Cervantes was a gambler, and the protagonists of his ' Rinconete y Cortadillo', from Novelas Ejemplares, are card cheats in Seville. The first written reference is found in a book by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. The game is a comparing card game where each player competes against the dealer.īlackjack's immediate precursor was the English version of twenty-one called vingt-un, a game of unknown (but likely Spanish) provenance. Blackjack players do not compete against each other. This family of card games also includes the European games vingt-et-un and pontoon, and the Russian game Ochko. It uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as ' twenty-one'. : 342 It is the most widely played casino banking game in the world. Pontoon, twenty-one, Siebzehn und Vier, vingt-et-unīlackjack (formerly black jack and vingt-un) is a casino banking game. A blackjack example, consisting of an ace and a 10-valued card