The History of Black Jack
Posted in Blackjack on 01/28/2010 06:22 pm by Royce
The game of chemin de fer was brought to the U.S. in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that a strategy was created to defeat the casino in black jack. This article is going to take a swift look at the creation of that technique, Counting Cards.
When betting was legalized in Nevada in ‘34, twenty-one screamed into universal appeal and was commonly bet on with one or two decks of cards. Roger Baldwin published a paper in 1956 which described how to lower the casino advantage based on odds and stats which was quite confusing for gamblers who were not mathematicians.
In 1962, Dr. Edward O. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to better the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also created the 1st strategies for card counting. Dr. Ed Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which illustrated card counting techniques and the tactics for reducing the house advantage.
This created a huge growth in Blackjack competitors at the US betting houses who were attempting to implement Dr. Ed Thorp’s techniques, much to the bewilderment of the casinos. The strategy was not easy to understand and hard to execute and therefore expanded the profits for the casinos as more and more folks took to gambling on Blackjack.
However this huge increase in earnings was not to continue as the gamblers became more sophisticated and more cultivated and the system was further refined. In the 80’s a group of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made counting cards a part of the regular vocabulary. Since then the casinos have developed countless methods to thwart card counters including but not limited to, more than one deck, shoes, shuffle machines, and gossip has it, sophisticated computer software to observe actions and identify "cheaters". While not illegal being discovered counting cards will get you barred from the majority of brick and mortar casinos in Las Vegas.