This game has several names. In England, it is called “21 points” or simply “Point”. In France, it was also called “21 points”, but in the local way, it sounded like Vingt-et-un and this French expression eventually turned into “Pontoon”. Under this name, this game, which is a variant of the well-known Blackjack, has become popular all over the world. It is generally accepted that it became particularly popular in Europe immediately after its appearance, i.e. in the middle of the XIX century. But it was only recently introduced to the online casino.
In order to win in Pontoon, you need to score as many points as possible. To win, you must have more points than the dealer, but you can not score more than 21-this automatically means busting, which is considered a loss. The rules of this game state that the suit of the card does not matter. An unambiguously winning combination is the Pontoon ACE (its value in this game is 11 points) combined with any card that has a value of 10 points.
The game requires several (no more than eight) decks of 52 cards. The dealer can draw an extra card if he has scored 17 points. If you win using the Pontoon combination, the player receives a bet multiplied by a factor of 2 to 1. Another interesting combination is a five-card trick. If a player has scored 21 points on any 5 cards, then the win ratio becomes 3 to 1. you can double your bet at any time, but the rules allow you to Do this only once per game. If a player has less than 15 points, they are automatically required to double their bet. There is no insurance against the loss of the Pontoon combination at the dealer.
Thus, the game Pontoon is similar to blackjack, but at the same time has a number of serious differences. Players will be interested to know that in this game, the casino advantage is very low, only 0.7%.
