The card game of Blackjack was brought to the United States in the 19th century but it wasn’t until the mid 20th century that a technique was developed to defeat the casino in twenty-one. This article is going to grab a swift look at the birth of that system, Counting Cards.
When betting was approved in Nevada in ‘34, twenty-one sky-rocketed into recognition and was commonly gambled on with 1 or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin wrote a dissertation in ‘56 which described how to reduce the casino edge built on probability and performance history which was really bewildering for those who weren’t math experts.
In 1962, Dr. Edward O. Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to advance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also created the 1st card counting tactics. Dr. Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which illustrated card counting strategies and the strategies for reducing the casino edge.
This spawned a huge growth in black jack players at the US casinos who were trying to implement Dr. Thorp’s techniques, much to the bewilderment of the casinos. The system was challenging to understand and hard to put into practice and therefore expanded the earnings for the casinos as more and more people took to playing twenty-one.
However this massive growth in profits wasn’t to continue as the players became more refined and more accomplished and the system was further refined. In the 80’s a group of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made counting cards a part of the day-to-day vocabulary. Since then the casinos have brought in numerous measures to counteract players who count cards including but not limited to, more than one deck, shoes, shuffle machines, and gossip has it, sophisticated computer software to analyze body language and detect "cheaters". While not against the law being caught counting cards will get you blocked from all brick and mortar casinos in sin city.
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