shuffle and then playing and betting accordingly when those cards come into play from the new shoe. This technique, which is admittedly much more difficult than straight card counting and requires excellent eyesight and powers of visual estimation, has the additional benefit of fooling the casino people who are monitoring the player's actions and the count, since the shuffle tracker could be, at times, betting and/or playing opposite to how a straightforward card counter would.

Arnold Snyder's articles in Blackjack Forum magazine brought shuffle tracking to the general public. His book, The Shuffle Tracker's Cookbook, mathematically analyzed the player edge available from shuffle tracking based on the actual size of the tracked slug. Jerry L. Patterson also developed and published a shuffle-tracking method for tracking favorable clumps of cards and cutting them into play and tracking unfavorable clumps of cards and cutting them out of play. Other legal methods of gaining a player advantage at blackjack include a wide variety of techniques for hole carding or gaining information about the next card to be dealt.

Variants

Pontoon is an English variation of blackjack with significant rule and strategy differences. However, in Australia and Malaysia, Pontoon is an unlicensed version of the American game Spanish 21 played without a hole card; despite the name, it bears no relation to English Pontoon.

Spanish 21 provides players with many liberal blackjack rules, such as doubling down any number of cards (with the option to 'rescue', or surrender only one wager to the house), payout bonuses for five or more card 21s, 6-7-8 21s, 7-7-7 21s, late surrender, and player blackjacks always winning and player 21s always winning, at the cost of having no 10 cards in the deck (though there are jacks, queens, and kings).

21st Century Blackjack (also known as "Vegas Style" Blackjack) is commonly found in many California card rooms. In this form of the game, a player bust does not always result in an automatic loss; there are a handful of situations where the player can still push if the dealer busts as well, provided that the dealer busts with a higher total.

Certain rules changes are employed to create new variant games. These changes, while attracting the novice player, actually increase the house edge in these games. Double Exposure Blackjack is a variant in which the dealer's cards are both face-up. This game increases house edge by paying even money on blackjacks and players losing ties. Double Attack Blackjack has very liberal blackjack rules and the option of increasing one's wager after seeing the dealer's up card. This game is dealt from a Spanish shoe, and blackjacks only pay even money.

The French and German variant "Vingt-et-un" (Twenty-one) and "Siebzehn und Vier" (Seventeen and Four) don't include splitting. An ace can only count as eleven, but two aces count as a Blackjack. This variant is seldom found in casinos, but is more common in private circles and barracks.

Chinese Blackjack is played by many in Asia, having no splitting of cards, but with other card combination regulations.

Another variant is Blackjack Switch, a version of blackjack in which a player is dealt two hands and is allowed to switch cards. For example, if the player is dealt 10-6 and 10-5, then the player can switch two cards to make hands of 10-10 and 6-5. Natural blackjacks are paid 1:1 instead of the standard 3:2, and a dealer 22 is a push.

In Multiple Action Blackjack the player places between 2 or 3 bets on a single hand. The dealer then gets a hand for each bet the player places on a hand. This essentially doubles the number of hands a single dealer can play per hour. Splitting and Doubling are still allowed.

Recently, thanks to the popularity of poker, Elimination Blackjack has begun to gain a following. Elimination Blackjack is a tournament format of blackjack.

Many casinos offer optional side bets at standard blackjack tables. For example, one common side-bet is "Royal Match", in which the player is paid if his first two cards are in the same suit, and receives a higher payout if they are a suited queen and king (and a jackpot payout if both the player and the dealer have a suited queen-king hand). Another increasingly common variant is "21+3," in which the player's two cards and the dealer's up card form a three-card poker hand; players are paid 9 to 1 on a straight, flush or three of a kind. These side bets invariably offer worse odds than well-played blackjack.

In April of 2007 a new version of Blackjack, called Three Card Blackjack™ was approved for play in the State of Washington. Three Card Blackjack ™ is played with one deck of 52 cards. In Three Card Blackjack the players place an ante bet. The players and dealer are then dealt 3 cards each. The players make the best blackjack (21) hand they can using 2 or all 3 cards. If the player likes their hand they make a play bet that is equivalent to their ante bet. The dealer must qualify with an 18 or better. If the dealer qualifies and the player beats the dealer, the player is paid 1-1 on both the Ante and Play bets. If the dealer does not qualify, the player is paid 1-1 on their Ante bet and their Play bet pushes. There is no hitting and no busting. At the same time that the player makes the Ante bet, they have the option of making an Ace Plus bet. If the player has 1 Ace in their hand of 3 cards, they get paid 1-1. An Ace and any 10 or Face Card pays them 3-1. An Ace and any two 10's or Face cards is paid 5-1. Two Aces pays 15-1 and Three Aces pays 100-1.

Blackjack Hall of Fame

In 2002, professional gamblers around the world were invited to nominate great blackjack players for admission into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. Seven members were inducted in 2002, with new inductees every year afterwards. The physical hall of fame is located at the Barona Casino in San Diego, California. Members include Edward O. Thorp, author of the 1960s book Beat the Dealer which proved that the game could be beaten with a combination of basic strategy and card counting; Ken Uston, who popularized the concept of team play; Arnold Snyder, author and editor of the Blackjack Forum trade journal; Stanford Wong, author and popularizer of the "Wonging" technique of only playing at a positive count, and several others. (Credit: Wikipedia).

Profiles

JackpotCity.co.uk Blackjack

BlackJack Ballroom

Vegas Blackjack

Virgin Games Blackjack

News