The card game of chemin de fer was introduced to the US in the 19th century but it was not until the mid 20th century that a strategy was created to beat the casino in twenty-one. This material is going to take a swift look at the birth of that technique, Card Counting.
When casino gambling was legalized in the state of Nevada in 1934, black jack screamed into universal appeal and was commonly gambled on with 1 or two decks. Roger Baldwin published a paper in ‘56 which detailed how to reduce the casino edge based on odds and statistics which was very complicated for people who weren’t mathematicians.
In 1962, Dr. Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to refine the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also developed the first strategies for counting cards. Dr. Ed Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which outlined card counting techniques and the practices for lowering the casino advantage.
This created a large increase in Blackjack players at the US betting houses who were attempting to put into practice Dr. Ed Thorp’s tactics, much to the anxiety of the casinos. The strategy was hard to comprehend and complicated to implement and therefore improved the earnings for the betting houses as more and more folks took to playing twenty-one.
However this huge increase in earnings wasn’t to continue as the gamblers became more highly developed and more educated and the system was further refined. In the 1980’s a group of students from MIT made counting cards a part of the day-to-day vernacular. Since then the casinos have brought in countless measures to thwart players who count cards including but not limited to, more than one deck, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and rumour has itnow complex computer software to observe actions and identify "cheaters". While not against the law being discovered counting cards will get you barred from the majority of brick and mortar casinos in sin city.