Blackjack History

HISTORY OF BLACKJACK
Blackjack is one of the most popular casino games in the world and is played and loved by many. The game is also known as twenty one or ‘vingt-et-un’ in French and is believed to have been introduced into the French casinos around 1700.

‘Blackjack’
When the game of twenty one was initially introduced into the U.S, it wasn’t very popular. To improve the interest surrounding the game, additional bonuses in the form of money was given to lure players to play the game. One such bonus was the one given when a blackjack (either a jack of spades or a jack of clubs) and an ace of spades were the first 2 cards that were received. This bonus became well known and the name of the entire game was soon associated with it, though bonuses were later abolished.
Roger Baldwin published a paper in 1956 titled ‘The optimum strategy in blackjack’ in the journal of the American Statistical association that was the first ever known use of mathematics and statistics in the game of blackjack. He showed methods of reducing the advantage of the casinos to zero.
In 1962, Edward O. Thorp modified the basic strategy offered by Baldwin that began to be used extensively for card counting. His book ‘Beat the Dealer’ published in 1963 was a huge sensation and resulted in the casinos changing the rules of the game to make it more difficult for the players. Automatic card shufflers and multiple deck blackjack began to make the game more difficult for the players.
Other important contributors to understanding the game include, Stanford Wong who wrote the book ‘professional blackjack’ that used computer assistance to teach blackjack strategy to novices as well as the experts. Julian Brown, a computer wizard with IBM, programmed many codes for the IBM mainframe systems that would simulate blackjack strategy. He also developed basic strategy as well as for card counting that were published in the 2nd edition of ‘Beat the Dealer’
This details the history of Blackjack that has spread to be one of the most keenly played casino games.