The game of Blackjack was brought to the United States of America in the 19th century but it wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth century that a strategy was developed to beat the house in Blackjack. This material is going to grab a quick peak at the development of that strategy, Card Counting.
When wagering was legalized in the state of Nevada in ‘34, twenty-one screamed into recognition and was commonly played with 1 or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin published a dissertation in ‘56 which explained how to lower the casino advantage built on probability and stats which was quite confusing for gamblers who were not math experts.
In ‘62, Dr. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to refine the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also developed the first strategies for counting cards. Dr. Ed Thorp wrote a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which summarized card counting techniques and the practices for reducing the casino advantage.
This created a huge increase in chemin de fer gamblers at the US betting houses who were attempting to implement Dr. Thorp’s strategies, much to the awe of the casinos. The system was hard to comprehend and hard to put into practice and therefore heightened the earnings for the betting houses as more and more people took to wagering on chemin de fer.
However this massive increase in earnings wasn’t to continue as the players became more sophisticated and more insightful 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 everyday vocabulary. Since then the casinos have introduced countless measures to counteract players who count cards including but not limited to, more than one deck, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and rumor has it, complex computer programs to analyze actions and detect "cheaters". While not illegal being discovered counting cards will get you banned from many casinos in Las Vegas.
