Blackjack Hustler

If you're a skilled card-shark, you can make pots of money. No, that doesn't mean by winning your nan's life savings by cheating at whist (although it's a thought). Instead, if you're a hotshot poker or blackjack player, you can make a decent living in places like Las Vegas – before subsequently blowing all your winnings on slot machines.

Rather than focus on such a lifestyle, most mobile card games tend to concentrate solely on the pure card games. Blackjack Hustler is different, though, right from the moment you create your own character to play the game and are presented with seven alternatives.

This isn't just about anonymous blackjack played against an invisible mobile dealer, you see. The game's core is very much its Career mode, where you try to earn your fortune. Still, let's deal with the basic gameplay first.

Blackjack Hustler plays a pretty good game of blackjack, with sharp graphics and speedy proceedings that convey the addictiveness of the real-world game very well. Even if you just want to play the odd hand while sitting on a bus, it's the most polished mobile blackjack mobile game you can get.

The real fun, however, comes with the Career mode. It's based around a map of a city, which enables you to go from your home to different casinos, stopping in at the bank if you need to borrow some more cash (note: this is generally a sign that your nascent blackjack career isn't going entirely well).

You can play one-off hands in the different casinos but they also hold tournaments, which you'll be told about in messages you can pick up when at home. The tournaments give you the chance to win high-rolling (sadly, virtual) prizes, including cars and even palatial houses. They don't actually appear in the game, but just totting them up gives you a sense of achievement.

Admittedly, once you start racking up the dosh in Career, Blackjack Hustler can feel a bit repetitive, which we're putting down to the real-life ennui of becoming extremely rich. Not that we'd turn it down, you understand. It's just the more money you get, the less you care about losing it / getting more of it.

The point is, after spending a week on-and-off obsessed by Blackjack Hustler's central mode, we soon settled down to just firing the game up for the odd quick fix, and so its long-term value is limited. Nevertheless, compared to its more basic rivals, this is definitely the standout mobile blackjack game, albeit only a short-term fix.