The casino game of black jack was introduced to the United States of America in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the mid 20th century that a strategy was created to defeat the casino in twenty-one. This article is going to grab a quick peak at the creation of that technique, Card Counting.

When wagering was legitimized in Nevada in ‘34, black jack screamed into universal appeal and was usually played with one or two decks of cards. Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in 1956 which described how to reduce the house advantage based on odds and statistics which was very difficult to understand for those who weren’t math experts.

In ‘62, Dr. Edward O. Thorp utilized an IBM 704 computer to advance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s dissertation and also created the first card counting techniques. Dr. Ed Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which summarized card counting strategies and the practices for lowering the house advantage.

This spawned a huge increase in chemin de fer gamblers at the US betting houses who were trying to implement Dr. Ed Thorp’s tactics, much to the consternation of the casinos. The technique was not easy to understand and hard to put into practice and therefore heightened the earnings for the betting houses as more and more people took to betting on chemin de fer.

However this large growth in earnings was not to continue as the players became more highly developed and more insightful and the system was further improved. In the 1980’s a group of students from MIT made counting cards a part of the everyday vernacular. Since then the casinos have brought in countless measures to counteract players who count cards including (but not limited to), multiple decks, shoes, constant shuffle machines, and rumor has it, complex computer programs to read body language and identify "cheaters". While not against the law being discovered counting cards will get you barred from most brick and mortar casinos in vegas.