Another in the Franki Dettori series from Playtech, making reference to his 1996 feat of winning all 7 races on the card at Ascot. This blackjack variation uses that number to heavily influence the game.
In this classic blackjack game an interesting twist has been added in the way of trophies which can be collected via a side bet that can last over a number of game rounds. This is very unusual for blackjack, as each round is normally completely independent of the last.
The game is RNG based and uses 6 decks, with a maximum 7,777x your stake available to win thanks to the side bet.
Playing the Game
It might be simpler to play an example hand to show you how the trophy side bet works.
You can see that the table has a few extra icons surrounding the Magic 7 side bet area, they are marked yellow in the image above. These are the trophies you need to collect. Trophies are attached to random cards as they are dealt, and the good news is that you can collect trophies from your hand as well as the dealer’s hand.
However, trophies can only occur on the initial deal, which gives you four chances to collect trophies each round; two from your hand and two from the dealer’s.
We will make a 10p bet on the game itself and a 10p Magic 7 side bet. If we don’t put a stake on the side bet we will not collect any trophies that are dealt.
You can see that we have collected two trophies, one from our own hand and one from the dealer’s. These are the cards with the blue corners, the 9 of diamonds and the Jack of clubs.
If you look to the right you can see how they look when they are not covered by other cards.
Also, notice in our example image above that two of the seven trophy icons are now gold coloured to indicate that they have been collected.
We went on to win that round so we collected on the regular bet, but the side bet carries over to the next round so long as you have not lost the hand, so that bet is still active.
Had we lost the hand the side bet would be over and the result would have been a ‘push’ as shown by the paytable.
We were not dealt any more trophies on the next hand so our side bet ended there and we got our stake back.
If we had been dealt another trophy we would have been at stage 3 on the paytable and stood to win at 1:1 if the side bet had ended at that point.
This can go on for seven rounds providing you bag a trophy each time, and if you manage 7 trophies in just two rounds – so 7 out of 8 cards would need to be trophy cards – you win the 7,777x payout.
10 Card Charlie
All other rules and payouts are standard issue, but it is worth mentioning that this game includes the 10 Card Charlie Rule.
This is where the player automatically wins (unless the dealer has blackjack) if they draw 10 cards without going bust. This is also applicable to split hands.
It is technically possible, although highly unlikely.
RTP
A theoretical return to player percentage of 99.58% applies to this game, which is around about where it should be for blackjack. This is because the side bet, which offers the potential for much bigger returns than usual, does not affect the base game.
The side bet therefore has its own RTP based on the likelihood of trophy cards being dealt, and that is 98.49%. However, the balance will be tipped because of the very high maximum payout, meaning that the chances of winning the side bet even at the lower end of the table may be smaller than the RTP suggests.