Gold Series Spanish Blackjack

Microgaming has produced excellent software versions of top casino games. With Spanish Blackjack (Gold Series), the company has produced a brilliant variant on one of the most popular card games in history. Basically, Spanish Blackjack is a single-hand game that follows a traditional blackjack format, but there are several interesting and noticeable differences. Don’t worry. The differences make for an outstanding game.

Game Play and Rules

The basic goal of Spanish Blackjack does not differ at all from the traditional version of the game. Your goal is to get to 21 without going bust. Of course, you can win even without 21. As long as your hand is higher than the dealer’s or if the dealer goes bust, you win.

As for the differences, they are pretty unique.

Eight decks of cards are shuffled and dealt out on a layout with five spaces. The space in the center is set aside to place bets. No wagers are placed on the other spaces. Once again, this is a single-player game. Interestingly, all of the tens have been removed from the deck lowering the total number per deck from 52 to 48. Anyone in need of a ten has to rely solely on getting a facecard for that result.

A cool feature to the game is a “Late Surrender” tweak to the rules. In Blackjack, when the dealer has an Ace showing, you can surrender half your hand to avoid losing all of it if the dealer pulls out a ten or a facecard. With Late Surrender, you are not locked into only surrendering at the beginning when the dealer checks for blackjack. You can do so before the dealer actually plays the hand. This way, if you have a real bad feeling about the game, you can always surrender the hand and cut your losses.

“Double Down Rescue” is another tweak on the traditional version of blackjack and its pretty interesting. The way it works is after you double down (double your bet and lock yourself into only taking one card on the hit), you are allowed to bring the bet back down to its original amount. So, if you have two fives and draw a three after doubling down, you can take back the second bet amount.

By the way, the maximum bet amount is $200.

Bonus 21

In blackjack, mostly all winning hands play 1 to 1. In other words, if you wager $5, you win $5. When you pull up blackjack, you are paid 3 to 2. $5 gets you $7.50. In Spanish Blackjack, there are additional payouts on “Bonus 21” hands. These bonus hands revolve around five, six, and seven card combinations that lead to a total of 21. How much they pay depends on the various factors. Is it a 5-6-7 straight? Are there three 7’s? Is it a flush of the same suit? Did you draw a straight flush? Suffice to say, the “rarer” the hand, the bigger the payout. As the saying goes, longshots do come in. A purely random deal of the cards could end up paying you a huge sum of money.

Autoplay

Not everyone is a fan of autoplay, but those who like to pick the pace of a game up could program the platform to play a set number of hands one after the other. You never know. Doing so could be a smart and lucky move.

A Neat Variation

Overall, the Gold Series Spanish Blackjack game from Microgaming is a pretty neat variation of one of the all-time classic games. Anyone looking for a unique spin on blackjack may wish to give the game a try.