The card game of Blackjack was introduced to the U.S. in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the mid twentieth century that a strategy was created to beat the casino in chemin de fer. This material is going to grab a rapid look at the development of that system, Counting Cards.
When casino gambling was legitimized in the state of Nevada in 1934, black jack sky-rocketed into popularity and was commonly played with 1 or 2 decks. Roger Baldwin wrote a dissertation in 1956 which explained how to lower the casino advantage founded on probability and statistics which was very difficult to understand for those who weren’t math experts.
In ‘62, Dr. Ed Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to refine the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also developed the first strategies for card counting. Dr. Ed Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which summarized card counting strategies and the practices for reducing the casino edge.
This spawned a huge increase in black jack players at the US betting houses who were attempting to implement Dr. Ed Thorp’s techniques, much to the anxiety of the casinos. The system was difficult to comprehend and complicated to put into practice and therefore expanded the earnings for the betting houses as more and more people took to playing black jack.
However this massive increase in profits was not to continue as the gamblers became more refined and more aware and the system was further refined. In the 80’s a bunch of students from MIT made counting cards a part of the regular vernacular. Since then the casinos have introduced countless methods to thwart players who count cards including but not limited to, more than one deck, shoes, shuffle machines, and gossip has itnow sophisticated computer software to read body language and identify "cheaters". While not against the law being caught counting cards will get you banned from most betting houses in vegas.
