The Beginnings of Twenty-One
The card game of black jack was brought to the United States in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth century that a system was created to beat the house in Blackjack. This material is going to take a rapid peak at the birth of that strategy, Card Counting.
When casino gambling was legitimized in Nevada in 1934, twenty-one screamed into universal appeal and was most commonly bet on with 1 or two decks of cards. Roger Baldwin wrote a dissertation in ‘56 which described how to lower the casino edge built on probability and stats which was quite difficult to understand for those who weren’t mathematicians.
In 1962, Dr. Ed Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to better the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also developed the 1st card counting strategies. Dr. Ed Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which summarized card counting techniques and the tactics for reducing the casino edge.
This spawned a huge growth in chemin de fer gamblers at the US casinos who were trying to put into practice Dr. Thorp’s techniques, much to the awe of the casinos. The system was hard to comprehend and complicated to carry through and thusly increased the earnings for the betting houses as more and more folks took to playing Blackjack.
However this huge increase in profits was not to continue as the gamblers became more highly developed and more insightful and the system was further perfected. In the 1980’s a group of students from MIT made counting cards a part of the everyday vernacular. Since then the casinos have developed numerous measures to counteract card counters including (but not limited to), multiple decks, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and rumour has it, sophisticated computer programs to scrutinize actions and detect "cheaters". While not against the law being caught counting cards will get you blocked from most casinos in sin city.