Why Spanish 21 Traps Many Blackjack Players

People who prefer to play blackjack tend to have a personality that lends itself into jumping into things and figuring them out for yourself. Along these lines, these players are also the type to jump in without completely reading or understanding the instructions or overall rules of a game because they like to figure things out for themselves. In Spanish 21, this can lead to a lot of problems because some of the rule changes are very atypical and can really create a situation where you’re headed for a subpar payout rate if you aren’t able to adjust correctly.

The main rule change in this game is that it uses a Spanish deck instead of a French deck. The French deck is known for being the most common type of deck used in blackjack, and it’s the typical deck with 52 cards. A Spanish deck, however, uses 48 cards, and the “ten” rank is removed so the order is ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, jack, queen and king. The ace can still count as one or 11, but the lack of the tens in the deck drastically change how it works out.

No tens mean that the dealer has a bigger advantage than usual. To compensate for this major change, there are some extra rules that give players more strategic options than usual. These rule changes include the ability to surrender late, the ability to double after splitting, the ability to re-split aces, the dealer blackjack always losing to the player blackjack and a player blackjack always winning. Moreover, you can double on any number of cards, and you can double or surrender after doubling (although you can’t hit after doubling). On top of all of this, you’ll get bonus payouts for certain hands like a five-card 21 hand paying 3:2 and a six-card 21 hand paying 2:1.

Along these lines, you have to play in a way that’s really atypical sometimes. For example, with soft hands, you’re not going to double nearly as often, and when you do, a lot of it is going to depend on how many cards are in your hand. What you have to do is learn to play very complicated strategies so that you can use the extra betting options to your advantage to overcome the edge that the dealer gets in this game from the 48-card Spanish deck.