When the majority of the population enters a casino nowadays, they get the picture of a mere game of math and chance. Playing blackjack is much more than a recreational activity or even a means of winning (or losing) money. It is a historical object that codes centuries of probability theory, American frontier sociology, psychology of exiled emperors, and an intractable technological arms race.
The game that we see today did not just emerge in Las Vegas. It began with its roots that go back to the literary creations of the Spanish Golden Age, the gold miners of the Klondike Gold Rush, and the military base of Maryland. This is the entire historiography of the game: a procession of a 17th-century Spanish parlor game into the big business of the modern world.
The Literary Genesis: How Cervantes Wrote the Rules
The history of most casino games is shrouded by the mists of folklore, but the predecessor of blackjack has a clear literary birth certificate. Astonishingly, the earliest distinct mention of the game appears in the prose of the author of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes.
In his novella Rinconete y Cortadillo of 1601, Cervantes gives an eloquent picture of the underworld of Seville. The narration is of two young tramps who are not mere beggars, but good card cheaters. Their game of choice? Veintiuna (Twenty-One).
The technical precision with which Cervantes has done it is mind-blowing to historians. Through his characters, he established the two pillars that still define the experience of playing blackjack today:
- The Objective: Adding up the cards to a total of twenty-one, without busting.
- The Ace: Cervantes makes the point very clear that the Ace may be rated as one or eleven.
This flexible valuation of the Ace is the family genetic trait of blackjack. Although there were other European games such as Trente-un (Thirty-One), Quinze (Fifteen), and so on, veintiuna was the only game of its kind in Europe. The characters of the tale played at a Spanish baraja- a deck of 48 cards without eights and nines. This short deck, in fact, concentrated more ten-value cards and left the player with the upper hand, which the modern advantage player would dream of. It demonstrates that the fundamentals of the game were standardized more than 400 years ago by street hustlers.
The Imperial Exile: Napoleon’s Game of Solace
This game came to France, where it was renamed Vingt-et-Un. It was adopted by the French Royal Court; however, its most renowned player was a man who had lost it all, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon was sent to the deserted island of St. Helena in the Atlantic and exiled after his defeat at Waterloo in 1815. The former Emperor lost his title and authority and resorted to Vingt-et-Un to spend the long, windy days at Longwood House. An interesting psychological fact about Napoleon was revealed by historical accounts by the people around him: he was a notorious cheat.
He would peek at dealer cards, hide cards in his sleeves, and miscount totals. When caught, he laughed it off. To Napoleon, the card table was a simulation of the agency he had lost. In St. Helena, he had nothing to control; at the Vingt-et-Un table, he could make success. Interestingly, he usually gave all his winnings at the end of the night, which showed that he played to dominate and not to make profits.
The version of the game that was played at Longwood House was slightly different from the one played nowadays. Players bet following the viewing of their initial card, and the dealer usually prevailed in all the ties. However, it was this version that would eventually be taken to the American land of the French colonists to the cultural center of New Orleans, and pre-condition the Americanized form of the game.
The Frontier and the “Blackjack” Etymology Myth
Vingt-et-Un changed as it went west on the riverboats of the Mississippi and into the saloon culture of the Wild West. Eleanor Dumont, a unique female professional gambler who came into Nevada City during the Gold Rush, was one of the most important representatives of this period. Later to be known as Madame Moustache, due to a peculiar tuft of black hair on her lip, she started a gambling parlor specifically called Vingt-et-Un, and provided a civilization to the otherwise uncivilized mining camps.
However, the biggest question of this period is still: Why is it Blackjack?
When you play blackjack and enquire a dealer about the name, they will probably inform you about the standard myth: that casinos were giving a 10 to 1 bonus on a hand of an Ace of Spades with a Jack of Spades or Clubs (a Black Jack). Although this tale is a nice one, history indicates that it is a lie. The era practically has no print advertisements or rule books to confirm this particular bonus.
Its actual source is probably in the geology of the Klondike Gold Rush (1896-1899). Era miners were constantly in search of Sphalerite, or Zincblende, a dark, heavy mineral common in the vicinity of gold and silver. This mineral was named by prospectors as Blackjack.
Finding a vein of “Blackjack” meant you were close to striking it rich. The transference of the word was metaphoric. When prospectors sat down in saloons to play Vingt-et-Un and fell on the top hand (an Ace and a 10), it seemed like falling upon a vein of Sphalerite. It was a “Blackjack”—a stroke of supreme luck. The word is used in print in 1899, which was precisely the year of the gold rush, implying that the game is named after a rock, rather than a card.
