Pontoon Game

Pontoon is a game similar to Blackjack or 'Vingt et un' which is French for 21. The game originates from France and rose in popularity with noblemen in the royal court of Louis the Fifteen and was one of Napoleon's favourite pastime activities, right after conquering and womanizing, and he devoted a significant time to it once exiled to St. Helena.

During the 20th Century Pontoon was the most popular game played by English-speaking armed forces and continues to be popular with British casino players today. The game is offered in many land casinos and international online casinos.

Pontoon, unlike casino blackjack, does not subscribe to a fixed set of rules so players are advised to check the specific Pontoon rules in the casino or online casino they choose to play at.

In both games the objective is the same and that is to have a hand value that is higher than the dealer's hand, but that does not exceed 21. However the two games have a different game procedure and rules.

All cards carry their numerical value, face cards all count for ten and aces can be worth either 1 or 11. In most casinos the game is played with 6 to 8 decks of cards.

The best hand is a Pontoon hand that has a value of 21 points using only the two cards dealt initially. The dealer is dealt both their cards face down so players do not know if the dealer had hit a Pontoon.

Pontoon does not offer an Insurance option as in blackjack because the dealer gets one face down card and only draws the second card at the end of the betting round. This gives an advantage to players as they are able to draw cards to reach a hand value of 21 and thus beat the dealer's natural 21. This is not an option players have when playing traditional blackjack.

In a hand that has not been doubled an Ace will always count as 1 and not 1 or 11 according to the player's wishes. So doubling on a soft 17 would mean the player has doubled on a 7. It is not advisable to double such hands.

When a player splits two Aces they can only get one additional card for each split Ace card. They cannot draw additional cards on top of that. Aces cannot be re-split so only one split is allowed and if a player gets again an Ace, they cannot split it again as they are not allowed to draw on split aces.

In Pontoon the dealer must always hit on a Soft 17 and stand of Hard 17. Players cannot stand if they have a hand value of less than 15.

The advantages of playing Pontoon is that players are able to reduce the house edge to 0.5% giving players on average a 99.5% payout percentage.

In some casinos players can reduce their losses thanks to the two special rules:

The 'Busted Bets Plus One' rule that can be noted as 'BB+1'. This rule will see a player losing only their original bet regardless of split hands. This is not valid for Busted bets.

The second rule is the 'Original Bets and Busted Only' that can be referred to as 'OBBO' that sees a player only losing one bet from each split hand. This rule also does not count for Busted hands.