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The game of chemin de fer was introduced to the US in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that a system was developed to defeat the house in twenty-one. This article is going to take a swift look at the birth of that strategy, Counting Cards.

When wagering was legitimized in the state of Nevada in 1934, black jack sky-rocketed into popularity and was commonly gambled on with one or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in ‘56 which described how to lower the casino advantage founded on probability and statistics which was quite complicated for players who weren’t math experts.

In 1962, Dr. Edward O. Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to refine the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also developed the 1st card counting techniques. Dr. Ed Thorp wrote a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which outlined card counting strategies and the tactics for lowering the casino advantage.

This created a huge increase in Blackjack competitors at the US betting houses who were attempting to put into practice Dr. Thorp’s techniques, much to the alarm of the casinos. The strategy was hard to comprehend and difficult to implement and thusly elevated the earnings for the casinos as more and more people took to gambling on twenty-one.

However this huge growth in profits 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 regular vocabulary. Since then the casinos have brought in countless methods to counteract card counters including but not limited to, more than one deck, shoes, shuffle machines, and speculation has itnow sophisticated computer software to scrutinize actions and identify "cheaters". While not prohibited being discovered counting cards will get you blocked from many casinos in sin city.

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