Blackjack is the most popular table game played at the casinos. The game originated in the French casinos around 1700 where it was called “vingt-et-un” (“twenty-and-one”). The game has been played in the United States since the 1800’s and the name of blackjack was adopted because if you got a Jack of spades and an Ace of Spades on the first two cards the player was additionally remunerated.
In the Western states of the US gambling was legal from the 1850’s through 1910, at which time Nevada made it a felony to operate a gambling game. In 1931 Nevada legalized casino gambling and Blackjack became the primary game of the casinos. In 1978 Atlantic City, New Jersey legalized casinos and since then many states have legalized river boat gambling.
Blackjack can be applied to mathematical models and the first effort was in 1956 when Roger Baldwin published a paper in the Journal of the American Statistical Association entitled “The Optimum Strategy in Blackjack”. Professor Edward O. Thorp in 1962 refined the basic strategy and developed the first card counting system. Thorp published his results in a book that became so popular that in 1963 it was on the New York Times best-seller list “Beat the Dealer”. Because of this book the casinos changed the rules of blackjack to give them better odds than they previously had. The major rule change was to increase the number of decks in the deal. Most casinos changed from one deck to six decks. This made it harder for the player to count the cards and gave the casino better odds. When the casino used one deck you only had to keep track of four cards (four aces, 16 face cards and so on). With six decks it gets a little harder to count the cards (24 aces, 96 face cards), but it still can be done. Don’t let the dealer know that you are counting the cards or they will throw you out of the casino.
Over the next few years many books were published devoted to winning at blackjack, in fact some of the books provided enough information to allow the reader to live off the profits of their efforts, publications such as Lawrence Revere’s “Playing Blackjack as a Business” and Stanley Robert’s “Winning Blackjack”. With the publishing of these “how to” books blackjack began to compete with craps as the most popular casino game in the state of Nevada.
A legend of the computer age and a winning system to beat the casinos was Ken Uston, who used five computers that were built into the shoes of members of his playing team in 1977. The team won over a hundred thousand dollars in a very short time. One of the computers was confiscated and sent to the FBI. The FBI experts concluded that the computer used public information on Blackjack playing and was not a cheating device. Uston and his group were barred from many Las Vegas casinos. Unfortunately Uston was found dead in a rented apartment in Paris in 1987, the cause of death remains undetermined.
Another group that took Vegas for millions was a group from MIT. They practiced counting cards and knew exactly when to play and when not to. They got caught by the casinos and were barred from ever playing again.
Playing blackjack at an online casino is a little different. First you are playing against a computer that shuffles the cards at every deal even though they are playing with only one deck. Your chances are better at winning online than playing with six decks at a casino.
|
