The card game of Blackjack was introduced to the United States of America in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth century that a strategy was developed to defeat the house in Blackjack. This article is going to grab a swift peak at the birth of that technique, Card Counting.
When wagering was legalized in the state of Nevada in ‘34, black jack sky-rocketed into popularity and was most commonly gambled on with 1 or two decks. Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in 1956 which explained how to reduce the house advantage founded on odds and statistics which was very bewildering for gamblers who weren’t math experts.
In 1962, Dr. Edward O. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to better the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also created the 1st card counting strategies. Dr. Ed Thorp wrote a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which illustrated card counting strategies and the tactics for lowering the casino edge.
This spawned a massive increase in black jack players at the US betting houses who were attempting to implement Dr. Ed Thorp’s techniques, much to the confusion of the casinos. The system was challenging to understand and hard to carry through and thusly elevated the earnings for the betting houses as more and more folks took to gambling on twenty-one.
However this huge increase in profits was not to continue as the gamblers became more highly developed and more educated and the system was further improved. In the 80’s a bunch of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made counting cards a part of the regular vocabulary. Since then the casinos have developed numerous measures 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 barred from many brick and mortar casinos in Las Vegas.