The card game of twenty-one was brought to the US in the 19th century but it wasn’t until the mid 20th century that a system was created to beat the casino in Blackjack. This material is going to take a swift look at the development of that system, Counting Cards.
When casino gambling was legitimized in Nevada in 1934, twenty-one screamed into recognition and was commonly gambled on with one or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin published a dissertation in 1956 which detailed how to lower the house edge based on probability and stats which was really difficult to understand for players who were not math experts.
In 1962, Dr. Ed Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to refine the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also created the 1st card counting techniques. Dr. Thorp wrote a book called "Beat the Dealer" which outlined card counting techniques and the strategies for reducing the casino edge.
This created a large increase in black jack gamblers at the US betting houses who were trying to implement Dr. Thorp’s strategies, much to the bewilderment of the casinos. The system was hard to understand and difficult to carry through and thusly expanded the earnings for the casinos as more and more people took to playing black jack.
However this huge increase in profits wasn’t to continue as the gamblers became more refined and more aware and the system was further improved. In the 80’s a group of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made counting cards a part of the regular vocabulary. Since then the casinos have brought in countless methods to thwart card counters including, multiple decks, shoes, shuffle machines, and speculation has it, complex computer software to analyze actions and identify "cheaters". While not against the law being caught counting cards will get you banned from all brick and mortar casinos in vegas.
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