History of Blackjack

All card games have exceptional history that goes down the centuries beyond the days of history itself, alas not all the time can researchers and historians discover a game full trace. The history of blackjack eludes scholars till now.

The first roots of blackjack are commonly agreed to appear in the 17th century in France. In French casinos a game that called Vingt En Un was played. Vingt-en-Un is "twenty one" in French, that obviously was not the first blackjack ancestor, but it is obvious that blackjack did originate from it, though the rules of blackjack don’t resemble it in all aspects.

Vingt en Un was very like blackjack, with few slight differences: only the dealer was permitted to double and the betting way was following: you used to have to bet after each round, that is not similar to modern blackjack. But Vingt-eb-Un's aim was to reach a 'natural' or a total of twenty one by using blackjack's hand ranking system as in the traditional and other blackjack variants. The English name blackjack originated from a Vingt en Un special feature, which was a special payout when someone had got a hand of a Jack and an Ace of spades, hence the name Black Jack, the ideal hand of Vingt en Un.

In Italy a game Seven and a Half was played at that time. In this card game played with face cards and the 7's, 8's and 9's ones, your purpose was to reach a hand of seven and a half points. Face cards were valued half a point while regular ones (7's, 8's and 9's) valued as one point. The King of Diamonds like a Joker could substitute any card, and basically it was a wild card. If participants exceeded seven and a half points they were "busted" then. The term "bust" of blackjack is supposed to derive from "Seven and a Half".

After the French Revolution the game migrated to North America. It was another strong point of turn in the blackjack history. It gained a lot of popularity since there were not any laws that prohibited card games then. Professional gamblers realized the huge potential, and soon they developed the basic strategy of blackjack in order to improve their winning odds. The game had begun gaining popularity in the early 19th century as the US government had banned and outlawed gambling. The US government supposed that gambling activities encouraged organized crime and corrupted society.

And so, with many laws against blackjack and Federal Marshals on its tail, the game became an underground game. It gained even more popularity as government's restriction tightened around the game during the 1920's, and finally Nevada made a decision to legalize gambling in 1931 and Las Vegas appeared. As the years passed blackjack attracted more and more interest, till science also had decided to investigate it.

The first attempt to study the game was made in 1953 by Roger Baldwin and his colleagues. This was also a big turn in the history of blackjack. They used statistics theory and calculations for reducing blackjack's house edge. Their findings were published in the American Statistical Association in 1956 under the title "Optimum Strategy in Blackjack", the first ever strategy guide of blackjack.

But Baldwin and his associates used the tools that were not as sophisticated as needed for fully investigation of blackjack's statistics. The following step to understand blackjack via mathematics and science was made by Professor Edward O. Thorp who polished their findings using new calculating systems and machines. The book "Beat the Dealer" was published by Thorp in 1962. There the first actual system, the blackjack card counting system was written down.

This was a huge success and it took the first place of the seller list of books of the New York Times in 1963. Not only "Beat the Dealer" had impulse on blackjack players and blackjack's history, but it hit the casinos with terror as well. All the casinos across the USA contrived plans to reduce the damage and soon after Thorp’s work was published they modified the rules of blackjack.

It was hard for average blackjack players to learn Thorp's Ten-Count, his book was difficult to read or understand for the public and the major effect that it had was raising the popularity of blackjack up into the sky. The blackjack public was raged upon the new 'bogus' blackjack variations of casinos. When the casinos realized that Thorp's "Beat the Dealer" did not threaten them, they reinstated the 'traditional' blackjack. Throughout the 60's, 70's and 80's blackjack was the card rising star among the casinos.

Another great contributor to blackjack was Julian Braun, an IBM employee, studied blackjack with a simulator. His work was put in the "Beat the Dealer" second edition. Another contributor, Lawrence Revere published "Playing Blackjack as a Business". It encouraged thousands of blackjack players.

Ken Uston, the hero of blackjack, had a great role in blackjack's history as well because he inspired millions in his books "Ken Uston on Blackjack", "Million Dollar Blackjack" and "The Big Player". Ken Uston and his associates used computers inserted to their shoes, and they made thousands of dollars every month by using them whilst playing blackjack at casinos in Nevada.

Ken Uston was not the last who used such methods and in the 1990's the casino halls were hit by another group of players, The MIT Blackjack Team who used card counting techniques. They made millions of US dollars till 1997 when The MIT Blackjack Team was banned from the casinos after the Griffin Investigation, a private detectives company that identify card counters and secure casinos worldwide from gamblers who cheat, detected them.

These days blackjack is a classic game that is played in Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and many other places in the world. Online blackjack is raising the popularity during the last few years, and hopefully it’d continue to be the classic game.

Hot news