How to play
Vingt-et-un (“twenty-one”) is the old card game that blackjack and Pontoon grew out of, printed in English rule books from 1800. There’s no casino dealer: one player holds the bank and the others play against it, and the bank moves around the table. Here you sit with three bots, and sooner or later the bank comes to you.
The aim is to finish closer to 21 than the banker without going over. Cards 2 to 10 count their face value, Jacks, Queens and Kings count 10, and an ace counts 1 or 11.
A round:
- Press Deal. Everyone gets one card. You see yours; the others stay face down.
- Starting from the player after the banker, each player looks at their card and stakes 10 to 500 credits. Tap chips to build your stake, then press Stake.
- Everyone, the banker too, gets a second card.
- Players take turns to Draw or Stand. Going over 21 loses your stake straight away.
- The banker plays last, then settles with everyone still standing.
The game uses one 52-card deck, shuffled before every round.
Winning and losing
- Higher total than the banker: the banker pays your stake.
- Same total or lower: you pay the banker. Ties go to the bank.
- Banker goes over 21: the banker pays everyone still standing.
- A natural (an ace and a 10, Jack, Queen or King as your first two cards) pays twice your stake.
- The banker’s natural ends the round at once and takes twice the stake from every player, except a player who also has a natural: that’s a draw.
Taking the bank
The bank changes hands in two ways:
- A player with a natural takes the bank for the next round, as long as the banker didn’t have one too. The first natural after the banker gets it.
- Nobody keeps the bank for more than five rounds in a row. After five, it moves to the next seat.
When you’re the banker you play against all three bots at once. You see who stands and who busts, but not the totals of the players still standing. Then you Draw or Stand, and win or pay each of them. Ties go to you.
Credits. Only your credits count; the bots never run out. As a player you need twice your stake in credits, in case the banker turns up a natural. As the banker, the bots’ stakes together can’t be more than half your credits, so you can always pay a round of naturals. A bot that finds nothing left to cover sits the round out.
Strategy
Use the bust chance. When it’s your turn, the message tells you how often one more card would take you over 21. It counts only the cards you can see: your own, and any that busted players or naturals have shown.
Stake on your first card. You choose the stake after seeing one card, so it’s natural to stake more on an ace or a 10-value card. Those cards start your naturals and your strong totals.
Ties are the bank’s. As a player, 17 against a banker’s 17 loses. As the banker, that same tie wins for you. That’s why the bank is worth holding.
The bots play by fixed rules. They stake more on aces and 10-value cards, draw below 16 (below 18 with a soft hand), and as the banker draw to 17.
The odds
There’s no house here: everyone, you included, takes a turn at the bank. With every seat played by the bots’ rules over 300,000 rounds, the bank came out almost exactly even, about 0.1% of all stakes in the players’ favour. Your seat held the bank in about a quarter of the rounds, and on average the players were dealt a natural about once every seven rounds.
Vingt-et-un is the ancestor of Pontoon and casino Blackjack. Many home games of twenty-one, including the one often called yirmibir in Turkey, are played this way, with the bank passing around the table.
If you enjoy Vingt-et-un, try Walking Wilds or White Hot Aces next.
