November 7, 2024
Editorial Guidelines
Experts in this article:
Sophia is a software QA Tester and web developer with experience testing multiple survey and task apps. She has two years of...
Jessica is a writer for SideHustles.com. Her side hustles include freelance academic writing and editing, which she's done for...
21 Blitz is a card game that resembles blackjack combined with solitaire. The makers of the app claim that it’s “better than blackjack,” as well as that it’s easy to learn and beneficial for your brain.
The app makers also say you can win cash prizes with 21 Blitz, but are the rewards as good as they claim?
Our tester went to find out.
21 Blitz is an app you can use to win (or lose) money by playing a card game that features elements of blackjack and solitaire.
The app is made by Tether Studios and is run by Skillz (a legitimate platform that hosts many other mobile games).
At the time of writing (June 2024), 21 Blitz has over 28,500 reviews on the App Store and an average rating of 4.6 stars (out of 5). It also has more than 3,000 reviews on the Samsung Galaxy store and an average rating of 4.5.
The bottom line is that 21 Blitz is definitely legit, but the real question is whether it has any earning potential.
Yes, 21 Blitz pays real money—if you can win enough games.
21 Blitz pays out cash prizes via PayPal, Apple Pay, credit or debit card, or check, with the payment method depending on how much you win and how you originally paid your entry fees.
We spent over 2 hours playing 21 Blitz, and we spent $15 in total (money that we deposited in the app). After we completed our test, we were able to withdraw $6.90 (after paying a fee on our withdrawal). This means we lost $8.10 overall.
Our experience demonstrates how easy it is to lose money on the 21 Blitz app. Even if you’re able to get better results than we did, you probably still won’t earn a worthwhile amount from playing this game.
As such, we’d recommend sticking with a more conventional side hustle if you want to make money. You can check out a list of side hustle ideas here.
21 Blitz is fun, but as a practical way to generate a second income stream, unfortunately, it doesn’t make the cut.
No, you technically don’t have to pay to play 21 Blitz. If you stick to playing practice games, you can avoid spending any money on entry fees (because practice games only require in-app credits that you can easily earn for free).
You can also try to earn credits on the app by completing various tasks.
Some of the tasks featured on the app reward you with credits that only allow you to enter practice games with no cash prizes.
However, other tasks will give you credits you can use to enter cash games (with cash prizes) or exchange for gift cards and other merchandise.
In 21 Blitz, you make stacks of cards, aiming to fulfill certain criteria that allow you to “clear” the stacks.
When you play a 21 Blitz game, you turn over cards from a deck one by one. The aim is to stack up all of the cards from the deck on four piles without “busting,” which happens when the values on your cards add up to more than 21.
You can see how the game works in the screenshot below.
All cards have values, most of which correspond to the number on the card. Face cards (kings, queens, and jacks) have a score of 10 each. Aces have a score of 1 or 11; the game will automatically allocate whichever score is more favorable, meaning it allows you to clear the pile or avoid busting.
There are several ways to clear a stack of cards (which, again, is the goal of the game, and what you need to do to avoid eventually busting):
Ideally, the game will end when you have played all of the cards from the deck. However, the game can sometimes end before you play all of your cards.
If you bust a stack (which happens when the values for your cards add up to more than 21), you get a strike. If you get three strikes, the game is over.
There’s also a three-minute time limit on 21 Blitz games. If you haven’t played all of the cards from the deck after three minutes, the game will end.
If you don’t complete the game within three minutes, you won’t get any time bonuses. Time bonuses are extra points you score for completing the game within the time limit.
The system for credits on 21 Blitz (and other Skillz games) is very complicated. In short, games have entry fees, which you can pay in various ways.
The easiest (but worst) option is to use real cash to pay. For obvious reasons, 21 Blitz incentivizes this—it’s how the app makes money—but we don’t recommend it. As mentioned, our experience suggests that you’re likely to lose most of what you put in.
There are also many other types of credits in the app, including:
All of this is fairly convoluted and hard to keep track of. The upshot is that it’s possible to play practice games with free credits.
It’s technically possible to enter cash games with (other types of) free credits as well, but it’s difficult and time-consuming to earn enough, and in practice, we suspect most of 21 Blitz’s users end up spending real money.
The only way to win money directly on the 21 Blitz app is to win cash prizes in cash games.
However, you have to pay entry fees to enter games with cash prizes. In general, the games with the largest prizes also have the highest fees.
