Ask a British player what the card game of the family holiday is and you may hear about Pontoon: the game where you stick, twist and buy, where five small cards beat a 20, and where a two-card ace and ten outranks every other hand. It plays like blackjack because the two games are relatives, and it plays differently because the family split a long time ago.
The relationship matters for orientation. Pontoon is not derived from blackjack. Pontoon, formerly called vingt-un, is the British domestic version of twenty-one, and blackjack and Pontoon both descend from the early British version of vingt-un, the same precursor our history of blackjack traces. It first became known as pontoon in Britain during the First World War, the name apparently a soldier's corruption of the French one. Two branches, one root.
This piece covers the traditional home game briefly, then the casino version in detail, using what the Wizard of Odds page on Pontoon lists as the usual rules. It closes with the trade the game offers, because Pontoon pays 2 to 1 on its best hands and takes the money back somewhere quieter.
The home game, briefly
As a home game, Pontoon has no official rules and varies from place to place, which is worth knowing before any confident statement about what the game requires. The shared core is the vocabulary and three player moves in the traditional game: a player may stick, stand on the current total; twist, take a card face up at no extra stake; or buy, add to the stake in exchange for a card. The best hand is a pontoon, an ace with a ten-point card, and the five-card trick rewards collecting cards without busting.
The casino version keeps those bones and formalizes the rest, and it is the casino version that carries a published rule set and a house edge, so it is what the rest of this article describes.
The usual casino rules
Per the Wizard of Odds, the usual casino rules use eight 52-card decks, with cards valued as in blackjack. Hands rank as follows, best first:
| Rank | Hand |
|---|---|
| 1 | A pontoon: an ace with any ten-point card, including after splitting |
| 2 | A five-card trick: any five-card hand that has not busted, all equal regardless of total |
| 3 | A hand of 21 or less with four or fewer cards, ranked by total |
| 4 | A bust |
The rest of the dealing: the player receives two cards face up and the dealer two cards face down, so there is no upcard. The dealer peeks for a pontoon, and with one, collects all wagers immediately. A winning pontoon or five-card trick pays 2 to 1, other wins pay even money, and ties lose. Under these rules the Wizard of Odds house edge is 0.38 percent.
How a hand plays
The player's options are wider than blackjack's, within one restriction. A player may stand only on 15 or more, or on any five-card hand. Below 15, standing is not offered. In exchange, hitting is allowed at any point, including after doubling, and doubling is allowed on two to four cards, once per hand, including after splitting.
Splits are liberal where aces are concerned. Equal ranks may be split, resplit once to a maximum of three hands, aces included. A player may draw and double after splitting aces, and a two-card 21 made after splitting aces counts as a pontoon, not a mere 21. A player who busts loses at once, before the dealer plays.
The dealer plays by fixed rule: draw to 17 or more, hit soft 17, and stop on any five-card hand. That last clause is easy to miss and cuts both ways, since a dealer who reaches five cards without busting has made a trick that beats almost everything.
What looks generous, and what pays for it
Read as a blackjack player, the player side of Pontoon looks rich. A pontoon or five-card trick pays 2 to 1, against 3 to 2 for a blackjack. Doubling reaches any two to four cards, not just the first two, and hitting after doubling rescues hands a blackjack double would have abandoned. Splitting stops at three hands, but split aces can be drawn on, doubled, and even resplit.
The bill arrives elsewhere. There is no dealer upcard to read, which removes the one piece of dealer information a blackjack player gets before acting. The dealer takes every tie, and ties are not rare: in standard six deck blackjack where the dealer stands on soft 17, commonly published figures put pushes at roughly one hand in twelve, most often on 20, as our piece on push frequency shows, and Pontoon turns every tie from a returned bet into a loss. And no standing below 15 forces action on weak hands blackjack would let you sit on. The package nets out at that 0.38 percent edge, in the same range as standard blackjack under good rules, earned with a rule set that plays nothing like the chart a blackjack learner carries in their head.
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Why the missing upcard matters so much
Every basic strategy decision in blackjack is conditioned on the dealer's upcard: the same player total stands, hits or doubles depending on what the dealer shows, which is the entire idea behind our guide to reading the upcard. In Pontoon both dealer cards are face down, so there is no upcard to choose a column of the chart with. A player who memorized the whole blackjack chart has memorized a grid with half its input missing.
The five-card trick has a cousin in blackjack, the Charlie rule, which our piece on the five-card Charlie describes as an automatic win on reaching a set number of cards without busting. The resemblance is real, and so is the difference: on paper a five-card Charlie is worth about 1.46 percentage points to a blackjack player per Wizard of Odds, a figure so generous the rule rarely appears; Pontoon gets the same thrill into the game and finances it with the tie rule and the rest of the package. Ties losing, meanwhile, is close to the price double exposure blackjack charges for showing both dealer cards, where the dealer wins all ties except tied blackjacks, and Pontoon charges it while showing neither.
Oddities and cousins
One structural surprise: in Pontoon, more decks lower the house edge, the reverse of blackjack. Wizard of Odds notes the effect and offers the explanation as a belief rather than a proof, that five-card tricks are easier to make with more decks in play. It is a good reminder that rule interactions are not always intuitive. And a naming trap to close: Australian Pontoon is a separate game, which Wizard of Odds describes as what Americans call Spanish 21; our piece on Spanish 21 covers that game, and it is not the game described here.
Practicing for the game you will actually face
21 Trainer does not play Pontoon or any variant; it teaches standard blackjack. That is less of a mismatch than it sounds. The habit that transfers is the one this whole site is about: learn the strategy computed for the exact rule set in front of you, because the rules move the answers. In the app, the nine casino presets and the full rule customization cover decks, the soft 17 rule, double after split, surrender and split limits, and the strategy charts redraw for whatever you select, as our piece on practicing for a specific rule set argues in full. For a tour of how the other popular variants trade rules back and forth, our variants compared piece is the companion read.
Frequently asked questions
What is Pontoon in blackjack?
Pontoon, formerly called vingt-un, is the British domestic version of twenty-one. It is not derived from blackjack; the two games descend from the early British version of vingt-un, and it first became known as pontoon in Britain during the First World War, the name apparently a soldier's corruption of the French one. As a home game it has no official rules and varies from place to place.
What is a five-card trick in Pontoon?
Any five-card hand that has not busted, regardless of its total. All five-card tricks are equal, they rank above every hand except a pontoon, they beat a hand of 21 made with four or fewer cards, and a winning one pays 2 to 1. The dealer also stops on any five-card hand, so the trick works in both directions.
Does the dealer have a hole card in Pontoon?
The dealer has two cards, both dealt face down, so there is no upcard to read. The dealer peeks for a pontoon, and with one, collects all wagers at once. That missing upcard is a structural difference from blackjack: every basic strategy decision in blackjack is conditioned on the dealer's upcard, so a standard chart cannot be used in Pontoon.
What is the house edge in Pontoon?
0.38 percent under what the Wizard of Odds page calls the usual rules: eight decks, dealer hits soft 17, pontoons and five-card tricks paying 2 to 1, other wins paying even money, and ties losing. That figure assumes correct play for those rules, and it is a published calculation, not a promise about any session.
Can you use a blackjack basic strategy chart in Pontoon?
No. A blackjack chart is a grid of player hands against dealer upcards, and Pontoon gives the dealer two face down cards, so there is no upcard to choose a column of that grid with. Standing rules differ too, since a Pontoon player may not stand below 15, and ties lose. Pontoon needs its own strategy, computed for its own rules.