The Origin of Twenty-One
The game of chemin de fer was brought to the U.S. in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the mid 20th century that a strategy was developed to beat the casino in chemin de fer. This material is going to take a swift peak at the creation of that technique, Counting Cards.
When casino gambling was authorized in the state of Nevada in 1934, twenty-one screamed into recognition and was most commonly wagered on with one or two decks of cards. Roger Baldwin wrote a dissertation in 1956 which described how to lower the house advantage built on probability and performance history which was quite difficult to understand for those who were not mathematicians.
In ‘62, Dr. Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to enhance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also created the 1st card counting techniques. Dr. Thorp authored a book called "Beat the Dealer" which detailed card counting strategies and the strategies for lowering the house advantage.
This created a large growth in black jack competitors at the US casinos who were trying to implement Dr. Ed Thorp’s techniques, much to the awe of the casinos. The technique was not easy to understand and hard to execute and thusly improved the profits for the betting houses as more and more folks took to wagering on twenty-one.
However this massive growth in earnings was not to continue as the players became more sophisticated and more aware and the system was further perfected. In the 1980’s a bunch of students from MIT made counting cards a part of the day-to-day vernacular. Since then the casinos have introduced numerous measures to thwart players who count cards including (but not limited to), more than one deck, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and gossip has it, sophisticated computer programs to observe actions and detect "cheaters". While not against the law being discovered counting cards will get you blocked from many brick and mortar casinos in vegas.
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