The rules, which are rather simple, are reprinted almost verbatim for the next half a century, but in 1850, more elaborate rules are described which are beginning to look like pontoon in all but name. In Britain, the game is also recorded in the 1770s and 1780s, for example in a comedy entitled Dissipation, but the first rules appear in the 1800 edition of Hoyle's under the name of vingt-un. The game continues to appear in French compendia as vingt-un and, later, vingt-et-un until the late 19th century, but appears obsolete today. It was also played at the court of Louis XV and is reputed to have been the favourite card game of Napoleon, but no French rules appear until 1817, nearly two decades after their publication in England. Other early accounts indicate that the game was new to France suggesting that it took root there from the mid-18th century. The first record of the game in France occurs in 1768 in the Mercure de France, which describes vingt-un as fashionable, but 'very old', referring to Cervantes' novella. This short story was written between 16, implying that ventiuna had been played in Castile since the beginning of the 17th century or earlier. The game is played with the Spanish baraja deck.

They are proficient at cheating at veintiuna (sic), and state that the object of the game is to reach 21 points without going over and that the ace scores 1 or 11. Cervantes was a gambler, and the main characters of his tale ' Rinconete y Cortadillo', from Novelas Ejemplares, are a couple of cheats working in Seville. Just two years later, the first brief description of the game is given in a novella by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, most famous for writing Don Quixote. The game is first mentioned by name in a 1611 Spanish dictionary where, under the entry for 'card' ( carta), it mentions the game of ventiuno ('twenty-one'). Known initially as vingt-un in all those countries, it developed into pontoon in Britain after the First World War and blackjack in Canada and the United States in the late 19th century, where the legalisation of gambling increased its popularity. Twenty-one rose to prominence in France in the 18th century and spread from there to Germany and Britain from whence it crossed to America.

The family includes the casino games of blackjack and pontoon as well as their domestic equivalents. Twenty-one, formerly known as vingt-un in Britain, France and America, is the name given to a family of popular card games of the gambling family, the progenitor of which is recorded in Spain in the early 17th century. Vingt-un, vingt-et-un, Siebzehn und Vier, Einundzwanzig

21 the card game