Blackjack has long been one of the most popular gambling games. Why is this? Here’s a few possible reasons:
- The popularity of books such as “Bringing Down the House: How Six Students Took Vegas for Millions (2004)” by Ben Mezrich, and its 2008 film adaptation 21, featuring Kevin Spacey.
- Unlike almost every other casino game, Blackjack does not rely merely on luck alone – your decision-making skills will have a dramatic effect on the outcome of your night’s session. As such, those in the know see Blackjack as a test of their skill versus the casino – playing online provides a level of separation that allows players to feel as if they are the ones in control.
- Blackjack is an easy game to learn, but a difficult one to master. The availability of Blackjack Cheat Sheet in every casino gift shop and the casino’s willingness to let you keep it with you at the table, if you can read it quickly, contribute to this impression that Blackjack is an easy way to make money.
- Blackjack is a social, anti-competitive game – a group of friends can gather around a table, all playing against the dealer, often winning, and losing together when the dealer busts. This makes the game a highly sociable game to play in person.
- When played online, you can play at your own pace (live-dealer tables not-withstanding), enabling you to learn the game effectively before practicing your skills for real.
Starting Out with Blackjack on Android
If you are completely new to the game, the first thing to do is grab yourself a trainer app from the Play Store – this will allow you to input any set of rules – how many decks are in use, whether you can double after a split, how many hands you can split to, and other such variations. These apps will usually explain these terms to you too. Spend a couple of hours with one of these trainer apps and you are ready to play for real!
Real Casino Blackjack on Android
There are two types of popular online blackjack – the digital variety, and the live dealer variety.
The Digital Variety
We would recommend starting out with a game such as Single Deck Blackjack Multi-hand from NetEnt (99.59% RTP), or Classic Blackjack Gold from Microgaming (99.9% RTP) to start off with, both of which are available at high-quality licensed casinos. Steer clear of the more exotic variations in the early days – they usually offer lower RTP’s anyway.
One of the great many advantages to playing online is that you can play American Blackjack if you wish, which has better odds than European Blackjack. When playing in a land-based casino, you may find that only the local rules are available to you – leaving valuable RTP on the table.
Live Casino Blackjack
Once you feel ready, why not try a Live Blackjack table next? Evolution’s Live Infinite Blackjack is available at Unibet and boasts one of the highest RTP figures in Live Blackjack at 99.51% RTP.
The experience is very different – you are seated at a table, being served cards by a real dealer, able to converse with the dealer and the other players. Therefore, the RTP must be a little bit lower – that dealer must be paid somehow.
Nevertheless, many players prefer this method of playing Blackjack online – it is more authentic to the real casino experience, and the superstitious amongst you – and let’s face it, that makes up a lot of the gambling public – often feel they receive better cards from a real dealer than a computer-generated Random Number Generator.
Why Android is the Perfect Platform for Playing Online Blackjack
Android has rapidly overtaken desktop, browser-based casinos as the number one way of playing Blackjack online. Why is this? On the desktop, you’ll need to login to your favorite casino website, deposit funds, finding the game you want to play can be a laborious task, and no matter how good the user interface a particular developer has created for the desktop, it can’t hope to match the tailor-made experience that Android allows for.
When you are playing Blackjack on your Android device, your device is completely devoted to your game – you can quickly switch between your training app, if you have forgotten the mathematically correct play in a particular situation, and all the buttons are laid out perfectly for a perfect user experience.
For this reason, we can’t see the desktop reclaiming the crown any time soon.