The Beginnings of Twenty-One
The game of twenty-one was brought to the United States in the 1800’s but it was not until the mid 20th century that a system was developed to defeat the casino in chemin de fer. This article is going to take a quick look at the birth of that strategy, Counting Cards.
When gambling was legitimized in Nevada in 1934, chemin de fer sky-rocketed into recognition and was commonly wagered on with one or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin published a dissertation in ‘56 which explained how to lower the house edge based on odds and performance history which was really complicated for those who weren’t math experts.
In ‘62, Dr. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to advance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also created the first strategies for card counting. Dr. Thorp authored a book called "Beat the Dealer" which outlined card counting techniques and the practices for lowering the casino advantage.
This spawned a large growth in chemin de fer gamblers at the US casinos who were trying to implement Dr. Ed Thorp’s strategies, much to the bewilderment of the casinos. The strategy was challenging to comprehend and difficult to implement and thusly elevated the earnings for the casinos as more and more folks took to gambling on twenty-one.
However this large increase in earnings wasn’t to continue as the players became more refined and more educated and the system was further improved. In the 1980’s a bunch of students from MIT made counting cards a part of the regular vocabulary. Since then the casinos have introduced countless measures to counteract card counters including but not limited to, multiple decks, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and gossip has it, sophisticated computer programs to observe actions and detect "cheaters". While not prohibited being discovered counting cards will get you blocked from many betting houses in vegas.
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