There are two main types of blackjack – shoe and card.
Shoe blackjack is played with a 52-card deck and uses the standard rules of blackjack.
Card blackjack is played with a face-down deck of cards and uses different rules, depending on the variant. .
There are dozens of variants of card blackjack, but the most common is called standard or conventional. In this variant, players are dealt two cards face down and then put all remaining cards into a pile in front of them.
The player with the highest card in the pile (or if there is a tie, the first card) wins the hand. Other variants include Spanish 21, where you must hit or go bust; double Dutch, where you double your bet if your hand consists of two pairs; and split pair, where you split any pair between the two cards in your hand.
There are also variations that allow players to keep some or all of their original two cards. These include split hands (where you keep one card), surrender (where you give up all your cards), doubling down (where you put another bet on top of your original bet), and Hot Poker (a variation where any Ace can become a high card).
In theory, any number between 2 and 21 can be beaten by playing correctly – that said, casinos usually have specific rules for each game that affect how often this happens. As a result, casinos tend to limit how many decks they use in each game to make it more likely that players will hit something profitable.
In general, shoe blackjack is typically played with at least six decks while card blackjack is typically played with either four or five decks.
