Blackjack Strategy - Casino Blackjack

Blackjack Strategy - Casino Blackjack

Blackjack is an incredibly popular card game, that is enjoyed by both casino goers and more amateur players within their own homes. It can also be referred to as 'pontoon', 'California Aces' or 'twenty-ones' relating to the winning card hand total. As far as casinos are concerned, Blackjack is commonly considered to be the most popular gambling game. It has been traced back to seventeenth century France, and it was only after the French Revolution that it spread to the United States. The popularity of this game consistently increased, and this was the context for the huge interest of the mathematical and scientific communities of the 1950s; they were very attracted by the task of deciphering the very best game strategies for all variants of the Blackjack game.

Mathematically, Blackjack is far from a simple game, this is why the work of Rodger Baldwin in 1956 was so well received and respected, since he had managed to work out, what is now referred to as the Blackjack 'Basic Strategy'. It is often presented in the form of a table, in which through a relationship between the hand of both the player and the dealer, it could be determined whether the best option of the player would be to 'hit' or 'stand' and thus raise their bets or not. In practice there were understandably some quirks with this theory, but it did considerably enhance the enthusiasm within the fields of science and mathematics, and spur on the quest to find the 'Blackjack Holy Grail'.

It was the work of Professor Edward Thorp in the early sixties that led on to the blackjack strategy that is 'card counting'. Professor Thorp was working on reworking the previous findings relating to Blackjack strategy, when he developed the theory that in essence, card decks have a form of 'memory' and this was the basis for the card counting strategy. Card counting relies on the fact that a player should be able to trace the relationship between their own hand and that of the house or dealer, and thus determine when it is most advantageous to raise their bets. In general it is the higher cards that are more beneficial to the player, since they ultimately mean that the dealer is more likely to go bust, and therefore the player is more likely to win that hand. Of course, the theories of Thorp go into much more detail and complicated explanations and equations relating the relationship of card hands in a Blackjack game. The theory in his book, 'Beat the Dealer', published in 1962 was received incredibly well by the gambling community. In fact, in the opinion of the casino industry, a little too well. It caused an uproar in casinos and gambling establishments across the globe, who believed that the card counting strategy undermined the true notion of 'risk' and 'chance' associated with gambling and betting.

Nonetheless, card counting continues to be a gambling phenomenon even to this day, with some people devoting their entire lives to this blackjack strategy and often turning it into a profession. The most famous of these professional blackjack players is Ken Uston, who was able to make a substantial living from playing blackjack, to the extent that he eventually earned a celebrity status among gambling circles, along with the nickname 'Mr Blackjack'. Card counting is considered to be such a successful blackjack strategy that online card counting lessons and courses are constantly emerging on the internet, encouraging and teaching beginners to the game and the strategy. The card counting concept has also been adapted to most variants of the Blackjack game, including multiple deck blackjack and European blackjack.