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The History of Blackjack

Blackjack is currently one of the most popular Casino card games, played in homes and casinos alike. There are many different variants of this game, some using multiple card deck rules, such as Las Vegas blackjack, or others with different scoring or betting systems. However in general, the game has been traced back to seventeenth century France, in the French casinos where it was known as 'vingt-et-un', which means twenty-one and responds to the card value goal of the blackjack player; to near but never exceed the sum of twenty-one However the name 'Blackjack' which is recognized today came about because during the earliest American gaming period, if the player produced a 'Jack' picture card and the Ace of Spades as their first two cards, then they would be paid out extra from the wager. These bonus payouts were used to encourage people into the casinos and around the Blackjack tables, because at the very beginning, once gambling was legalised in America. Therefore, with the jack card and the ace of spades being black, the name 'Blackjack' evolved.

It was after the French Revolution that the game began to spread across continents and eventually reached American shores. It spread into the illegal casinos, since between the 1850s and early 1900s gambling was outlawed, and so Blackjack was pushed, along with the entire gambling scene, underground. It was during this period of blackjack history that the semi-circular blackjack gaming table evolved. However, in 1931 gambling was once again legalised in the state of Nevada, and so Blackjack experienced a boom, along with the entire gambling industry. Yet, Blackjack became by far one of the most popular card casino games; the name Blackjack stuck even though the bonus payouts were soon deleted. However, on the other side of the Atlantic, British Blackjack remained an illegal activity, since gambling remained illegal in the United Kingdom until the 1960s. However, it still remained an incredibly popular game, particularly amongst the more affluent and wealthy sections of British society, who had sufficient disposable income to fund the gambling and betting past times. This is the period during which notorious aristocratic such as John Aspinall flourished, hosting gambling and blackjack parties for the wealthy members of British society.

It was during the 1950s that the challenge to find the 'Blackjack Holy Grail' began; mathematicians and gambling experts were struggling to find the solution to the Blackjack game, which was actually an incredibly complex game mathematically. It was Rodger Baldwin, who in 1956 first succeeded. He wrote a paper on 'The Optimum Strategy of Blackjack'. Tracing the relationship between the hand of the dealer and the player now forms the basis of the 'card counting' strategy of Blackjack and this theory was developed from the works of Professor Edwin Thorp who investigated the theory that a deck of cards has a form of 'memory', and that in tracing this memory of the cards, the player should be able to determine whether to raise their bets or not. Thorp had refined the earlier works of Baldwin, and soon earned himself the nickname 'The Einstein of Blackjack'. He published his findings in a book called 'Beat the Dealer' and this book remained at the top of the New York bestsellers list for a week in 1963. Of course this was very much to the detriment of the casinos, since it made it more possible for the players to secure a win. The gambling industry responded by introducing new rules and restrictions that made it much more difficult for the player to win and apply Thorp's strategy.