Spanish 21 · Explanation
How Spanish 21 works
Spanish 21 uses a 48-card Spanish deck — all four 10-spots are removed, leaving A through 9 plus J, Q, K. The big twist: a player 21 always wins immediately, even against a dealer 21, and a player blackjack beats a dealer blackjack.
To compensate for the missing 10s, the game pays bonuses: a 5-card 21 pays 3:2, 6-card 21 pays 2:1, and 7-or-more-card 21 pays 3:1. Special 6-7-8 and 7-7-7 combinations pay 3:2 mixed, 2:1 suited, or 3:1 spades. A suited 7-7-7 against a dealer 7 triggers the Super Bonus ($1,000–$5,000).
Other player-friendly rules: you can double on any number of cards, double after split, and redouble (double your double) up to the table limit. Late surrender is common, and many tables offer rescue — surrender after doubling to recover your original bet instead of losing both.
Using this site
Basic Strategy →
Color-coded charts showing the optimal play for every hand total vs every dealer upcard, across 384 casino rulesets. Adjust decks, H17/S17, redouble, doubling rules, surrender/rescue, and split rules in the panel above. Toggle “Show EV” for exact expected values, and see the house edge (with and without the Super Bonus) for your rules.
Hand Calculator →
Enter any two player cards and the dealer upcard to get the exact expected value of every legal action — hit, stand, double, split, surrender/rescue — with win/push/loss probabilities for each. Player blackjacks always pay 3:2 and beat dealer blackjack.
Dealer Outcomes →
Exact probabilities for what the dealer ends up with (17 through 21, bust, or blackjack) for each upcard, under H17 and S17 rules, before and after the blackjack peek.
All numbers are computed by exact dynamic programming over an infinite-deck model — not Monte Carlo simulation. For education only, not gambling advice.