The game of black jack was brought to the United States of America in the 1800’s but it was not until the middle of the 20th century that a technique was developed to beat the house in chemin de fer. This article is going to take a swift look at the birth of that system, Card Counting.
When gambling was approved in Nevada in ‘34, Blackjack sky-rocketed into popularity and was usually gambled on with 1 or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in 1956 which described how to lower the casino edge based on probability and statistics which was quite complicated for people who were not math experts.
In ‘62, Dr. Ed Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to enhance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also developed the 1st tactics for counting cards. Dr. Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which detailed card counting techniques and the practices for reducing the house edge.
This spawned a huge increase in chemin de fer gamblers at the US betting houses who were attempting to put into practice Dr. Thorp’s techniques, much to the amazement of the casinos. The system was hard to comprehend and difficult to carry through and thusly elevated the profits for the betting houses as more and more folks took to playing black jack.
However this huge increase in earnings wasn’t to last as the players became more refined and more aware and the system was further perfected. In the 1980’s a bunch of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made counting cards a part of the day-to-day vernacular. Since then the casinos have introduced numerous methods to thwart card counters including, more than one deck, shoes, shuffle machines, and speculation has it, complex computer programs to scrutinize actions and detect "cheaters". While not prohibited being discovered counting cards will get you blocked from all betting houses in Las Vegas.
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