Blackjack is a card game where the object is to score as many points as possible by playing cards to reduce the sum of the dealer’s hand. The basic rules are simple: each player ante up (put money into the pot), and then takes turns playing cards until someone either reaches 21 or busts. Any card that is played, including a 10 or an Ace, counts as one point. (Aces can also be counted as either 1 or 2 points, depending on the situation.) If a player gets 21, they win the hand and the entire pot.
If a player busts, they lose everything they’ve put in – even if they only had a single card left in their hand. Blackjack is often compared to poker because both games involve putting money into the pot and then taking it back out again. There are, however, some key differences between blackjack and poker: for one thing, in blackjack players can’t just keep playing cards until they hit a winning combination – if they do, the other players can simply count their hand and make sure that they don’t have any better cards than what the player has already played. In poker, on the other hand, players can keep playing until someone folds – which is why most people consider blackjack to be a more strategic game than poker.
