[ English ]

The game of chemin de fer was introduced to the U.S. in the 1800’s but it wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth century that a system was created to defeat the casino in black jack. This material is going to take a swift peak at the creation of that technique, Counting Cards.

When gambling was made legal in the state of Nevada in ‘34, chemin de fer screamed into recognition and was usually played with one or 2 decks of cards. Roger Baldwin published a dissertation in ‘56 which detailed how to lower the casino advantage founded on probability and statistics which was really bewildering for players who were not math experts.

In ‘62, Dr. Thorp used an IBM 704 computer to enhance the mathematical strategy in Baldwin’s paper and also developed the first techniques for counting cards. Dr. Thorp authored a tome called "Beat the Dealer" which illustrated card counting techniques and the practices for lowering the house advantage.

This spawned a massive increase in Blackjack competitors at the US casinos who were attempting to implement Dr. Ed Thorp’s techniques, much to the amazement of the casinos. The system was hard to comprehend and hard to execute and therefore expanded the profits for the betting houses as more and more folks took to playing black jack.

However this large growth in earnings wasn’t to last as the gamblers became more refined and more aware and the system was further refined. In the 80’s a group of students from MIT made card counting a part of the day-to-day vernacular. Since then the casinos have introduced countless methods to counteract card counters including, more than one deck, shoes, shuffle machines, and gossip has it, complex computer software to observe actions and detect "cheaters". While not illegal being discovered counting cards will get you banned from most casinos in sin city.