The History of Twenty-One
Sunday, 31. January 2010
The casino game of twenty-one was brought to the US in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the mid twentieth century that a system was created to beat the casino in black jack. This article is going to take a rapid peak at the birth of that strategy, Card Counting.
When betting was authorized in Nevada in 1934, Blackjack sky-rocketed into recognition and was commonly played with one or two decks. Roger Baldwin published a dissertation in 1956 which described how to reduce the house advantage founded on odds and statistics which was quite confusing for those who were not math experts.
In ‘62, Dr. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to enhance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also developed the first card counting tactics. Dr. Ed Thorp wrote a book called "Beat the Dealer" which summarized card counting strategies and the practices for reducing the casino advantage.
This spawned a large growth in Blackjack players at the US betting houses who were attempting to put into practice Dr. Thorp’s techniques, much to the confusion of the casinos. The technique was difficult to understand and complicated to execute and thusly improved the earnings for the betting houses as more and more folks took to playing black jack.
However this huge increase in profits wasn’t to last as the gamblers became more sophisticated and more educated and the system was further improved. In the 1980’s a bunch of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made card counting a part of the day-to-day vocabulary. Since then the casinos have introduced numerous methods to counteract card counters including (but not limited to), multiple decks, shoes, shuffle machines, and speculation has it, complex computer software to analyze body language and detect "cheaters". While not against the law being discovered counting cards will get you barred from all betting houses in sin city.
Posted in Blackjack by Dixie