Chinese Blackjack

Chinese Blackjack, also known as ban luck in Hokkien, ban nag in Cantonese and xi dach in Vietnamese, is a card game closely related to conventional blackjack that developed among Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and remains especially popular in Singapore and Malaysia, where it is sometimes called Kampung, or Village, Blackjack. It is traditionally played during Chinese New Year gatherings among family and friends using one or two standard 52-card decks, and can accommodate any number of players, one of whom serves as dealer, either by fixed designation or by rotation between hands. As in standard blackjack, players wager on reaching a hand value of 21 or otherwise beating the dealer's total without going over, but Chinese Blackjack adds a distinctive twist: the dealer may look at each player's hand individually, choose whether to let particular hands continue drawing cards, and only reveal the dealer's own final total after every player hand has been settled, giving the dealer far more strategic latitude than in the Western casino version.