The game of twenty-one was brought to the U.S. in the 1800’s but it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that a system was developed to beat the house in Blackjack. This article is going to take a quick look at the creation of that technique, Counting Cards.
When casino gambling was authorized in the state of Nevada in ‘34, chemin de fer screamed into popularity and was usually wagered on with one or 2 decks. Roger Baldwin wrote a dissertation in ‘56 which detailed how to reduce the house advantage based on odds and statistics which was really bewildering for people who weren’t mathematicians.
In 1962, Dr. Ed Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to better the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also created the first card counting techniques. Dr. Ed Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which summarized card counting techniques and the tactics for lowering the house edge.
This created a large increase in black jack players at the US betting houses who were trying to put into practice Dr. Thorp’s techniques, much to the consternation of the casinos. The system was challenging to understand and difficult to execute and thusly increased the profits for the casinos as more and more people took to playing Blackjack.
However this huge increase in profits was not to continue as the players became more refined and more aware and the system was further improved. In the 1980’s a group of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made counting cards a part of the everyday vocabulary. Since then the casinos have brought in countless methods to thwart card counters including, more than one deck, shoes, shuffle machines, and gossip has itnow complex computer programs to read body language and identify "cheaters". While not prohibited being discovered counting cards will get you banned from the majority of betting houses in Las Vegas.