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Blackjack History
| More on Blackjack |
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| Blackjack Beginner’s Guide |
| How to Play Blackjack |
| Basic Blackjack Strategy Chart |
| Blackjack Strategies |
| Blackjack Glossary |
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This popular casino game dates back a few centuries and its roots are believed to have stemmed from the French game “Chemin de Fer” and the likes in the 1700′s. The Blackjack card game many believe, evolved in French casinos and was called “Vingt-en-un”, which literally means twenty one. As the game increased in popularity, it spread to the United States most likely with French colonists and began being played in the 19th Century.
In order to make the game more popular, American gaming rooms gave a special incentive to players for an ace/jack of spades – blackjack. This was deemed as favoring the player too much and so the incentives were dropped, but the name stuck. At that time gambling was legal in the Wild West of the U.S. until 1910, but less than ten years later illegal gambling halls across the country were thriving and Blackjack was being played. Finally in 1931, Nevada saw the lucrative side of gambling and forgot about morality and re-legalized casino gambling, where blackjack quickly became one of the most popular.
In other countries gambling also began to grow in popularity and started operating casinos namely in England, France, and a number of islands in the Caribbean. Then in 1956 a book appeared on the market which applied mathematics to the game of Blackjack and the first strategy was born. The book which was entitled, ‘Playing Blackjack to Win’, used probability and statistics theory to increase the odds for the player. However, in 1962 a book which almost changed the existence of blackjack was published, called ‘Beat the Dealer’. With the use of computer simulation, he demonstrated how card tracking and changing one’s bets could lead to beating the house. In fact, it was so popular that it even spent one week on the best seller list of the New York Times. However, its popularity and the counting technique which it taught brought about some very player-unfriendly changes to the rules of blackjack in order to make it more difficult for players to win.
The effect of this book actually ended up increasing casino profits of blackjack as it became the most popular and profitable table game to play in the 1960′s, ’70′s and even 80′s. Blackjack was a game that was beatable and many wanted to prove that they too could beat the system, even if they had not read the book, or understood the strategy presented by Thorpe.
Today casinos keep making amendments to the blackjack game, such as adding the number of decks or shuffling more often, in order for the right balance to exist so that the rules still give the house that winning edge. The game continues to succeed in its popularity and can be found in almost every respectable casino, land-based or online.
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