What Online Casinos Don't Want You to Know About Pontoon

Published: February 27, 2014

It's not a secret that blackjack games and blackjack variations allow for some of the highest payout rates and lowest house advantages of any of the games in online casinos. One of the problems for players, however, is that these games can be particularly difficult to learn. There are complex strategies involved because you're getting information from both the dealer's card, the rules of the game which can change from table to table, and the value and characteristics of your hand. Sometimes you even have to take into consideration the exact cards in your hand instead of just their total value.

All of this can be extremely overwhelming. But there's something that online casinos don't want you to know: Pontoon is a much easier game to learn. It's very similar to blackjack, but there are some major differences. First, you have much less information to work with since the dealer does not have a card to show you. Second, you never have to worry about the exact cards in your hand and only their total. Third, it's a much easier game to learn how to play. You can get the house advantage down to less than 0.40 percent in most pontoon games without having to learn anything more than the basic strategies.

If you're already familiar with blackjack, then you only need to learn a few changes to make in strategy for you to have a good start. First off, the number of cards in your hand matters in pontoon because getting five cards automatically beats everything except for a natural 21 (known as a pontoon in this game, similar to a blackjack in blackjack games). As a result of that, you should never double with a two-card soft hand, but you should always double with a four-card soft hand.

Another rule is that you can never stand if you have 14 or less. This makes some of the strategies a lot easier for hard hands. Always stand with a hard 15 or higher when you have two or three cards. If you have four, then you'll double with everything 16 and lower, and you'll hit with 17 while standing on 18 and up. As you can see, the five-card rule drastically increases your aggression in a lot of situations where you have four cards, and that's the main rule difference that you have to learn.