Spanish 21

Spanish 21 is a variation of blackjack, considered to be the world's most popular casino card game. The glaring difference between the two is that Spanish 21 makes no use of the 10 cards, which should appeal to casino gamblers and blackjack players who love a good challenge. You have a higher house edge, but more attractive payouts, bonuses, and rule modifications to provide a reasonable balance.

Spanish 21 Strategy

When learning to play Spanish 21, it helps if you know blackjack. But if building your Spanish 21 strategy, it helps to unlearn your blackjack strategy because the two games' strategies are practically disparate.

This is not to say that blackjack players best stick to what they play best and not bother giving the no-tens conundrum a shot. Despite a higher house edge, Spanish 21 makes for some of the best bets in land-based and Internet Casino gambling. In casinos where the dealer must stand on a soft 17 or re-doubling is allowed, Spanish 21 probably allows better bets than blackjack.

Spanish 21 Basic Strategy & Card-Counting

Basic strategy and card-counting are very popular forms of blackjack strategy, which sure makes it tempting to deduce that they can work just as well for Spanish 21. Not if you wish to hang on to your money and sanity.

Card-counting is a strategy in which you aim to keep track of the cards that have already been played from the shoe—literally, by counting cards—in order to gain an advantage over the house. As more cards are played from the shoe, the more you narrow down what cards are left, and the more you can anticipate the cards that you will be dealt and what sort of hand you might make.

Alright, you can start card-counting, attempt to lower the house advantage in Spanish 21. Alas, that is one high house edge you are dealing with, due to the absence of tens, a lot higher than in blackjack. You have got to be one very optimistic gambler to expect to swing the odds to your favor in a game that is practically designed to thwart the card-counters. With its higher house advantage and 25% fewer probabilities to make a blackjack, Spanish 21 is a game of negative expectations. The effects of card-counting are too miniscule to offer any relevant edge in playing hands with positive expectations.

Blackjack basic strategy is a mathematical method of assessing an action given a situation in a particular game. It theorizes that, given the variables governing game play—like the number of decks in a shoe or specific table rules, it is possible to determine what moves are statistically profitable to the player in the long term. If followed to the letter, basic strategy is believed to lower the house edge to less than 1% in blackjack, and this is mostly because the game's steady, smaller number of house rules and card combinations do not exactly force big changes on basic strategy.

Spanish 21 does force those changes. The 10-point cards are 25% fewer: sixteen 10-point cards in a standard 52-card deck less the four 10 cards (one from each of the four suits). Certain 21 bonus hands add more mathematical variables, as do additional house rules and card combinations. For example, you are allowed to double down after seeing any number of cards, unlike in blackjack where you are limited to doubling down merely after the first two cards. If you have 3-3-3-2 for a four-card 11, you can double down. And if you don't like the added card, you can still back out by asking for a double down rescue, which permits you to surrender one bet while pulling back the other. With other hands, you can ask for a late surrender.

Because of the gap caused by the differences between the two games, Spanish 21 has opened up the possibility of having an extreme set of game rules; of having an uncommon combination force you to devise an uncommon strategy. Blackjack and casino gaming author John Grochowski has said that Spanish 21 is "essentially blackjack with an extreme set of rules." Hence, the inception of Spanish 21's very own basic strategy.

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Spanish 21

Spanish 21 Strategy

Spanish 21 Basic Strategy & Card-Counting

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