All About Chinese Blackjack

Chinese Blackjack is a game that shares many similarities with other variants, but it has several stand out features that make it unique.

Chinese Blackjack is an incredibly popular game around Chinese New Year with many people playing it at home as part of the festivities. But you’ll also find it on offer all year round in many Asian casinos.

If you’ve ever played this Oriental variant, then you’ll know it has different winning combinations to almost every other version of blackjack. These are:

• Ban-ban – A hand made of two aces that pays 3:1.
• Ban-nag – An ace and a card that has a value of 10 (the same has blackjack in other variants). It pays out 2:1
• Free hand – This is a hand value of 15 and allows either the player or dealer to hand back their cards for them to be put back in the deck and re-dealt.
• 5-Dragon – A hand of five cards that are not bust. 5-Dragon below 21 is paid out at 2:1 while a 5-Dragon hand of 21 pays 3:1.
• 7-7-7 – Players with three 7 cards can receive a payout of anything between 5:1 and 21:1, depending on house rules

There are also some differences with how the player and dealer having the same hands are dealt with.

• If both hold ban-ban, it’s a push.
• If both have ban-nag, the dealer wins
• A player with ban-ban beats a dealer with ban-nag
• If the dealer has 5-Dragon below 21, players must double their initial bets
• If the dealer has 5-Dragon 21, players must triple their initial bets

Other rules are the same as you would find in most other common blackjack games.

As you can see, Chinese Blackjack is a unique variant that’s made more exciting by its myriad of different outcomes.