Spanish 21 bonus payouts
The bonuses are not decoration. Remove them and the house edge nearly doubles.
Short answer
Spanish 21 pays a bonus for reaching 21 with five or more cards, and for a 6-7-8 or 7-7-7 combination. Bonuses are void once you double or split. Together the bonus 21s are worth about 0.33 percentage points of house edge SIM, which is two thirds of the entire edge in the standard game. The Super Bonus, a flat jackpot for suited 7-7-7 against a dealer 7, is dealt about once in 635,762 hands EXACT.
The standard pay table
| Hand | Pays | How often it lands |
|---|---|---|
| 21 with five cards | 3:2 | 0.275% |
| 21 with six cards | 2:1 | 0.037% |
| 21 with seven or more cards | 3:1 | 0.0055% |
| 6-7-8 or 7-7-7, mixed suits | 3:2 | 0.282% for any 6-7-8 or 7-7-7 |
| 6-7-8 or 7-7-7, same suit | 2:1 | |
| 6-7-8 or 7-7-7, all spades | 3:1 |
Frequencies measured over 100,000,000 rounds of correct play. SIM Pay tables vary by casino, so read the felt.
Bonuses pay on top of the normal win, and they are void if you doubled or split that hand. A six-card 21 that came after a double pays even money and nothing more.
The Super Bonus
If your first three cards are three suited sevens and the dealer's upcard is a seven, you win the Super Bonus: a flat dollar amount, typically $1,000 on bets of $5 to $24 and $5,000 on bets of $25 or more. Other players at the table often receive an envy bonus. The Super Bonus is void if you have doubled or split.
The exact probability of being dealt that hand is 0.00015729%, or about 1 in 635,762 EXACT. At a $5 bet a $1,000 jackpot is 200 units, so the Super Bonus is worth roughly 0.03 percentage points of house edge. At $25 the $5,000 jackpot is also 200 units, so the value is about the same. Between $24 and $25 the jackpot does not scale, so a $24 bet earns a better rate on the Super Bonus than any bet from $25 upward until well past $25. This is a curiosity, not a strategy.
Why the Super Bonus changes one decision
It changes exactly one play, and the chart cannot show it, because the chart does not know your suits.
If you hold a pair of sevens of the same suit and the dealer shows a 7, do not split, and do not double. Hit. Conditional on that exact situation, the third matching seven arrives on 1.40% of draws EXACT: four cards of that suit and rank remain in a 285-card shoe. On a $5 bet, that 1.40% chance at 200 units is worth about 2.8 units of expectation, and splitting or doubling voids the bonus entirely. Nothing else in the game comes close to that.
Once you draw any card that is not the seventh seven, the Super Bonus is gone and you play the resulting total normally.
What the bonuses are actually paying for
Taking the four tens out of each deck is what the bonuses compensate for. It costs you a two-card 21 on 0.57% of hands, it weakens every double, and it drops the dealer's bust rate by roughly four percentage points against every weak upcard. The bonuses give back 0.33 points, the always-wins-21 rule gives back another 0.32, and doubling freedom and rescue give back 0.32 between them. Take any one of those away and the game stops being competitive with the blackjack table beside it.
[TODO: price the envy bonus and the common alternative bonus pay tables through this engine.]
Common questions
Do bonuses pay after a split?
No. In the standard rule set, splitting or doubling voids every bonus on that hand, including the Super Bonus. This is why the pair-splitting chart differs from blackjack.
Should I chase a five-card 21?
Not deliberately. The correct chart already accounts for the value of drawing extra cards, which is part of why you hit some totals here that you would stand on in blackjack. Taking an extra card the chart does not call for costs more than the bonus is worth.
Is the Super Bonus worth playing for?
It is worth about 0.03 percentage points, so no, it should not affect where you sit. It should affect exactly one decision: never split suited sevens against a dealer 7.