The History of Black Jack
The card game of Blackjack was brought 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 casino in black jack. This article is going to grab a swift look at the creation of that system, Card Counting.
When casino gambling was authorized in Nevada in ‘34, black jack sky-rocketed into recognition and was most commonly wagered on with one or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin published a paper in ‘56 which detailed how to lower the house advantage founded on probability and stats which was very difficult to understand for those who were not math experts.
In 1962, Dr. Ed Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to better the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also created the first card counting strategies. Dr. Thorp wrote a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which summarized card counting strategies and the strategies for lowering the casino edge.
This created a large increase in twenty-one players at the US betting houses who were trying to implement Dr. Thorp’s techniques, much to the awe of the casinos. The strategy was hard to understand and complicated to implement and therefore increased the earnings for the betting houses as more and more folks took to betting on twenty-one.
However this huge growth in earnings was not to continue as the players became more refined and more aware and the system was further perfected. In the 1980’s a group of students from MIT made card counting a part of the day-to-day vernacular. 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 itnow complex computer programs to analyze actions and identify "cheaters". While not prohibited being discovered counting cards will get you blocked from the majority of casinos in sin city.