The Beginnings of Twenty-One
The casino game of black jack was brought to the United States of America in the 19th century but it wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that a technique was developed to defeat the house in black jack. This article is going to grab a quick look at the creation of that technique, Card Counting.
When casino gambling was made legal in Nevada in 1934, Blackjack screamed into universal appeal and was usually gambled on with one or two decks. Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in 1956 which explained how to lower the house advantage built on probability and statistics which was quite difficult to understand for people who were not math experts.
In ‘62, Dr. Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to advance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also created the 1st tactics for card counting. Dr. Thorp authored a book called "Beat the Dealer" which outlined card counting strategies and the strategies for reducing the house advantage.
This created a massive growth in chemin de fer players at the US betting houses who were trying to implement Dr. Ed Thorp’s techniques, much to the anxiety of the casinos. The strategy was not easy to understand and complicated to implement and thusly expanded the profits for the casinos as more and more people took to playing Blackjack.
However this large growth in profits was not to last as the players became more refined and more cultivated and the system was further improved. In the 80’s a group of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made counting cards a part of the regular vocabulary. Since then the casinos have introduced numerous measures to counteract card counters including but not limited to, multiple decks, shoes, shuffle machines, and speculation has itnow sophisticated computer programs to read actions and identify "cheaters". While not illegal being caught counting cards will get you blocked from most if not all betting houses in vegas.
No comments yet.