The Origin of Twenty-One
The card game of Blackjack was introduced to the United States of America in the 19th century but it was not until the mid twentieth century that a strategy was developed to beat the casino in Blackjack. This article is going to take a quick peak at the development of that strategy, Counting Cards.
When gambling was legalized in Nevada in ‘34, black jack sky-rocketed into universal appeal and was usually gambled on with one or 2 decks. Roger Baldwin wrote a dissertation in 1956 which explained how to reduce the casino advantage built on probability and statistics which was quite complicated for gamblers who weren’t mathematicians.
In 1962, Dr. Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to enhance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also created the 1st tactics for card counting. Dr. Thorp authored a book called "Beat the Dealer" which outlined card counting techniques and the practices for reducing the house advantage.
This spawned a massive growth in black jack players at the US betting houses who were attempting to put into practice Dr. Thorp’s techniques, much to the awe of the casinos. The system was hard to understand and difficult to execute and thusly improved the earnings for the betting houses as more and more people took to wagering on chemin de fer.
However this large growth in profits wasn’t to last as the gamblers became more sophisticated and more cultivated and the system was further perfected. In the 1980’s a bunch of students from MIT made card counting a part of the everyday vernacular. Since then the casinos have introduced countless methods to thwart card counters including, multiple decks, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and speculation has itnow sophisticated computer programs to analyze actions and detect "cheaters". While not prohibited being caught counting cards will get you blocked from all betting houses in vegas.
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