Later references to this game are found in France and Spain.

'Rinconete y Cortadillo' was written between 16, implying that ventiuna was played in Castile since the beginning of the 17th century or earlier. The game is played with the Spanish baraja deck. They are proficient at cheating at veintiuna (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. Cervantes was a gambler, and the protagonists of his ' Rinconete y Cortadillo', from Novelas Ejemplares, are card cheats in Seville. The first written reference is found in a book by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. The game is a comparing card game where each player competes against the dealer.īlackjack's immediate precursor was the English version of twenty-one called vingt-un, a game of unknown (but likely Spanish) provenance. Blackjack players do not compete against each other. This family of card games also includes the European games vingt-et-un and pontoon, and the Russian game Ochko.

It uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as ' twenty-one'. : 342 It is the most widely played casino banking game in the world. Pontoon, twenty-one, Siebzehn und Vier, vingt-et-unīlackjack (formerly black jack and vingt-un) is a casino banking game.

A blackjack example, consisting of an ace and a 10-valued card

Poker ace counts as 1