Pontoon and Australian blackjack

Pontoon is two different games that share a name. British Pontoon is the home and pub version of vingt-et-un, played against a banker who wins all ties, with its own vocabulary of twist, stick and buy. Australian Pontoon is a casino game introduced in the mid-1990s as an unlicensed derivative of Spanish 21, dealt from 48-card decks with no dealer hole card. Alongside it, Australian casinos deal a conventional blackjack whose no-hole-card settlement rules, BB+1 and OBBO, are found almost nowhere else.

British Pontoon

Wikipedia’s account, drawn from Arnold’s 2011 description of standard rules, describes a banking game for a table of players and a single banker, played with one 52-card pack (a second pack is sometimes added for large groups).

The deal. The banker is initially whoever draws a jack. Each player receives one card face down, places a stake, and receives a second card. The banker takes two cards face down and does not look at them. A player who beats the banker with a pontoon may take over the bank.

Hand ranking. A pontoon, an ace with a ten-value card as the first two cards, is the best hand and pays double. Next is a five-card hand of 21 or less, which beats every other hand except a pontoon. Below that, hands rank by total. Busting (22 or more) loses.

The player’s options, with the vocabulary that distinguishes the game:

Once a player has twisted, they may no longer buy, so a player wanting the extra stake has to buy before twisting. Buying is a way of increasing the bet on a promising hand; unlike a blackjack double it does not end the hand after one card.

The banker’s turn. After every player has stuck or bust, the banker turns both cards and draws as they choose; the banker cannot split. The banker wins all ties, which is the game’s central house advantage. If the banker busts, every player still in the hand is paid. If the banker has a pontoon, the banker takes every stake on the table, including from players who also hold one, and is not paid double for it.

Payouts. A player’s pontoon is paid double (a stake of 2 units returns 2 + 4 = 6), unless it was made on a split hand. Other winning hands are paid at even money on the full stake, including any bought cards. Older rule sets differed: Wikipedia’s 1939 reference pays a natural treble and transfers the bank, and its 1800 rules stand ties off rather than giving them to the banker.

No published house edge exists for British Pontoon as it does for casino games; the banker’s advantage from winning ties is substantial, and the bank rotates so that it evens out. For scale, Wizard of Odds measures “player loses 17–21 ties” in ordinary blackjack at 8.86 points to the house.

Online Pontoon

Online casinos deal a hybrid under the name Pontoon that keeps the British hand ranking and tie rule but uses casino procedure. Wizard of Odds describes the RealTime Gaming version: eight 52-card decks, both dealer cards face down, dealer peeks for a pontoon, player may stand only on 15 or more or on a five-card hand, may double once on two to four cards and hit afterwards, may split to three hands and draw to split aces, and a pontoon or five-card trick pays 2:1. Ties go to the dealer. House edge about 0.38%; Microgaming’s version about 0.39%.

Australian casino Pontoon

The casino game called Pontoon in Australia and Malaysia is something else: a Spanish 21 derivative, dealt since around 1995, that Wikipedia and Wizard of Odds both describe as unlicensed. The structure of Spanish 21 is intact: 48-card decks without tens, the multi-card and 6-7-8 and 7-7-7 bonuses, late surrender, doubling on any number of cards at most venues, and double-down rescue. The changes are in the dealer’s procedure.

Because there is no hole card, the settlement rule when the dealer completes a blackjack after a player has doubled or split matters, and Australian casinos use rules rarely seen elsewhere. Wizard of Odds’ definitions:

Wizard of Odds’ house edge figures by casino, as published (the page itself flags that some casinos have since changed deck counts and split rules):

The two rules worth the most are doubling on any number of cards (restricting it to two cards costs 0.16 points) and the number of decks (four decks are 0.08 points better than eight). Under these rules Pontoon has a lower edge than the conventional blackjack dealt beside it, which Wizard of Odds puts at about a third lower in Sydney.

Australian blackjack

The conventional game in Australian casinos is a no-hole-card blackjack with continental doubling rules. Wizard of Odds’ description: the dealer takes no hole card; doubling on 9, 10 and 11 only, including after splits; no surrender; the number of splits, resplitting of aces, deck count and soft-17 rule vary by casino. The settlement rule is one of OBO, BB+1, OBBO or ENHC as defined above.

Wizard of Odds measured the Star City Sydney game in 2008 at 0.59% (eight decks, one split, BB+1, S17). Relative to that, OBO is worth 0.03 points to the player, OBBO costs 0.02, ENHC costs 0.10, four decks are worth 0.07, six decks 0.03, resplitting ordinary pairs to three hands 0.05 and resplitting aces 0.12; the dealer hitting soft 17, as at Crown Melbourne, costs 0.22. The strategy changes for a no-hole-card game under ENHC settlement are set out in European no-hole-card rules. Under BB+1 or OBBO, doubled bets are not at risk to a dealer blackjack, so peek-game doubling strategy applies; only the splitting cells need thought, and only under OBBO.

Choosing between them

In an Australian casino the Pontoon table is usually the better game if its rules match the table above; see Sydney for the local picture. A British Pontoon player visiting a casino anywhere should expect none of the home rules to apply except the name. Blackjack World Tour is a free iOS blackjack game played with virtual chips; it is a social casino with in-app purchases and no real-money gambling. The casino games described here are real-money games whose rules change over time.

Related reading

• Spanish 21
• European no-hole-card rules
• Blackjack rules around the world
• History of blackjack