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 20th century that a system was created to defeat the house in Blackjack. This article is going to take a rapid look at the creation of that system, Counting Cards.
When betting was legitimized in Nevada in 1934, black jack sky-rocketed into popularity and was most commonly played with 1 or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin published a paper in ‘56 which explained how to lower the casino edge founded on probability and statistics which was really bewildering for people who were not math experts.
In ‘62, Dr. Edward O. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to advance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also created the 1st tactics for counting cards. Dr. Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which summarized card counting strategies and the practices for lowering the house advantage.
This spawned a large growth in black jack competitors at the US betting houses who were trying to implement Dr. Ed Thorp’s techniques, much to the bewilderment of the casinos. The strategy was difficult to understand and hard to implement and thusly increased the earnings for the betting houses as more and more people took to gambling on twenty-one.
However this large increase in earnings wasn’t to continue as the gamblers became more sophisticated and more aware and the system was further refined. In the 80’s a bunch of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made card counting a part of the everyday vocabulary. Since then the casinos have brought in numerous measures to counteract card counters including, more than one deck, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and rumor has itnow complex computer programs to analyze body language and detect "cheaters". While not illegal being discovered counting cards will get you blocked from most if not all brick and mortar casinos in Las Vegas.
January 31st, 2010
Malaki
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