Slingo Originals are the brains behind this particular take on blackjack, which takes the traditional game with mostly traditional rules but also introduces card trading into the equation.
It’s an RNG based game that gives greater control to the player and opens the door to make or lose money during each hand after your stake has been placed.
You can still split and double but no insurance is available in this game. Split hands are both available to buy or sell cards and will be played out one at a time.
The other basic rules to be aware of include:
- Dealer stands on soft 17
- Player can double after splits
- No re-splits
- Splits not available after a trade
- Split Aces can be hit
- No surrender rule
- Infinite deck is used for all deals including buy and sell
- Dealer checks for blackjack on 10
The game plays a little differently to what you might be used to, so lets take you through a hand to explain it.
Playing the Game
The first screen you will see looks a little barren as you can tell, and is only used to choose your stake amount.
After you have selected an amount the regular game screen will look like this:
As you can see, things look a little bit different.
In Blackjack Xchange you have the option to buy or sell your cards depending on the strength of the hand you have been dealt compared to the dealer’s.
We have a 7 and a 6, so 13, and the dealer’s up card is a 6. If we wanted to we could dump one of our cards and buy a new one to try and improve our position, or we could just hit as normal. We wouldn’t stand for obvious reasons.
Let’s buy a new card in place of the 7 for 29p and see what happens.
We now have a total of 16 which is a little difficult. We can continue to buy or hit or stand. Obviously the more we buy cards the less money we stand to make if we win. We have staked £2 so only stand to get £2 profit if we win, which makes buying too many cards a false economy.
The card we really want to get rid of is the 6 but it costs £1 to trade it for another, meaning that even if we won we would only get 71p back on our stake assuming we don’t get blackjack, and we might even end up with a worse hand.
Let’s do it anyway and chance our arm.
We got lucky here and ended up getting blackjack, which wins us the game if we want it to and gets us 3:2 back on our stake for a £5 return and £3 profit, minus the £1.29 we spent buying cards, so £1.71 total profit. However, we also now have the option to sell one of our cards given that we are in a very strong position.
This can go on indefinitely, but as you can see it gives the player much more control over their hand although it does come at a price, and you can end up losing a lot more than your stake if you keep buying cards and still lose.
Also, note that the buy and sell prices have a 2.5% margin built in, so every time you do it the casino is making a small amount.
RTP
This game comes with strategy guides in the help menu which explain what your best move is in any given scenario.
Assuming you follow their basic strategy the theoretical return to player percentage for Blackjack Xchange is 99.68%.
This is actually higher than regular blackjack.