The Mathematical Revolution: Solving the Unsolvable
For around 350 years, playing blackjack was viewed as something based on intuition and superstition. Gamers had faith in hot dealers and lucky seats. This was altered in 1953 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
U.S. Army engineers Roger Baldwin, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel, and James McDermott came up with the insight that the dealer has no free will (they have to hit 16 and stand on 17), hence the game is mathematically deterministic. Without modern computers, they worked with standard desk calculators to enumerate the combinatorial analysis of each possible hand by hand.
They released the Optimum Strategy in Blackjack in 1956, which would be the first accurate Basic Strategy in the world. They demonstrated that with the help of stringent rules, a player could lower the house edge to a few percent. They had figured out how to tie the house.
Enter Edward Thorp
The house was beaten by an MIT professor by the name Edward Thorp. In 1962, with the help of an IBM 704 mainframe, Thorp studied what occurs when you remove cards from the deck. He found out that low cards (2-6) favour the dealer, and high cards (10s and Aces) favour the player.
Thorp then discovered that by following the proportion of high to low cards, one could know when the deck happened to be favorable to the player. This gave birth to card counting. His book Beat the Dealer resulted in hysteria never seen before. Las Vegas casinos were allowed to alter the rules overnight on April 1, 1964, to limit splitting and payouts. The outcry was so extreme that the casinos were compelled to revert to the old rules, but the battle between the house and the advantage player had really started.
The Technological Arms Race
Thorp had to use a mainframe in a lab, but others attempted to move computers to the pit. Keith Taft, a religious Baptist teacher of physics, invented the first wearable black jack computer, George, in 1972.
At 15 pounds and secured to his midsection, “George” was operated by switches in the shoes of Taft. He would use his toes to enter the values of the card, and the computer would indicate the optimal decision through lights in a pair of glasses. Taft later came up with a more lightweight version, David, and even miniature cameras that fit inside the belt buckles in order to peek into the hole card of the dealer.
The inventions by Taft put the legal system into evolution. Nevada enacted a law in 1985 that created a felony offence to use electronic gadgets to foresee the results of games. This, however, just pushed the players to sharpen their human skills.
Industrialized Warfare: The MIT Team
When casinos improved at identifying individual counters, players responded through team formation. The concept of the Big Player was invented by Al Francesco, who was a supposed Godfather of Blackjack. Spotters in this system sat at their table playing minimum bets and counted cards without their notice. When the count was hot, they would call the notice of the so-called Big Player, and he would fly in and bet to the limit.
The MIT Blackjack Team industrialized this technique. They ran like a hedge fund, and they raised funds through investors and trained students in high tricks such as shuffle tracking. They demonstrated that blackjack could be a business with a predictable Return on Investment, as long as you had enough cash to survive the fluctuations.
The Modern Era: 6:5 Payouts and the End of the Golden Age
In 2011, the game experienced perhaps its last, biggest victory of house vs. player through the courtesy of Don Johnson. Johnson, a company officer, not a mathematician, got more than 15 million dollars at Atlantic City casinos without adding up a card.
He took advantage of the desperation of the casinos after the recession of 2008. Johnson had negotiated a 20 per cent rebate on all losses that were over $500,000 to entrap the casino’s mathematically. He also dramatically reversed the house advantage by playing high volatility and quitting whenever he reached the win target or loss rebate trigger. The casinos were subsidizing his losses, creating a “risk-free” zone that Johnson mined for millions.
The Casino Counter-Attack
The industry has reacted to the times of Thorp, Taft, and Johnson with brute force. The environment of playing blackjack has changed drastically today in many ways to the disadvantage of the casual player.
Two major changes signal the degradation of the game:
- Continuous Shuffling Machines (CSMs): These machines can randomize discards on each hand, making it mathematically impossible to enumerate cards.
- The 6:5 Payout: This is the most pernicious change. Conventionally, a blackjack (Ace + 10) paid 3:2. On a $100 bet, you won $150. Most contemporary tables currently pay 6:5, that is, the same $100 bet gives only a $120 win.
This rule modification alone puts the house advantage at about 1.4 per cent, a disaster of an increase in a game whose house advantage normally ranges at less than 0.5 per cent. It turns blackjack from a fair gamble to a high-margin extraction device that is indistinguishable from a slot machine.