Twenty-one (card game)

Twenty-one is a family of gambling card games in which players attempt to accumulate cards whose values sum as close to twenty-one as possible without exceeding it, competing individually against a banker or dealer rather than against each other directly. Number cards typically count at face value, face cards count as ten, and the ace counts as either one or eleven at the holder's choice, with a hand of exactly twenty-one from the first two cards usually paying a bonus. Players may draw additional cards to improve a hand or stand once satisfied with its total, and a hand exceeding twenty-one busts and loses regardless of the dealer's own result. Historical twenty-one variants were played across Europe for centuries before American casino play standardized the modern rules and name blackjack for the same underlying game, and the twenty-one family remains the ancestor referenced in most histories of that casino game.