Tribes Celebrate as California Restricts “Blackjack-Style” Games at Cardrooms

California Cardrooms that skirted the state's gaming laws and offered “blackjack-style” table games are in for a major shake-up.

The California Department of Justice announced last Friday that the Office of Administrative Law approved two regulatory measures, one of which dealt with blackjack-style games. Under the new approach, “traditional blackjack” is not approved in local cardrooms.

Attorney General Rob Bonta said that the regulations were submitted on Dec. 23, 2025, and were finally approved last week.

Blackjack gone from California cardrooms

The new guidelines will significantly redefine what is and isn’t permissible at California cardrooms.

These gambling dens are legal and licensed by the state. However, they are not allowed to infringe on the rights granted to the state’s tribal community and their gaming enterprise.

According to the new rules, players can’t “bust” in any of their games. Instead, hands will now be settled through a comparison with the live dealer.

Hitting “blackjack,” or turning an ace and a card with a value of 10, doesn’t guarantee a win. Cardrooms were also barred from branding games as “Blackjack” or anything with 21 in the title.

Kyle Kirkland, head of the California Gaming Association, told CBS News Sacramento that the ramifications could result in a halving of a $6 billion industry that supports 20,000 working-class families.

“It's just a dramatic, hard, 180-degree pivot in how the law is being interpreted, and that's what we have the problem with, that it's like, without any real reason, any visible harm to the public, we're having a 180-degree change in how these games are being interpreted, and it's devastating,” he said. “Candidly, we're not ready to just give up and fold up shop by April 1. We've had our lawyers working on this. There's going to be some legal pushback.”

More changes

Another new rule alters “player-dealer” games. 

The player-dealer will have to be a seated person; the player-dealer position must be offered to every player at the start of a new hand; and the position must rotate to at least two other players every 40 minutes, or else the game will end.

Tribal groups previously argued that the old rules only required the player-dealer position to be offered, but rotations weren’t forced. That meant that third-party dealers often hired by cardrooms essentially acted as the house, which infringed on their gaming rights, since California’s only licensed retail casinos are tribally-owned.

Stars Casino co-owner Joseph Melech told CBS News Sacramento that he believes that 20 percent of the casino’s 80 full-time employees will be affected by the change. 

“We have a lot of single parents here that raise their kids and want an income and been with us for years, so it's good that way,” he said. “Right now, we're doing well with our local charities and with job creation, and if some of these regulations go into effect, it's going to affect the games that we offer, and the things that we're going to be able to do for our community, like most card rooms and their communities.”

California already has strict policies in several areas of the gambling industry, including the absence of sports betting and online casinos. The state also enacted a bill banning sweepstakes casinos on Jan. 1.

Atty. Gen. Bonta also previously opined that daily fantasy contests constituted illegal gambling under California law.