The Origin of Blackjack
The game of black jack was brought to the United States of America in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth century that a strategy was developed to beat the house in Blackjack. This article is going to take a swift peak at the development of that technique, Counting Cards.
When betting was made legal in Nevada in ‘34, Blackjack sky-rocketed into recognition and was commonly bet on with 1 or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin wrote a dissertation in ‘56 which detailed how to reduce the casino advantage based on odds and performance history which was quite complicated for individuals who were not math experts.
In ‘62, Dr. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to advance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also developed the 1st card counting strategies. Dr. Thorp wrote a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which outlined card counting strategies and the tactics for reducing the house advantage.
This created a massive growth in Blackjack competitors at the US betting houses who were attempting to implement Dr. Thorp’s techniques, much to the alarm of the casinos. The strategy was difficult to understand and complicated to implement and therefore improved the earnings for the betting houses as more and more people took to gambling on twenty-one.
However this huge growth in profits wasn’t to continue as the gamblers became more refined and more aware and the system was further perfected. In the 80’s a group of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made card counting a part of the regular vernacular. Since then the casinos have developed countless methods to counteract players who count cards including, multiple decks, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and gossip has it, sophisticated computer programs to read actions and identify "cheaters". While not against the law being discovered counting cards will get you blocked from most if not all betting houses in Las Vegas.
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