Blackjack

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The game of black jack was introduced to the United States in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the mid twentieth century that a system was created to beat the house in black jack. This material is going to grab a swift peak at the development of that technique, Card Counting.

When betting was authorized in the state of Nevada in 1934, Blackjack sky-rocketed into universal appeal and was most commonly gambled on with one or 2 decks. Roger Baldwin published a dissertation in ‘56 which detailed how to reduce the house edge founded on probability and stats which was quite confusing for players who weren’t mathematicians.

In ‘62, Dr. Edward O. Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to advance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also developed the 1st techniques for card counting. Dr. Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which outlined card counting strategies and the strategies for lowering the house advantage.

This spawned a large growth in twenty-one players at the US betting houses who were attempting to implement Dr. Ed Thorp’s strategies, much to the bewilderment of the casinos. The strategy was challenging to understand and hard to implement and thusly expanded the profits for the betting houses as more and more people took to betting on black jack.

However this massive growth in earnings wasn’t to last as the players became more sophisticated and more insightful and the system was further perfected. In the 1980’s a bunch of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made card counting a part of the regular vernacular. Since then the casinos have brought in countless methods to thwart players who count cards including, multiple decks, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and speculation has it, complex computer programs to observe body language and detect "cheaters". While not illegal being caught counting cards will get you banned from all casinos in vegas.