Blackjack Counting Card Strategy- A Brief History on a Mathematical Trick

Did you know that the popular trick called blackjack counting card has been around for a few decades? Enthusiasts and serious blackjack players wanting to score a fortune in casinos have been using the strategy for years.  The game of blackjack may be straightforward, where the players and the dealer aspire to score a 12 or at least near that number. The initial arrangement is that players get two cards, but they will be given the chance to add more in the hope of scoring a 21. If the dealer (casino) holds a lower hand or goes over 21 and your cards add up to 21 or close to it, you win in the game. The counting and comparison are easy to do, but predicting the values of the cards in the deck and making the appropriate wagering decision is the difficult part. This is where hi lo card counting comes into the picture, a system design and inspired by a UCLA Professor Edwards O. Thorp.

From a Scientific Paper to the Blackjack Tables

It all started in 1956 when Thorp read a statistics paper published in a journal. Inspired by the thesis of the paper, Thorp immediately initiated an inquiry on blackjack patterns. He later initiated a scheme that is now familiar to many players who want to learn to count cards. What he did was to examine the cards from a deck and come up with a system that can determine the remaining variations after some hands have been played. The idea behind the system is that if you are tracking the cards that have been dealt, then you can make a guess if the remaining card values will be favorable to you or the dealer (casino). With this system, he later published a book called ‘Beat the Dealer’ in 1962, now the must-own for those learning how to count cards.
Many consider this seminal book as a complex take on blackjack counting card strategy. The system may be complex and hard to understand, but there’s no denying the fact that this is an original system that inspired many to study blackjack in the hope of beating the dealer.




Further Reading:

1. Blackjack Counting Card at CardCountingTrainer.com
2. 3 Ways to Count Cards at WikiHow.com