Casino offer, which interpretation is valid?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I think I am clearly owed £100 a casino

The offer given for all hands of £25 or more:

I played a lot of blackjack, and got paid out on all my 5-card Charlies but I didn’t get paid out on double blackjacks. To my mind the repeated use of “in a row” throughout all the offers establishes the phrase as meaning “sequentially, one after the other”. The single hand obviously refers to players who play multiple hands at a tme, so if hand 4 gets a BJ then hand 3 gets one no bonus but if hand 4 gets a BJ then hand 4 gets another then bonus.

First time I got 2 consecutive BJs and no payout the CSR assured me it would pay out when I completed the offer I was in the middle of. I got another one in the meantime, and no payout at the conclusion. After a lot of chat, I was then offered the explanation that the offer means you need to get 2 BJs at once. I think this makes no sense, as the phrase “in a row” is clearly sequential. If they meant “at the same time” they should have used that phrase or similar. Which interpretation(s) do you think is/are valid?

2

“Twice in a row on a single hand” is ambiguous, but I’d interpret it to mean that you’d have to play two hands a game and get blackjack on both.

3

I read the offers first and reflected on them before reading the remainder of your post. My interpretation matched the casino’s.

4

What exactly does “hand” mean in blackjack. I’d assume like in other card games I know it means the set of cards that go together in some fashion: 13 cards in bridge, 5 cards in draw poker, etc.

When you play two somethings simultaneously in Blackjack do you say you’re playing two hands? In that case you can’t really win get two blackjacks in a single hand ever. If hand means the complete deal to all players at once, then the casino is right. And I guess if you were playing three _? (can’t call them hands), you’d have to win on the 1st and 2nd or 2nd and 3rd not the 1st and 3rd.

5

I would usually say you are playing two spots. One hand in blackjack consists of one betting cycle; i.e. everything that happens between placing your initial bet and when the dealer takes the cards back.

This is why “blackjack twice in a row on a single hand” is extremely poorly worded. By the usual use of “hand” in blackjack, meaning one complete cycle of play, it’s impossible to get two blackjacks in a row. What I would think they mean is two blackjacks in a row on the same spot, which is a reasonable interpretation that agrees with the OP.

Apparently, what the casino actually means is two blackjacks sequentially in one deal of the cards, which means this offer is impossible to achieve for players who only bet one spot.

Either way, the wording is bad and it seems the casino staff doesn’t even understand exactly what the offer means.

OP should definitely complain about the ambiguous wording and poor staff communication. Maybe you’ll get a coupon for the buffet.

6

In my own wording, I think it means a player plays two hands on a single deal and gets 21 on both.

It isn’t the clearest phrasing, but it is clearer to me than what the OP is trying to describe in the second paragraph. That has me quite confused.

7

My thought on reading it was you needed to split aces and get dealt 10s for that one to pay out. I guess you could split 10s and get dealt aces too but I doubt that combo happens very often. A single hand is what happens to the cards of a single betting spot at the table you can play multiple hands from a single chair. Then for it to be sequential you need one directly after the other and the only way I can think of to do that would be splitting aces. That being said it’s really weird wording.

So I’d go with no they don’t owe you anything.

8

That’s not a blackjack. A blackjack is only an Ace + 10 on the first two cards dealt.

(If you don’t believe me, try to get a dealer to pay you 3:2 on your split aces when you get 10s.)

9

Update: I went back to the casino and played 2 hands to a deal to try to trigger the bonuses with their interpretation. Again, although the 5-card Charlies came in fine nothing happened when I got 2 BJs in the same deal on adjacent seats. CSRs eventually put it through to someone more senior and eventually I got £50. This week I went back and decided to forget about the double BJ so just played one hand per deal as normal. I got 2 consecutive BJs and the bonus triggered.

This makes it clear to me that my original interpretation was the intended one, the original trigger mechanism must have been broken and they’ve now fixed it, the CSRs were talking shit, and they really do owe me £100 for my original double blackjacks. Trying to get them to understand is going to be a nightmare though…

10

My advice is to let the matter drop. They don’t build casinos because people win.

11

This was just an update for anybody who saw the original question, firmly showing my interpretation was right. As for casinos “not letting people win” I’ve deliberately not revealed how my luck went outside the scope of the offer. Whether I made loadsamoney and the £100 would be a cherry on the top or lost a load and the £100 may mitigate some loss is not relevant.