Black Jack Articles
Blackjack history
Blackjack's ancient history is difficult to trace just like poker. Most sources claim the game evolved from French games, like "chemin de fer", "vignte et un and "French ferme." Others claim that Spanish "One and Thirty"; and Italian "Baccara" and "Seven and a Half" all have some similarity to modern Blackjack. Most experts agree that the rules of vingt-et-un or twenty-one have the closest similarity to the modern game of Blackjack.
Blackjack originally got its name from an early bet which paid 10 to 1 if the player's first two cards were a jack of spades and an ace of spades, both black suites. Blackjack's popularity spread to the United States in the 1800's.
From the1850's to 1910, gambling was legal in the Western part of the United States. After 1910 until 1931, gambling was illegal. Nevada legalized casino gambling in 1931 and Blackjack became very popular. The most common type of Blackjack game was played with one or two decks.
Until around the mid 1950's, it was believed that the house had the edge in Blackjack because the player played first.
In 1956 however, a paper was published by Baldwin, Cantey, Maisel, and McDermott in the "Journal of the American Statistical Association". In this publication, the men laid out a set of recommendations for the play of the game. These recommendations were very close to today's basic card counting strategy. The following year, they published a manual for the public with this system of play, but it attracted little interest. The tone was so scholarly, that it was difficult for anyone who was not a mathematician to understand.
When Edward Thorp, a Mathematics Professor at New Mexico State University saw the paper he understood that the composition of the deck changed with each card dealt. This meant that some combinations of the remaining cards favored the house and others favored the players.
In 1962, Edward Thorp published "Beat the Dealer", which contained the simple yet profound message that decks of cards have memory. Each hand is dependent on the makeup of the deck at that time and by paying attention to the cards already played, the player can predict with some amount of reliability what will appear in the deck next. Dr. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computation Center to create a statistical analysis called the Monte Carlo simulation and discovered that 10's and Aces remaining in the deck put the player at an advantage, while 5's and 6's being left in the deck put the dealer at an advantage. Thus, card counting was born.
In 1963, "Beat the Dealer" spent one week on the New York Times bestseller list.
Another important contributor to modern Blackjack strategy was Julian Braun. Mr. Braun was the IBM employee who improved Dr. Thorp's code and ran simulations on IBM mainframes. His updated strategies and card counting techniques were included in the second edition of "Beat the Dealer" and numerous later books.
If the player could keep track of the cards left in the deck, they could decide how to bet on each hand. For example, if there are many 10's and aces left they would be smart to bet high, and if there are lots of fives and sixes left they might want to bet low.
Due to the popularity of Dr. Thorp's book, there was a huge increase in the amount of Blackjack players at casinos trying to implement this strategy. This caused some consternation among casinos. Many casinos changed their Blackjack rules fearing losses from people using Thorp's system. This caused a notable backlash among Blackjack players and a huge drop-off in the amount of people playing Blackjack. The casinos relented, and changed their rules back. Thorp's book ended up making money for casinos, as it increased the amount of Blackjack being played. His system, however, was hard for many players to implement and understand reliably.
Blackjack is more popular today than it was in the 1800's. The work by Thorp, Braun and others transformed Blackjack from a little-played game stuck in the corner of most casinos into the most popular casino and online casino table game in the US today. This is mainly because it is very easy to learn and play, and with some concentration, it is possible for a player to improve his/her odds.
