Blackjack in its present form originated in France sometime in the 1700's. The game was originally called "vingt-et-un" or twenty one in English. This game had probably emerged from other French games such as "chemin de fer" which is very similar to today's game of baccarat.

The game spread to the United States and the rest of Europe in the early 1800's and the English name blackjack was adopted. This name came about because there used to be a rule which meant you were paid out at odds of 10/1 if you received the ace and jack of spades as your first two cards and this was called a blackjack. This rule is not played anymore but the name has stuck.

The game grew in popularity and in the US, scientists begun to study the statistics of the game and a scientist named Roger Baldwin published a study in a mathematical journal titled "basic strategy". Using his statistical analysis a system was devised for playing the game where the casinos advantage was only 0.5% over the player. This increased the popularity of the game considerably. This information led a scientist named Dr Thorp to study the game in more detail and in 1962 he published the first details of a strategy for playing the game called card counting where the odds of winning actually shifted in the players favour. This caused a huge number of players to try and beat the casinos but due the complexity of Dr Thorp's method, players found it difficult to implement and the result was that the casinos profits soared. Since then casinos have been in a constant battle with card counters and the rules are regularly changed to shift the odds back in the favour of the casino. This hasn't dampened enthusiasm for the game as it is still the most popular game in US casinos. Its popularity has now spread around the world and there are virtually no casinos where the game is not played.