Vegas Strip Blackjack

The name says it all; this is the blackjack variation that is most commonly found on the strip, Las Vegas. Las Vegas is a large desert city in Nevada that was originally built by casino owners and has become world famous as a place of entertainment in its broadest sense as well as casinos and gambling. Casinos used to be banned in a lot of states and in fact still are in many states so they decided to build their own town, full of casinos.

There is not much to do in Las Vegas apart from shows and gambling but having said that, the shows attract all the top artists and there is a great selection and the gambling is second to none with casinos operating virtually 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Most of the action takes place in one street known as the strip. The town has two parts, the old and the new with the old part being where it all began and where you will find the most famous casinos. The new part of Vegas is where the old hotels and casinos have moved to, as their position in the old part was getting too small. Vegas has grown throughout the years to become the most famous and largest gambling town in the USA, Gambling Mecca some call it; some of the hotels are quite spectacular and the hotel rates are kept low to attract more people into the city.

Many players will play Vegas Strip Blackjack without actually realising it as it does not differ very much from the basic kind that has been explained in “Getting started 1-3”. The only difference here is that you are allowed to double down on any first two cards. This means that if you have a total of lets say 7 in your initial deal, you are allowed to double down however if you do this then all double rules apply and you will only receive one extra card. It is easy to forget that this is a different game and not simply one of the tale rules where you are playing. The next question is why would you double on a 7 which is an excellent question and would only be done when the dealer has a bad card showing for example, 5 and even then it is a pretty brave play so if you are a normal blackjack player the chance are that playing Vegas Strip blackjack would be no different from playing the standard version.

Players will tend to double because they are not so worried about having a good total to beat the bank but they are actually gambling that the bank will go bust. Statistically seen, a 5 is the worst card that a bank can have and therefore the players are trying to use the statistics to win money. Also in Vegas strip blackjack there is a slight change in the rules when it comes to splitting. You are normally only allowed to split a total of three times per box, leaving you with four hands to play. This is not usually very interesting because the chance of you splitting three times is very small. This only becomes a problem when you are dealt two aces and you split these to get another few aces. In an ideal world you would like to split these again to increase your chance of getting 21 but unfortunately this is not allowed. The chance is very small of this happening but you must be aware of the complete rules if you are playing Vegas strip blackjack. The splitting rules of standard blackjack can also very from casino to casino so when you sit at a table make sure you know the rules of that table.

We also cover on a later page the alternative Vegas game namely Vegas downtown blackjack but gain the differences are quite small. With all these different names for blackjack it can seem that life is quite complicated and the casinos and online casinos do not help themselves in our opinion by making up new names for what is a simple game; it should be possible to play surrender blackjack on any table regardless of its name in the same way that the insurance bet is available on many tables but as long as they are looking for unique selling points to attract you to their tables it seems we are stuck with the complication.