Blackjack History Many scholars have traced the origin of the game of blackjack to a very similar game played in France in the 1700s. The French games of chemin de fer and ferme have been cited as the games that spawned blackjack. Other have noted that the French game of vingt et un (twenty and one) was a more likely origin of the game of blackjack. The name “blackjack” has been attributed to a type of bet (no longer practiced) that paid 10 to 1 if the jack of spades and ace of spades (both black, of course) were the first cards received by a player. The game soon found its way to the American west in the 1800s and gained much popularity throughout the century. When gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931, blackjack became a central attraction of every casino. A major change to the game of blackjack and the operation of casinos came with the application of mathematics to the analysis of the game. Mathematics was used to analyze game odds and players found they could play practically even odds with the house. The book that started it all was “Beat the Dealer” by Dr. Edward Thorp. It quickly became a best seller and blackjack became the most popular table game in every casino in the United States during the 1960s. The media attention was great for the casino operators who made tons of money from influx of blackjack players and the increasing popularity of the game. The casinos soon realized that “Beat the Dealer” had actually showed people how to play and beat casinos at their own game. This caused many casinos to change the rules to make it even harder to win. Casino attendance dropped dramatically. People left the casinos in protest and casinos found they were losing more now than before the change to table game rules. The casinos decided to return to the original rules in an effort to bring back patrons who had left in protest. Some of the changes made by casinos in the 60s remain today. The introduction of multiple decks, shuffling machine and frequent shuffling continue to give casinos an edge over players today. The casinos edge was restored mainly as a result of these changes and the fact that many of the methods described in books like “Beat the Dealer” were quite difficult to master. The next assault on the casinos advantage came in the 1970s and was led by a man called Ken Uston. Uston and his team of high tech gamblers used hidden computers to help them win piles of cash from casinos. The FBI looked into what Uston and his team were doing and found that his devices were not cheating devices and were legal. The use of multi-decks discouraged Uston methods being tried by others. Uston was banned from casinos in Vegas and died in 1987. Another high tech attempt to beat the casinos came in the 1990s when a group of MIT students won millions from casino all over the U.S. They used a sophisticated combination of computer analysis, card counting and intensive training in mock casinos to consistently win at the blackjack tables. The story of the MIT Blackjack Team was the subject of the book “Bringing Down the House” by Ben Mezrich in 2002. Look for a new movie produced by Kevin Spacey in 2005.

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