Blackjack
has evolved out of other French games such as “chemin de fer”
and “French Ferme”. Blackjack originated in French casinos
around the 1700's where it was called “vingt-et-un” (twenty-and-one)
and has been in United States since the 1800's.
Naming of Blackjack
The game was christened 'Blackjack' because if
a player held a Jack of Spades and an Ace of Spades as the
first two cards, the player was paid out extra. So with
Spades being black and Jack being a vital card - Blackjack
was born!
Gambling becomes Legal
Gambling was legal out West from the 1850's to
1910, at which time Nevada made it a felony to operate a
gambling game. In 1931, Nevada re-legalized casino gambling
where BlackJack became one of the primary games of chance
offered to gamblers. As some of you may recall, 1978 was
the year casino gambling was legalized in Atlantic City
, New Jersey . As of 1989, only two states had legalized
casino gambling. Since then, about 20 states have had a
number of small time casinos sprout up in places such as
Black Hawk and Cripple Creek , Colorado and in river boats
on the Mississippi . Roughly 70 Native American Indian reservations
operate or are building casinos as well.
In addition to the United States , countries operating
casinos include France , England , Monaco ( Monte Carlo
of course) and quite a few in the Caribbean islands.
Blackjack strategy
The first recognized effort to apply mathematics
to BlackJack began in 1953 and culminated in 1956 with a
published paper. Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in the Journal
of the American Statistical Association titled "The
Optimum Strategy in BlackJack". These pioneers used
calculators and probability and statistics theory to substantially
reduce the house advantage. Although the title of their
paper was 'optimum strategy', it wasn't really the best
strategy because they really needed a computer to refine
their system.
In 1962 Professor Edward O. Thorp refined their basic strategy
and developed the first card counting techniques. He published
his results in "Beat the Dealer", a book that
became so popular that for a week in 1963 it was on the
New York Times best seller list. The book also scared the
hell out of the casinos.
Another major contributor in the history of winning BlackJack
play is Julian Braun, who worked at IBM. His thousands of
lines of computer code and hours of BlackJack simulation
on IBM mainframes resulted in The Basic Strategy, and a
number of card counting techniques. His conclusions were
used in a 2nd edition of Beat the Dealer, and later in Lawrence
Revere's 1977 book "Playing BlackJack as a Business".
Ken Uston used five computers that were built into the
shoes of members of his playing team in 1977. They won over
a hundred thousand dollars in a very short time but one
of the computers was confiscated and sent to the FBI. The
feds decided that the computer used public information on
BlackJack playing and was not a cheating device. Ken helped
lead a successful legal challenge to prevent Atlantic City
casinos from barring card counters.
