Blackjack History

history of blackjack

The origin of the card game called Blackjack is still argued but it was possibly a derivative of French games like "French Ferme", and "Chemin de Fer". It was in French casinos where blackjack originated back in 1700. It was known as the "Vingt-Et-Un" meaning twenty-one.

Since 1800's this game is played in U.S. The name given to this game is apt because if any player gets an Ace and Jack of Spades since the initial two cards then he was additionally rewarded. During 1850 to 1910, gambling was lawful in the West. At this instance, Nevada made this game a criminal act. Then again, in 1931, it was re-legalized and it developed into a main game of luck that was offered to the gamblers.

The first attempt to win

The first ever effort of applying mathematics to the game of blackjack started in 1953 and this reached to its peak in 1956. Roger Baldwin has written about a strategy of playing blackjack in the periodical of American Statistical Association. He along with other pioneers utilized calculators, statistics, and probability theory to minimize the house edge substantially. The tile of the paper published was 'optimum strategy' and this strategy was not the bets strategy, as it required computer to process their system.

Techniques appearance

The point where Baldwin and his company left off, Prof. Edward O. Thorp took it up from there. Thorp refined the basic strategy of the game and then developed the very fist technique of card counting. He brought out his result in the book "Beat the Dealer", which came on the bestseller list of New York Times. This scared the casinos and so they started to alter the regulations of this game, making blackjack even harder to win. However, it did not last long because people objected and did not play the latest version. As a result, casinos suffered a great loss of profits. When they were losing cash, they swiftly slipped back to the earlier rules. The method of "Ten-Count" as per Beat the Dealer is not easy to learn and is still very difficult to find.

Julian Braun is another main provider in the account of triumphing Blackjack. He developed many computer codes and spend hours of blackjack mock-up and gave out The Basic Strategy plus other card counting techniques. All his results were utilized in Beat the Dealer's second publication. Last but not the least, Ken Uston is another mastermind who used computers assembled into the sneakers of his team members and won thousands of dollars. However, the FBI decided that those computers utilized open information on blackjack and so cannot be taken as cheating.