When International Game Technology introduced Guaranteed Play video poker at the 2006 Global Gaming Expo, the word already was out that Guaranteed Play slot machines would be next.

Sure enough, when the doors opened to G2E 2007 Nov. 13-15 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, there were Guaranteed Play slots. But guess what else is up for the Guaranteed Play treatment? You guessed it. Guaranteed Play blackjack was one of the handful of new blackjack products at the annual conference and trade show.

As shown at the expo, Guaranteed Play would offer 30 hands of blackjack for a price dependent on your wager per hand. A $20 buy-in would guarantee you 30 wagers at $5 a hand --- $150 in action. You can choose 30 $10 wagers for a $40 buy-in, 30 $25 wagers for a $100 buy-in, and if you buy in for $300, and the guarantee jumps to 30 hands at $100 a hand.

A good deal? Not necessarily. If your goal is just to be able to play a while, Guaranteed Play offers that. A $20 buy-in under regular game conditions would guarantee you only four hands --- four losers, and you’re done. That’s something we’ve all had happen. In Guaranteed Play, you get to keep playing all 30 hands at no extra cost, no matter how many hands you win or lose.

But if your goal is a shot to win, that’s another matter. To cash anything out, you have to have a WINNING session. Not a small losing session. Not a break-even session. If you break even, you lose your full original investment.

Here’s the way it works. If you buy in for $20, you’re given 30 Play Tokens and $50 in non-cashable Table Chips. Those table chips are recorded as your Starting Balance. For each hand you play, you push out one play token and a wager within the parameters of set minimum and maximum bets. If you split or double down, you also must use another Play Token --- splits and double downs are counted as hands within the guarantee.

You may continue to play as long as you have Play Tokens. If you run out of Table Chips, the dealer gives you more and adds them to your Starting Balance.

When you end a session, if you have Table Chips in excess of your Starting Balance, your are paid. If your chips are equal to or below the Starting Balance, you lose your buy-in.

To give an extreme example, let’s say you push every hand for 30 hands. In a regular game, you’d still have your original 20 bucks. In Guaranteed Play, you’ve lost your buy-in. Or let’s say you’ve won a little and lost a little, and in the end had $5 more in chips than you had at the start. In a regular game, you’d cash out $25. In Guaranteed Play, you cash out $5. Anytime you have enough to cash out, you’re cashing out less than you would in a normal game by the amount of your buy-in.

There’s an upside, of course. The tradeoff here is that in sessions where you’d have been reaching for your wallet after early losses in a regular game, Guaranteed Play lets you keep going. Sometimes you’ll recoup the losses and have a winning session, playing hand you otherwise would never have played. And there is a jackpot built into Guaranteed Play. When you make the maximum bet and your hand ties the dealer, you win hand if one of your cards exactly matches one of the dealer’s --- 5 of diamonds matches 5 of diamonds, for instance. Two matches win five times your bet. Three matches pays $10,000, four matches with hands of 17 through 20 pays $250,000 and four matches at 21 pays a jackpot of anywhere from $1 million to $5 million, depending on bet size.

Of course, to have four cards match the dealer in suit and denomination, AND add up to 21 is more the stuff of dreams than the stuff of blackjack.

Guaranteed Play is probably best used as a promotion. IGT and Walker Digital, which originated the concept, tried to stress that aspect at G2E. Handouts at the Guaranteed Play portion of the IGT booth included a sample coupon book with a "Blackjack Movie Night for Two," suggesting the casino might package together vouchers for two movie tickets, two popcorns, two soft drinks and two 30-hand blackjack guarantees for a set price ($49 on the sample).

Such packages might be the niche for Guaranteed Play. Cash players are going to find Guaranteed Play a volatile experience, with the cashout rules guaranteeing many more losing sessions than in regular blackjack.

There were a handful of other new blackjack products at G2E, including a game from Gaming Entertainment Inc. that throws blackjack into reverse, a la low-ball games at poker. In Lo-Bo Reverse Blackjack, the object is to get a lower-ranking hand than the dealer.

All the 10-value cards are removed from the deck, and instead of busting by going over 21, you bust anytime you go over 13. Instead of getting paid 3-2 on two-card 21s, you’re paid 2-1 on a pair of Aces, the perfect hand in Lo-Bo. You may split and double down, as in regular blackjack.

After you see your initial two cards and the dealer’s face-up card, you may either stand or discard one card and call for a hit. You’re always going to want to get rid of a 6 or higher, and in many situations will want to dump a 5, if that’s your high card. The dealer will always take a third card, and make his or her best two-card hand out of the three.

Stanley Ko’s analysis of the game calculated the house edge at about 1.8 percent with a basic strategy, which Ko also calculated.

Gaming Entertainment, whose founder is former World Series of Poker no-limit seven-card stud champion Joe Awada, also has added some blackjack-like touches to baccarat in Double Down Baccarat. One card is turned face up on player and banker hands, and bettors have the option of standing, doubling down or surrendering. One bonus: If a double down wager wins with a hand of 9, the original wager is paid at even money while the double down bet is paid at 2-1.

To make up for the doubling and surrendering, the house wins all ties except on 9. If both hands are 9, player and banker bets all win.

The house edge is slightly lower than on traditional baccarat, and it’s actually lower on player than on banker. Elliott Frome’s analysis calculates that those who use the options correctly face a house edge of 0.86 percent on player bets, and 1.22 percent on banker. That doesn’t mean the house makes less money on the game. They more than make it up in increased action --- the analysis says those who bet on player will double down 63.31 percent of the time.

British company TCS John Huxley was on hand with Blackjack Plus, three insurance-like options. The first is insurance, with a twist. As in regular blackjack, when the dealer has an Ace up and a 10-value face down for a blackjack, the insurance bet pays 2-1. However, if the face down is a Jack of spades or a Jack of clubs, the payoff is 3-1, reducing the house edge against average players to 3.54 percent and opening the profitable insurance window a little wider for advantage players.

The second Blackjack Plus option is Dealer Draws Ace, extending the insurance concept to hands in which the dealer has a 10 face up. On such hands, if the dealer then completes a blackjack with a 10 down, Dealer Draws Ace bets are paid at 11-1 odds, a high house edge of 7.4 percent.

Finally, there’s Dealer Busts on Ace, a side bet that the dealer who starts with an Ace will bust. If the dealer hits soft 17, Dealer Busts on Ace pays 6-1 and has a house edge of 2.6 percent. If the dealer stands on all 17s, the bet pays 7-1 and has a house edge of 7.62 percent.

Reel Games, which distributed both table games and video slot machines, showed a side bet called Jackpot Blackjack. It’s a progressive, available in pay tables designed for either $1 or $2 wagers. You’re betting that there are going to be blackjacks, either in your hand or the dealer’s. In the basic $1 pay table, if either you or the dealer has a two-card 21, you’re paid $3. If the blackjack is suited, you get $6, on up to $25 if both have blackjacks, $250 if both have suited blackjacks, $1,000 if both have Ace-Jack suited and a progressive jackpot if both have Ace-Jack of spades. With a rollover jackpot value of $10,000, Ko’s analysis calculates the house edge at 24 percent on a two-deck game, and 23.6 percent on a six-decker.

With house edges like that, only the unwary and the serious jackpot chasers will stick with the bet. As always this seems to be the case with new wrinkles in blackjack; the best option seems to be solid play at the basic game.