Shaq Invented a New Form of Blackjack and He’s Debuting It at Parx

Shaquille O'Neal will be at Parx in Bensalem on October 4th to debut Shaq Blackjack, a hybrid slot-table game.

ShaqBLACKJack

Photo via PRNewsFoto/Parx Casino

Shaquille O’Neal is a man of many talents. Basketball, acting, rapping, trying to build apartments in Atlantic City, tweeting, et cetera.

And now, perhaps, he’s made his greatest accomplishment: Shaquille O’Neal and Dynamic Gaming Systems have invented a new form of blackjack. It’s officially called ShaqBLACKJack, but most of the logos seem to make you want to call it Shaq Jack.

According to a release, Dynamic Gaming Systems and O’Neal literally spent four years developing this game. One pictures O’Neal in his basement, furiously flipping through a deck of cards and coding different games on a UNIX machine.

Seriously, Dynamic Gaming Systems says Shaq was literally involved in the creation of the game. “I wanted to find a way to make a casino game fun for everyone and find a way to bring Shaq’s unique brand of humor to the gaming floor,” Dynamic Gaming’s CEO Charlie Barksdale said in a release. “We clicked right away when we started talking about creating this game.”

According to a promotional video aimed at casinos, this is how it works: Shaq Jack has a live dealer, who pulls cards out of a shoe and deals onto a table. But he or she deals three hands, instead of just one. Players sit at consoles near the dealer; before each hand, they are allowed to pick which hand they want to play against. Yes, otherwise this seems exactly the same as any other type of blackjack. But it has a cartoon Shaquille O’Neal that congratulates you if you win!

Basically, Shaq Jack is a way to make blackjack less intimidating for the casual or newbie player, since it’s at a terminal. And it’s a way to casinos to pay one person to deal cards to many more players than possible at a regular live table.

According to Parx’s CEO, O’Neal himself literally convinced the casino to debut this game. It’s time for another great press release quote:

“When we had the opportunity to play the game and we personally experienced Shaq’s enthusiasm for creating this thrilling new game for our customers, we knew we had to have it,” Parx CEO Tony Ricci said in the press release. “Shaq himself is synonymous with excitement, winning and fun — and that is what we want our guests to think about Parx.”

O’Neal appears at Parx on Sunday, October 4th, at 6:30 p.m.