Blackjack

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The card game of Blackjack was introduced to the United States of America in the 19th century but it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that a strategy was created to defeat the house in Blackjack. This material is going to take a swift peak at the development of that strategy, Counting Cards.

When casino gambling was legalized in the state of Nevada in ‘34, twenty-one screamed into popularity and was usually played with 1 or two decks. Roger Baldwin wrote a dissertation in 1956 which described how to reduce the casino advantage founded on probability and statistics which was quite confusing for those who were not mathematicians.

In ‘62, Dr. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to advance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also developed the 1st strategies for counting cards. Dr. Ed Thorp authored a book called "Beat the Dealer" which summarized card counting techniques and the practices for lowering the casino edge.

This created a large increase in chemin de fer gamblers at the US betting houses who were trying to put into practice Dr. Thorp’s tactics, much to the bewilderment of the casinos. The strategy was not easy to understand and hard to put into practice and therefore elevated the profits for the betting houses as more and more people took to wagering on black jack.

However this large growth in earnings wasn’t to continue as the gamblers became more sophisticated and more insightful and the system was further perfected. In the 80’s a group of students from MIT made card counting a part of the everyday vocabulary. Since then the casinos have brought in countless methods to counteract card counters including, multiple decks, shoes, shuffle machines, and speculation has it, complex computer programs to scrutinize actions and detect "cheaters". While not illegal being discovered counting cards will get you blocked from the majority of betting houses in Las Vegas.