Blackjack History

Card games may be a byproduct of paper money. It seems that in 900 A.D. in China people began to shuffle paper money in all types of combinations. This eventually led to card games, and nowadays card games in China are still referred to as "paper tickets".

The 52 cards deck has been introduced by the French around 1600. This type of deck has been later adopted by the English and the Americans.

The first records of gambling date as far as 2300 B.C. in China of course. Gambling was very popular in ancient Greece also, but it wasn't legal.

Modern blackjack is derived from French games such as "chemin de fer" or "French Ferme". We can date blackjack as far as the 1700's when it was played in French casinos under the name of "vingt et un". In the U.S. it has been played since the 1800's. The name blackjack comes from the card combination of an Ace of Spades and a Jack of Spades. This was the best hand a player could get and paid the highest ratio.

Gambling was legal between 1850 until 1910. This is when gambling became a felony and it was illegal to own or operate a gambling game. This didn't last too long. In 1931 gambling became legal again in Nevada and one of the most popular games played was blackjack. Atlantic City and New Jersey also legalized gambling in 1978. Ever since approximately 20 states across America have embraced gambling and casinos have opened in those states. Gambling is also legal on Native American reservations. There are approximately 100 casinos on Native American reservations across America.

Do not think that you can gamble only in America. There are casinos in countries like France, England, Monaco and even in the Caribbean Islands.

The first mathematician that thought about applying his knowledge to blackjack was Roger Baldwin in 1956. With the help of calculators, probability and statistics theories he managed to develop a method that considerably increased the player's advantage. He published his findings in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, under the title "The Optimum Strategy in Blackjack". This was far from "optimum", it still needed refining, but it was the best of its day.

Professor Edward O. Thorp took Baldwin's work one step further. He refined Baldwin's technique and also took an interest to card counting strategies. He published his findings in his book "Beat the Dealer", in 1963. The book was an instant success and it even featured on the pages of the New York Times as a best seller.

The casinos in retaliation to "Beat the Dealer" changed the rules of Blackjack. They made it harder to win at blackjack, but these harder rules meant that fewer people played the game. This resulted in a loss of profits for the casinos. They decided to change the rules back as nobody would play according to the new rules. They even made a profit when people came back to the table hoping to win according to Thorp's instructions. The game was now more popular than ever, but Thorp's "ten count" method was difficult to learn and people more likely lost that won since they didn't understand much of these rules.

The most computer inclined contributors to blackjack strategy must be Julian Braun. He used thousands of lines of code and hours of simulation on IBM mainframes and came up with basic strategy and some card counting techniques. His findings were published in "Beat the Dealer", the second edition. In 1977 Lawrence Revere also used Braun's findings when he published his book "Playing Blackjack as a Business".

In 1977 Ken Uston built five computers that fit into the shoes of his team mates. They managed to win over a hundred thousand dollars but the casinos eventually caught up to them. The casinos confiscated one of those computers and sent them to the F.B.I to be analyzed. The F.B.I. concluded that because the computers used public information about blackjack they are not considered cheating devices. In 1981 Ken appeared on Sixty Minutes and led a legal campaign to prevent card counters from being barred from casinos.

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