The Blackjack Revolution

17 October 2024

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: Blackjack has been the most popular table game in the casinos since the mid-1960s after Edward O. Thorp’s book, “Beat the Dealer,” was published. In that book Thorp explained his method for counting cards and beating the casinos.

ABBY: Thorp ushered in the blackjack revolution where players began to realize that the game could be beaten. Could most of the players who were flocking to blackjack beat the game?

CINDY: No. They couldn’t. But they thought they could and many learned a form of basic strategy to help them play their hands correctly – or almost correctly. This wave of blackjack players became the foot soldiers that made blackjack the number one game in the casinos.

ABBY: Replacing craps, which was the ultimate World War II game that ruled the casinos until blackjack dethroned it. And craps has stayed dethroned all these years later. It is still the number two game, I think, but it no longer rules supreme.

CINDY: In fact, blackjack can be beaten by card counters. In those early days of Thorp’s success, the blackjack games were single decks and the dealers dealt almost every card. The card counting system that Thorp advocated was not an easy one to memorize and execute in the casino but the casinos tended to panic.

ABBY: Oh, yeah, the casinos started using multiple decks (now six, eight, and infinite with continuous automatic shufflers). They changed some of the rules too and how deeply the dealers dealt into the group of remaining cards.

CINDY: Dealers started to hit soft 17 too. If you don’t know the lingo, a soft 17 is an ace-6. If dealers hit that hand it gives them a higher edge over the player. The old rule was that the dealers stayed on all 17s.

ABBY: But card counting became easier too as new theorists came up with simpler card counting systems. These could work on the new multiple-deck games and they were a lot easier to learn. In fact, new basic strategies were developed for just about every blackjack game the casinos introduced.

CINDY: And casinos have also introduced games that sort of related to traditional blackjack like Spanish 21, and many brought in continuous automatic shufflers that would just play until they broke – and then another continuous shuffler would be brought in. This certainly put the basic strategy player in a deeper hole than ever before.

ABBY: After all the blackjack revolution of the 1960s, how many blackjack players can actually count the cards in today’s games?

CINDY: In a given casino on a given day maybe a couple will give it a shot.

ABBY: Are they successful?

CINDY: I don’t know. I really don’t. The casinos do seem to think they are, that’s for sure. But in truth I have no idea. It may just give the bosses something to do; you know, look for the dreaded card counters.

ABBY: So, what is card counting? Should we do a column on that?

CINDY: Maybe next week.

ABBY: Okay. Next week it is!