Twenty-One (banking game)

Twenty-one, formerly known as vingt-un in Britain, France and America, is the name given to a family of popular card games of the gambling family, the progenitor of which is recorded in Spain in the early 17th century. The family includes the casino games of blackjack and pontoon as well as their domestic equivalents. Twenty-one rose to prominence in France in the 18th century and spread from there to Germany and Britain from whence it crossed to America. Known initially as vingt-un in all those countries, it developed into pontoon in Britain after the First World War and blackjack in Canada and the United States in the late 19th century, where the legalisation of gambling increased its popularity. The game is first mentioned by name in a 1611 Spanish dictionary where, under the entry for "card" (carta), it mentions the game of ventiuno ("twenty-one"). Just two years later, the first brief description of the game is given in a novella by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, most famous for writing Don Quixote. Cervantes was a gambler, and the main characters of his tale "Rinconete y Cortadillo", from Novelas Ejemplares, are a couple of cheats working in Seville. They are proficient at cheating at veintiuna (sic), and state that the object of the game is to reach 21 points without going over and that the ace scores 1 or 11. The game is played with the Spanish baraja deck. This short story was written between 1601 and 1602, implying that ventiuna had been played in Castile since the beginning of the 17th century or earlier. The first record of the game in France occurs in 1768 in the Mercure de France, which describes vingt-un as fashionable, but "very old", referring to Cervantes' novella. Other early accounts indicate that the game was new to France suggesting that it took root there from the mid-18th century. It was also played at the court of Louis XV and is reputed to have been the favourite card game of Napoleon, but no French rules appear until 1817, nearly two decades after their publication in England.