This is a subject near and dear to my heart, because — as many of you already know — I am a blackjack dealer, and player, and fan.

So when I first began to investigate blackjack on the web, I was more than a little skeptical. Let’s face it, any of the blackjack games that came out before the 21st Century were pretty damn limited (have you ever seen the Windows 95 blackjack? It’s really good for a laugh, but not much else).

And it goes almost without saying that not many people were comfortable playing real-money games online during the “wild west” days of the late 90s and early 2000s — even if they had the broadband to make it possible!

But starting in the middle of the first decade of this century, online casinos started to get safe, and online casino software developers started to get good. Real good.

If I remember right, the first really impressive game of online blackjack that I played was at the good old InterCasino (back when I still could — curse you, UIGEA!). Honestly, it was a mature and good-looking game of blackjack even then (and we’re talking maybe eight or nine years ago), a huge step up from what I was used to!

At this point, any of the better European or US casinos online should have not just a great basic blackjack, but at least a handful of variants to let players experiment with different rules and the ways that they affect your strategy. I’m partial to Pontoon, but between my three main casinos I have a total of almost 30 completely different games that are based on blackjack!

And it goes without saying that you should make sure that the casino will accept your deposit in the first place! If you’ve only got a Visa, you’ll want only Visa online casinos (and so on).