02.01
The Beginnings of Twenty-One
The card game of black jack was introduced to the United States in the 1800’s but it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that a strategy was developed to beat the casino in chemin de fer. This material is going to grab a rapid look at the birth of that technique, Counting Cards.
When betting was approved in Nevada in 1934, Blackjack screamed into recognition and was commonly bet on with 1 or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin wrote a dissertation in ‘56 which described how to lower the house advantage based on odds and statistics which was very bewildering for those who weren’t mathematicians.
In 1962, Dr. Edward O. Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to advance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also created the 1st tactics for card counting. Dr. Ed Thorp authored a book called "Beat the Dealer" which detailed card counting techniques and the tactics for reducing the house edge.
This created a huge growth in black jack gamblers at the US betting houses who were attempting to put into practice Dr. Ed Thorp’s tactics, much to the amazement of the casinos. The system was hard to understand and hard to put into practice and thusly elevated the profits for the casinos as more and more people took to gambling on twenty-one.
However this large growth in earnings wasn’t to last as the gamblers became more refined and more cultivated and the system was further perfected. In the 80’s a bunch of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made card counting a part of the everyday vocabulary. Since then the casinos have developed numerous methods to counteract players who count cards including (but not limited to), multiple decks, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and rumor has it, sophisticated computer software to observe actions and identify "cheaters". While not prohibited being discovered counting cards will get you barred from most brick and mortar casinos in sin city.
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