Mafia Blackjack Simplified Walkthrough

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Mafia Blackjack is a lot easier than all the rules make it appear to be. It’s basically a Boss Fight but instead of stamina or ammo we kill the bosses with the powers winning hands in Blackjack. If you win a hand the health of the boss is reduced and if you lose it’s increased in a smaller proportion. Unlike real Blackjack you don’t gain anything extra for winning (with the exception of a Blackjack). You need to view your win as an attack on the boss plus the Chips you risked are returned to you. In the case of a Blackjack (assuming the dealer doesn’t have one too) you will get 150% of your Chips back but you aren’t playing for Chips, you are playing for health reduction. Chips afford you the ability to play a hand and these are earned by in game actions. Conservation of Chips so you can play more hands and therefore do more damage to the boss. The basic odds of winning a hand of Blackjack are about 43% to you and 48% to the house (in this case Zynga is the house). There is about a 9% chance for a tie (known as a push) and in this case you only get your Chips back but no damage is done to the boss. As explained below the odds are a little different in Mafia Blackjack because of the house rules and as many have seen so far the Zynga luck factor plays a role as well. Below is a simplified walkthrough and some basic strategy to help those who don’t know how to play.


Like with Mafia Poker, every house can make their own rules. In the Zynga House you aren’t allowed to split like cards or double down.You won’t find any casinos that don’t allow splitting or doubling down because it brings the odds even more in favor of the house and nobody would play. I found a guy on the internet who ran 1.34 million hands in a Blackjack simulator, and had a result of -0.005683851 (a loss of -$84,375 over $14,844,690 total bet). He reran the same number of hands without splits or double downs and his loss rate was 3.42 times higher [1]. This may simplify the game and make it easier for players who have never played Blackjack but it kills the standard odds.


Before you can start playing you should have a basic understanding of the game. The rules are pretty simple, you want to get as close to 21 without going over as possible. Each card’s value is its respective face value (2 to 10), while J, Q and K cards have a value of 10. The Ace can be counted as 1 or 11 to make the best possible hand value. There are 52 cards in each deck and the suits don’t matter. All we care about are the numbers 1-11. The player and the dealer are dealt 2 cards and only 1 card is shown for the dealer. The player has the 1st option to draw more cards and should stop once the reach 17 or higher without going over 21. The dealer will then show his second card and start drawing if he has less than 17. In Mafia Blackjack the dealer stops at 17 and offers two different types of Blackjack. The first 2 bosses use a single deck and the last 2 use a double deck. The charts below are basic strategy and the Double Down and Split options should read as a Hit for out purposes.

Single Deck Strategy

Double Deck Strategy

The instructions for playing the event are outlined nicely in the FAQ so I’m not going to go into much detail. Once you understand the game all you need to do is click ‘Go Play’ button, Bet 10, let the cards fall as they may and decide if you want to hit or stand.

The 3 possible outcomes are win, lose or push. If you win with a Blackjack you get 150% of your bet back. If you go over 21 you have the option to Bust or undo the hand but that will cost you more Chips and isn’t recommended. In Vegas they call these sucker bets. If the boss has a Blackjack you lose even if you get 21. If both the player and the boss have a Blackjack (Ace + 10) it’s a push. In the event of a non-Blackjack win or a push the Chips you bet are returned. If you lose, Zynga keeps them. If you win the bosses health is decreased and if you push it remains the same.


It’s impossible to say how many Chips are needed to defeat each boss because of the odds and variations. In the example below the 2nd boss, Kayla Ross is used. She has 2,000 health points and each win does 100 damage and subtracts 100 points from the total. The boss regenerates 20 health points with each win. I started out with 240 Chips and it cost 10 Chips per game. After paying for the 1st game my Chip total was 230 and Kayla has 2,000 health points. By the midway point I was down 169 Chips and by the time I spent all 240 Chips Kayla still had 500 health points left so I purchased 250 more. By the time I defeated Kayla and moved to the Philanthropist (AKA Joe Willeby) my total was 221. I used an additional 45 Chips but gained +20 for defeating Kayla. In the end it took a total of 285 Chips to defeat the 2nd boss. Of course there will be variations but this is probably a decent average of what will be acquired of all accounts and we can probably estimate that it will cost about 150 Chips per 1,000 health for the first two bosses. This is very random and some may find they get much luckier or unluckier.

As you defeat the bosses, they get red X’s over their images and the current boss shows up on the home page banner.
Once you make it to the 3rd boss you have the option to raise your bet and you get to see your 1st card and the bosses 1st card before you decide. If used at the right times this could make a difference but the risk is not worth the reward. You can raise the bet to a maximum of 50 Chips but the damage dealt will only be 3 times as high. If you lose it could be a disaster. In the 1st example I wouldn’t even think of raising but in the 2nd one I might. It paid off but since I didn’t gain any extra Chips and only got 30 Chips and 3 hands worth of damage it wasn’t worth the risk of losing 50 Chips.

