The casino game of chemin de fer was introduced to the United States of America in the 19th century but it wasn’t until the mid twentieth century that a strategy was created to defeat the house in Blackjack. This material is going to grab a quick look at the development of that technique, Card Counting.
When betting was legalized in the state of Nevada in 1934, Blackjack screamed into popularity and was most commonly wagered on with 1 or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin published a dissertation in 1956 which described how to reduce the casino edge founded on odds and statistics which was really complicated for players who were not mathematicians.
In ‘62, Dr. Ed Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to advance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also developed the 1st techniques for counting cards. Dr. Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which detailed card counting techniques and the tactics for reducing the casino edge.
This spawned a large growth in black jack gamblers at the US betting houses who were trying to implement Dr. Thorp’s strategies, much to the consternation of the casinos. The strategy was hard to comprehend and complicated to implement and thusly elevated the earnings for the betting houses as more and more people took to playing chemin de fer.
However this huge growth in profits was not to continue as the players became more refined and more aware and the system was further refined. In the 80’s a group of students from MIT made card counting a part of the everyday vocabulary. Since then the casinos have brought in numerous measures to thwart players who count cards including but not limited to, multiple decks, shoes, shuffle machines, and rumor has it, complex computer programs to read actions and detect "cheaters". While not against the law being caught counting cards will get you banned from many betting houses in sin city.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.