Blackjack History

In the United States, gambling was legal in the West from the 1850s to 1910, where Nevada passed a law making it a felony to operate a gambling game. It reversed itself almost twenty years later, in 1931, where it legalized casino gambling once more. Blackjack then became one of the best games of chance offered to gamblers.

Because of its growing popularity, people began applying statistics and mathematical methods in the hopes of gaining even a slight edge over the gambling casinos. The first such known effort was in 1956, where Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in the Journal of the American Statistical Association. He and his partners used probability theory to raise the odds in their favor. In 1962, Professor Edward O. Thorp refined Baldwin's strategy and became the first to develop card counting techniques. He published his results five years later in his book “Beat the Dealer”, which became so popular it stayed a week on the New York Times bestseller list.

The casinos were determined not to let go of their house advantage even after publication of books like Thorp's, so they decided to change the rules of the game to make it even more difficult for players to win. As it was, it didn't last very long, as the people protested by not patronizing the casinos. When they started losing cash, they quickly went back to the old rules. It mattered, though, that Thorp's “Ten-Count” method was hard to understand and even more difficult to master.

Julian Braun is another such person who decided to use computer code in making the Blackjack odds run to his favor. Hours of Blackjack simulation at IBM, where he worked, ended in a basic strategy and card counting techniques. His conclusions were also used in a 2 nd edition of Thorp's “Beat the Dealer”. A set of moves known as “basic strategy” was developed and modified over the years by experts.

Blackjack is a game with simple rules to understand. A player's main objective is to beat the dealer by either accumulating a higher score than the dealer without going over 21, or hang on to a lower score and hope that the dealer goes over. All face cards are given a 10 value, while an ace is worth either a 1 or 11, depending on the player. The highest hand is a blackjack or natural, a two-card hand that totals 21. A player's hand can't be beat unless the dealer also has a blackjack, which is then called a push or tie. Three or more cards totaling 21 do not beat out a natural 21.