The card game of Blackjack was brought to the United States in the 1800’s but it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that a system was developed to beat the house in black jack. This material is going to grab a quick look at the development of that technique, Counting Cards.
When casino gambling was made legal in the state of Nevada in ‘34, Blackjack sky-rocketed into recognition and was most commonly played with 1 or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in 1956 which explained how to lower the house edge founded on odds and stats which was very confusing for players who weren’t mathematicians.
In ‘62, Dr. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to refine the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also created the 1st tactics for counting cards. Dr. Thorp authored a book called "Beat the Dealer" which illustrated card counting strategies and the practices for reducing the casino edge.
This spawned a large growth in black jack players at the US casinos who were trying to put into practice Dr. Thorp’s strategies, much to the anxiety of the casinos. The technique was hard to comprehend and complicated to carry through and thusly elevated the profits for the casinos as more and more people took to playing twenty-one.
However this large growth in profits wasn’t to last as the gamblers became more refined and more aware and the system was further refined. In the 80’s a group of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made counting cards a part of the day-to-day vocabulary. Since then the casinos have brought in countless methods to thwart card counters including, more than one deck, shoes, shuffle machines, and gossip has it, complex computer software to observe body language and detect "cheaters". While not illegal being discovered counting cards will get you blocked from many brick and mortar casinos in Las Vegas.