In the rare event of a Blackjack you will earn more Chips if you raise but that's not very likely.

Now that we know the approximate number of Chips it will take to defeat the 2nd boss, lets look at how to get Chips. Chips will drop when doing jobs. I found they dropped easier in South Africa. You can activate the Lockpick Bonus but you can’t get more than 20 Chips per day. The Lockpick Bonus works and you get double the Chips but both count towards the total and Chips will stop dropping once you hit 20. I don’t think Chips drop in New York but they dropped right away in South Africa.

When fighting Chips only drop when you get an ice or a kill. You will need at least 20 ices in any destination to get all that are available.

When Robbing, you get 2 Chips per Rob Board clear regardless if you use a Rob Squad or not so you need to clear 5 Robbing Boards in any destination to get all 10.

With/Without Rob Squad

Chips drop in both Shootout and Mob Fury Arenas. I found they dropped easier in 500 Arenas than they do 100s.
The Daily Reward will vary throughout the event. On the first day we got 30. The FAQ says that it’s a surprise and calls these ‘Surprise Grants’ so we will have to wait to know the totals. Collect these Chips from the home page banner.

We can get 5 Chips per day from the feeds but this is going to be a little tricky. The good news is you don’t have to beg for them but the bad news is the news feeds won’t be heavily populated with them and they are limited. The only way these requests make it into the feeds is when someone defeats a boss and shares.
You can use the Stream Scanner to expedite the process but they aren’t going to be as easy to find as they have been on day 1. The requests are located under the ‘index’ tab.

The above is summed up in chart form. The Daily Collect will vary and on the first day we received 30 Chips. Without knowing the exact number of Daily Collect Chips it’s hard to say if there are enough free Chips to master the event. If you collect all of the available Chips per day you are guaranteed at least 95 Chips per day bringing the event total to at least 950. Like Challenge Missions I suspect we will be getting more than 30 Chips as the event progresses.  You will also earn 10, 20 and 40 Chips for defeating Bosses 1, 2 and 3. This will add an additional 70 Chips to the total if you get that far.

Action	Limit Per Day	Limit Per Event
Jobs	20	200
Fights	20	200
Robbing	10	100
Arena	10	100
Daily Reward	Varies*	300*
Feeds	5	50
Total	95	950

*Day #1=30 Chips, approximate total assumes 30 Chips per day for the Daily Collect

The spreadsheet below was made by Neil Mackay and can help us answer the question if there are enough free Chips. Neil took the standard Blackjack odds (which are actually better than the Zynga odds) and the health of all the bosses combined to figure out how many hands are needed to defeat all the bosses and compared that to the number of free Chips available. If Zynga doesn't change anything it looks like we will only get about a little over half way there without spending reward points. (click image to enlarge)

You can read up on what Zynga is calling ‘Cheats’ and as stated above they are often referred to sucker bets in Las Vegas. For those who claim that players who spend money are cheating, Zynga agrees in this event.

There are 2 peeves I have with this event (not counting the horrible odds). The popup which tells you if you won, lost or pushed covers up the hand history so it’s impossible to know what the dealers last card was. In the example below I would like to see how this boss pulled a 21 out of his ass to beat my 20 but I can’t. It’s also ridiculous that if the boss has a Blackjack that they make you go through the time and effort of playing if you are going to lose anyway. This is what makes those cheats a waste of Chips. You could purchase all of them to win a hand and still lose in the end because the boss had a Blackjack. In the casinos when the dealer has a Blackjack all play is terminated (unless an Ace is showing and you have the option to purchase insurance) and the next hand is dealt. Because of this I couldn’t tell if the dealer hits a soft 17 (Ace counting as 1).  Team Spockholm is working on tools to help us as the actual playing aspect is too labor intensive, frustrating and rather boring. If the odds were a little better and the issues outlined above are fixed this could be an enjoyable feature. I suspect the last 2 bosses may prove to require more Chips than we can get for free and if that is the case then this will be a Lucky Streak in disguise.
In the end it's up to you to decide if the rewards are worth all this hassle. They are definitely not worth spending reward points on. You are only playing for 1 loot item and +16 skill points. You only get to keep the loot item with the highest level of mastery.For 12 reward points I can get +12 skill points and a decent piece of loot for simply crafting from one of my properties during a 2Xs build. If I want a loot with comparable stats I can purchase one for 35 reward points when they aren't on sale. If there aren't enough free Chips to master Mafia Blackjack then it's a dud.