02.26
The History of Twenty-One
The card game of chemin de fer was brought to the US in the 19th century but it wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth century that a technique was created to beat the casino in Blackjack. This article is going to take a quick look at the birth of that strategy, Card Counting.
When betting was legalized in Nevada in 1934, twenty-one screamed into universal appeal and was commonly played with 1 or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin wrote a dissertation in ‘56 which explained how to reduce the house advantage built on probability and stats which was really confusing for individuals who were not math experts.
In ‘62, Dr. Ed Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to better the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also created the 1st card counting techniques. Dr. Thorp authored a book called "Beat the Dealer" which illustrated card counting strategies and the practices for reducing the casino edge.
This spawned a huge increase in Blackjack gamblers at the US betting houses who were trying to implement Dr. Thorp’s techniques, much to the confusion of the casinos. The strategy was hard to comprehend and difficult to implement and therefore improved the earnings for the betting houses as more and more people took to betting on black jack.
However this large increase in profits was not to continue as the players became more refined and more insightful and the system was further improved. In the 80’s a group of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made card counting a part of the regular vocabulary. Since then the casinos have introduced numerous measures to counteract card counters including (but not limited to), multiple decks, shoes, shuffle machines, and gossip has itnow complex computer software to analyze body language and detect "cheaters". While not illegal being discovered counting cards will get you barred from many brick and mortar casinos in vegas.