When we were testing 21 Blitz, we saw games with entry fees ranging from $0.60 to a whopping $120, and prize pools ranging from $1 to $200.
Here’s what happened in the games we entered on 21 Blitz:
We noticed that, compared with other, similar apps we’ve used, 21 Blitz offered us a relatively narrow selection of tournaments, with less variation in terms of prizes and entry fees.
Again, we invested $15 into 21 Blitz. We spent over 2 hours playing games and trying to earn credits to enter games with. At the end of that period, we we were able to withdraw only $6.90. This means we lost money overall (more than half of our initial deposit).
As mentioned, cash games are the only way to earn money directly on 21 Blitz. However, there are other tasks that allow you to earn various types of credits, some of which (Bonus Cash and Ticketz) you can use to enter tournaments or exchange for gift cards or merchandise.
The Daily Challenge is a task you can complete on 21 Blitz each day to earn extra rewards. The nature of the challenge and the prize available will depend on how many days you use the app in a row, as shown in the screenshot below.
You can also see that not all of the rewards are useful. Sometimes, you can only win Zs (for entering practice games).
We completed the 21 Blitz Daily Challenge a couple of times. On one occasion, we had to play a practice game to get the reward, but this only consisted of Zs.
On another occasion, the challenge was to play a pro game. We did this, and we got 250 Ticketz for our efforts.
21 Blitz gives you a Login Bonus you can claim every day you use the app. These bonuses may comprise Zs, Ticketz, or other rewards.
We claimed 21 Blitz’s Login Bonuses seven times in total.
On four occasions, we got only Zs for doing this. However, on three occasions, we were rewarded with prizes of Ticketz (20 Ticketz, 97 Ticketz, and 446 Ticketz).
21 Blitz (like other Skillz games) has a tier system whereby you can get extra rewards when you progress from one tier to the next. You can progress through the tiers by earning Ticketz.
We only managed to graduate as far as the Silver Tier on 21 Blitz. We weren’t sure if we actually received any rewards for this; we didn’t see any show up in our account. It’s possible that they don’t appear immediately.
21 Blitz has a leaderboard for players who earn the most medals on the app. Medals are another type of award you get whenever you play a game (along with Ticketz, cash prizes, and experience points or “XP,” which don’t have much purpose, as far as we could tell).
You won’t be able to view the 21 Blitz leaderboard until you’ve played five games. Once you’ve unlocked the leaderboard by doing so, you can view it by clicking on the “Leagues” tab at the bottom of the app screen.
We viewed the leaderboard on 21 Blitz several times. We won Zs for ranking highly, as shown in the screenshot below.
For example, the screenshot below shows one occasion where we won 55 Zs for reaching fifth place on the 21 Blitz leaderboard.
We never won any Ticketz, Bonus Cash, or real cash prizes from this feature, so it was a bit of a disappointment.
21 Blitz gives you trophies for completing certain achievements on the app, and trophies give you bonus rewards.
Many of these rewards will be Zs. However, you can also win Ticketz and possibly also other prizes when you earn trophies.
We won various trophies on 21 Blitz, including trophies for:
As you can see, many of the trophy prizes we won were Zs and, as such, useless for winning money or merchandise.
You may be able to get rewards by using the 21 Blitz Card Quests feature. You can find this by going to the main menu and then clicking “Card Quests.”
However, this feature may not always be available, as we learned when we tried to use it.
The Card Quests feature promises prizes, as shown in the screenshot below, but we couldn’t tell whether these prizes included in-app credits or merely decorative features for customizing the look of the 21 Blitz app (e.g., game scenes and images for card backs).
When we investigated the Card Quests feature (called “Starry Nights”) on 21 Blitz, we couldn’t work out how to use it to get bonus rewards.
After we had used the 21 Blitz app for a while, we noticed that the Starry Night Card Quests feature had disappeared from our menu. We’re not sure whether this was because we used the app intermittently or if there were other conditions we failed to fulfill in order to access the feature.
Skillz runs sweepstakes for users of 21 Blitz—and its other games—that usually have prizes of Bonus Cash.
This is one of the hardest ways to earn credits on 21 Blitz, as you have to simply cross your fingers and hope for the best.
To check the sweepstake results and see if you were picked, go to the main menu on the app, click on “FAQs,” then go to “Special Events.” You’ll see a list of usernames like the one below.
We repeatedly checked the results of the sweepstakes we saw on 21 Blitz, which offered the chance to win Bonus Cash prizes, but sadly, we never ended up on the list.
