Spanish 21: a shorter deck and its own chart

The sign says Spanish 21. The game looks like blackjack and the chart in your pocket is for blackjack. How much of it still applies?

The deck: four cards out of every 52

Spanish 21 is dealt from six or eight Spanish decks, and a Spanish deck holds 48 cards rather than 52. The four cards missing from each deck are the four tens — the jacks, queens and kings all stay, and they are all still worth ten points each. Everything about the shape of the game is the shape you already know: your total against the dealer’s without going over 21, the dealer acting last by a rule printed at the table, and a bet lost on a hand that goes over.

• A
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10 taken out
• J
• Q
• K

One suit of a Spanish deck: the 10 is taken out, the jack, queen and king stay. Every card that would have finished your 20 or broken the dealer’s hand is now a shade less likely to arrive.

A game dealt this way and changed in no other respect would cost more than the plain game, and nobody would sit at it. What makes people sit at it is the other half of the exchange, and that half is written into the published rules of the game rather than posted at the table.

What the table hands back

These terms are printed in the published rules of the game, not chosen by the table, so they travel with the name over it.

• Hit and standAs at any table.
• A second bet on the handOn any number of cards, not only the first two.
• The way out after itGive the hand up afterwards; the second bet comes back, the first is lost.
• Split, and split aces againAnd carry on playing the split aces rather than taking one card each.
• SurrenderPrinted in the rules of this game.

Five things to do where the plain table offers four, and one of the five — the way out after the second bet — exists only because this game lets that bet go up so freely. A move you have never used is a move you will not think of at the table, which is what the practice table further down is for.

What a long 21 is paid

The other half of the exchange is a scale of payments for hands the plain game adds nothing for. Two scales, in fact, and both carry the same condition at the end.

The extra payment or the extra bet, not both on the same hand: that is why this game’s chart does not put a second bet up everywhere the plain chart does.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

The scales are the part people remember from this game, and they are also the part that does the least work. A payment that arrives on a hand you were going to finish anyway is welcome; it is not a reason to take a card you would otherwise have stood on. The chart below already counts every one of these payments — that is what makes it the chart for this table and not the other one.

Its own chart, and where it differs

The chart worked out for this game, at a table where the dealer hits a soft 17, is on the card below: hard totals, soft hands and pairs. Read a cell as you read the plain chart — your hand down the side, the dealer’s card across. A number beside a letter counts your cards, because the second bet may go up on any number of cards. The marks *, † and ‡ flag hands where a 6-7-8 payment is still possible from your two cards.

Set beside the plain chart, the disagreement is not a cell or two. In 34 cells of 330 the two charts name different moves outright: a hand the plain chart stands on is taken a card on here, a pair the plain chart splits is not split here. In 52 more the move is the same for the first two or three cards and changes once the hand is longer — something the plain chart never has to say, because there the second bet can only go up on two.

• Different move outright34 cells where the chart you learned names a move this game’s chart does not.
• Same move, until the hand grows52 cells where the answer holds for two or three cards and changes after that.
• Cells in the chart330 in all, across hard totals, soft hands and pairs.

Playing by the full chart makes the cost of the play smaller than playing by feel, and that is as true here as at the plain table. What it does not do is make the game free of cost, or turn a hand that was always going to be lost into one that was not. Carrying the plain chart to this table is the one thing worse than carrying none at all: it will answer confidently, and in a good many cells it will answer for a different game.

What the hour costs, and which line decides

Everything above — the four cards taken out, the moves handed back, the scales of payments — comes to a single figure: the share of every bet the house keeps on average from a player who never departs from the chart. Here it is beside the plain game, and beside itself.

The longer the bar, the dearer the hour. The two Spanish 21 bars are the same game played by its own full chart; what separates them is what the dealer must do on a soft 17.

So the honest sentence about this game is a sentence about which table you are standing at. The small figure people repeat for Spanish 21 is printed under the line for a dealer who stands on a soft 17, and the list that line comes from carries a second line, for a table where the dealer hits a soft 17, on which the house keeps the larger share. The rules of the game leave that choice to the table, and the table posts it along with its bets and its payouts, in one wording or the other.

• What the name over the table tells youThe deck it is dealt from, and with it the moves and the scales of payments: those are in the published rules of the game.
• What the name does not tell youWhat the dealer must do on a soft 17, and the smallest and largest bet the table takes. Those are posted at the table, and the first of the two decides which of the two figures above is yours.

8 of the casinos in our register name this game among the games they deal, so it is a table you can walk up to rather than a curiosity. Read the dealer rule on the one in front of you before deciding it is the cheaper table in the room.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Decide how much money the evening gets and how long it runs before you sit down, and stop when either one is used up. A run of losing hands is not a debt the table owes you: putting more money down to get it back only makes the hour dearer. An unfamiliar name over the table is a reason to read, not a reason to raise the bet. If the money on the table starts to feel like money you need, call one of the lines below — that is what they are for.

The chart on one card

That is the lesson. The chart for this game is on one card: print it, or keep it on your phone.

Practice table

Every hand below is a cell where the chart for this game and the chart for the plain game disagree, and both answers come from the engine that works the charts out rather than from anybody’s memory. Level 1 is the cells where the move itself changes; level 2 is the cells where the move holds until your hand grows; level 3 is what the table pays extra, and when it does not. The lesson is one run: every square on the strip below is one hand of the lesson, and all the squares are there from the start. Only your first answer on each hand counts, and when a level’s squares are full the next level begins by itself. Nothing is bet here.

Check yourself

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Five quick ones. Pick an answer, then check it. No timer, no points: just whether it stuck.

Where to play, and further reading

19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · Play responsibly · help, day or night: Gambling Support BC 1-888-795-6111, 24 hours

Further reading

• Rules of Play for Table Games: Blackjack · British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC)The rules this track follows section by section: six decks, the dealer on soft 17, doubling, splitting and surrender.
• Game rules: Blackjack · Loto-Québec (Société des casinos du Québec)Québec’s rules: one to eight decks, a face-down dealer card, and the soft-17 rule left to the sign at the table.
• Playing Blackjack · Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino NiagaraOne Ontario operator’s own booklet, including both blackjack payouts and both dealer rules it may post.
• Blackjack: how to play · OLG PlaySmartOntario’s beginner page: the moves, the hand signals it describes, and what insurance is.
• Know the game: Blackjack · Casinos Regina & Moose Jaw (SaskGaming)A Saskatchewan operator on what the chart does and does not do, and where to pick one up in the building.
• Blackjack basics · Wizard of OddsWhat three common ways of playing blackjack without the chart cost, on that author’s own table.

How it’s worked out