Home Card for IPhone Combines Some of Blackjack’s Best Features with Poker and Craps

4-Score-Pro Blackjack

Home Card is an innovative game mixing elements of poker and blackjack card games with the craps dice game.

Playing cards have an epic history. Possibly invented in Ancient India and early decks were found in 9th century China. However for the over 200 years, most casinos have only offered games such as poker and blackjack card games using French decks (also known as “Anglo-American playing cards” or “poker decks”). Steve Mitchell is looking to change this with a radical new deck of playing cards called “4-Score-Pro”.

Cards in the 4-Score-Pro deck share the same four suits as French decks (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs), but also have significant differences. The numbered cards are not simply numbered between 2 and 10; instead, each numbered card has four numbers between 1 and 20 (each number is used 8 times throughout the deck). In place of the 2 jokers (usually tossed aside and forgotten), this deck contains 4 jokers. Replacing the aces and face cards are 2 wild cards, 8 false cards, and 4 money cards.

To promote the new 4-Score-Pro deck, Mitchell has created Home Card, an iPhone casino card game available through iTunes. Like poker, players build ranked hands; unlike poker, players can now hold up to eight of a kind with a single deck. Also, unlike poker, players can choose between four possible values for each card held.

But, playing Home Card is very different to playing poker. In some respects, it plays more like a blackjack card game. Cards are laid out on the table until the player chooses to hold or receives a false card. The dealer continues to play until he has a better hand or draws a false card. Drawing a false card is comparable to going bust in blackjack, in that both result in immediate loss for the player. Because players must calculate the odds of drawing desirable cards against receiving false cards, the tactics bear similarities to blackjack strategies.

Unfortunately, as Home Card is currently only available for Apple products and marketed through Apple iTunes it does not support gambling for real money. However, the developers specifically conceive the game as a casino card game complete with wagering. Therefore, it is reasonable to hope it shall ultimately be available in real blackjack casinos, both online and offline.