You can get $1 in Bonus Cash for referring people to play 21 Blitz. However, you’ll only get these rewards for the first two people you refer.
We didn’t refer anyone to 21 Blitz, so we didn’t get any Bonus Cash for referrals.
If you’re playing multiple Skillz games that you’ve signed up for with the same email, you’ll have to merge your different accounts to play cash games on all of them (as well as to use certain other features).
This means you’ll have all of your Ticketz, Bonus Cash, and withdrawable cash in one place (i.e., in the app you designate as the primary account).
This feature might be useful if, for example, you have Ticketz on multiple Skillz apps and want to consolidate them into one place to swap for Bonus Cash or other prizes.
We reviewed Pool Payday and Blackout Bingo before we tested 21 Blitz. As such, when we started playing 21 Blitz and merged our accounts, we received the Ticketz we had left over from the two other apps we’d used.
However, even with the Ticketz we earned from playing two other games, by the end of our 21 Blitz testing marathon, we still didn’t have enough Ticketz to buy even $1 of Bonus Cash or redeem any prizes. This shows just how long it takes to accumulate a meaningful number of Ticketz on Skillz apps like 21 Blitz.
To start playing 21 Blitz, you can visit the Skillz page for the game and scan the QR code to download the app onto your device.
Alternatively, you can download the app directly from the App Store or the Samsung Galaxy store using the buttons below.
21 Blitz is not available for non-Samsung Android devices. That said, there’s a practice version of the app on Google Play. Because Google doesn’t allow apps that veer into gambling territory on its store, this version is single-player only, and doesn’t feature cash prizes.
We don’t recommend spending money on 21 Blitz. However, if you decide you want to do it anyway, there are several payment methods you can use:
If you decide to put down a deposit to enter 21 Blitz tournaments, you can choose between various denominations, starting from $5.
As shown in the screenshot below, if you pay more, you’ll get Bonus Cash freebies, which incentivize 21 Blitz players to fork out more money. You may also sometimes see other special offers with even more Bonus Cash.
To reiterate, these offers are designed to make you spend money, and our advice is: don’t fall for the app’s tricks.
When we played 21 Blitz, we purchased deposits of $5 (three times), so we didn’t get any Bonus Cash freebies.
The system for withdrawals on 21 Blitz is somewhat complicated. The method they’ll use to pay you will depend on how much you’re withdrawing, and also on how you originally paid your deposits to enter games.
21 Blitz will repay you for your deposits using whatever method you used to pay. For example, if you paid a $25 deposit via PayPal and later want to take out $10 from your withdrawable cash balance, you’ll get this money as a PayPal refund.
If the amount you withdraw is more than you’ve paid in total for deposits (meaning you won money), 21 Blitz says they’ll send you a check in the mail that will cover the difference.
To give another example, if you use your debit card to pay a $25 deposit, and you win enough games that you can withdraw $30, you should get a $25 refund on your card, plus a $5 check sent to you in the mail.
21 Blitz says that you should allow 4–6 weeks for withdrawals, but that they will often be processed much faster than this. When we withdrew money, we got paid the same day.
Yes, there are sometimes fees for withdrawals on the 21 Blitz app. You’ll pay a $1.50 fee for any withdrawals under $10.
This means it’s less profitable to withdraw smaller amounts from the app, as you’ll lose a relatively larger proportion of your earnings to fees this way.
21 Blitz doesn’t mention a minimum threshold you need to reach to withdraw money on the app. However, as withdrawals of less than $10 are subject to a $1.50 fee, you effectively won’t be able to withdraw anything if you have less than $1.50 (you’d pay as much or more in fees than you’d be withdrawing).
Yes, one thing you need to know before you withdraw money from 21 Blitz is that, when you cash out, you’ll forfeit your Bonus Cash. Unfortunately, because of the way 21 Blitz entry fees work, it’s also impossible to spend your Bonus Cash without also spending your withdrawable cash.
This means you’ll often lose a big chunk of Bonus Cash when you withdraw. This is a big disincentive against withdrawals, which encourages you to carry on playing—and spending more money.
Anyone can play 21 Blitz. However, cash games aren’t allowed everywhere in the US, since some states prohibit online gambling. These include:
You also have to be at least 18 years of age to play cash games (including 21 Blitz games) on the Skillz platform. 1
If you like the idea of getting paid to play games, but you’re not sure that 21 Blitz is quite the ticket (or Ticketz), we’ve found several alternatives for you to try:
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