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A short history of blackjack from the French game vingt-et-un to the modern day online blackjack sites. Find out more about online blackjack from this article. The original game of blackjack was created in the 17th, in France and was initially called “vingt-et-un” (twenty-one in French). The original French version of blackjack required the player to draw a jack of spades followed by an ace of spades in order to win. This is where the term blackjack originates from, describing the essence of the game.

The French revolution has imported blackjack to the United States where it quickly became highly popular in casinos and gambling houses. Because blackjack involved both luck and skills to win the game was very popular among professional gamblers and serious players. But with the 1910 ban on gambling, the game was outlawed and forced to go underground. During this period blackjack was associated with mobsters and criminals.

The seemingly simple rules of blackjack have made it very popular and lead to numerous winning strategies and techniques to be developed. There were numerous books written about it over the years and many movies used blackjack as the basis for their plot. Today, blackjack is found in casinos all over the world and with the commercialization of the Internet numerous online blackjack sites offer playing the game right at your computer.

During the early 70th, Dr. Keith Taft began developing the first blackjack computer, and by 1972, Keith had started using a computer in the Nevada casinos to play “perfect” blackjack. His first computer weighed fifteen pounds. He went on to develop dozens of concealable computers and other electronic devices over the next two decades, ever smaller and more powerful. By the mid-’70s, Keith and his son, Marty, had met Al Francesco, and they would be putting together teams of players using computers to beat the blackjack tables.

In the toe of each shoe there were two “switches”, or buttons - one above each big toe and one beneath - for a total of four switches. The computer itself was about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but thinner. By using a series of toe taps, kind of like Morse code, the player could relay to the computer everything it needed to know in order to make a decision in a blackjack game.

This computer communicated its decisions to the player with buzzes and taps on the sole of the player’s foot. It was not easy to use one of these devices. It took weeks or even months of practice to get to the point where you could use the device at casino-dealing speed without foot cramps stopping you. It essentially entailed learning to “type” with your big toes. Even once you had memorized the codes, inputting them via the toe switches was a chore.

According to Richard Epstein’s Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic, Academic Press, 1977, blackjack became popular during World War I, and was called “black-jack” from the practice of paying a bonus to a player who held an ace of spades with a jack of spades or clubs. John Scarne, puts the year when this curious rule first appeared at 1912, when twenty-one tables appeared in horse-betting parlors in Evanston, Illinois. I believe Epstein’s information is taken from Scarne, and Scarne states that he discovered the origins of blackjack in America as a result of his private discussions with old-time gamblers, not from any published texts that can be looked up today.

That curious bonus payout that gave blackjack its name, however, has long since disappeared. There may be some casino somewhere that pays a small bonus if a player is dealt a natural 21 which includes a jack of spades or clubs, but that is no longer a normal rule of the game. Today, a blackjack is simply any initial two cards that consist of an ace and any ten-valued card.

I am skeptical of much of what Scarne has written about blackjack, so I’ll quote from Mickey MacDougall’s MacDougall on Dice and Cards (Coward-McCann, 1944, NY), which was published prior to any of Scarne’s books: “Many professionals dress up the game by giving prizes for certain hands. A favorite stunt is to offer ten times the size of the wager to anyone holding a natural twenty-one with a black jack. This adds interest to the game, but it also tempts a player to increase his stakes.”

Thorp also included a Simple Point Count in this new edition of his book, but at the time that strategy seemed way too simple to most players to gain much of an edge, or to be taken seriously by players who wanted to beat the game. Later, the power of Thorp’s simpler method of adjusting the running count, without keeping a separate count of the exact number of cards played, would be shown.

Still, the casino’s fears were mostly unfounded. The Complete Point Count was easier to use than the ten-count, but it was not a lot easier. It required players to keep two separate counts. In addition to the running count of the cards’ point total, the player had to keep a count of the exact number of cards remaining to be played. And in order to play his hand, he had to memorize a chart of 158 different strategy changes to be made according to the count.

Resorts International opened in Atlantic City, the first legal East Coast casino in the twentieth century. Their four- and six-deck blackjack games offered a new form of surrender. This rule gave basic strategy players a small edge over the house right off the top, without any card counting whatsoever! And the advantage to card counters was even greater. From opening day, card counters had a field day at Resorts’ tables. And, ironically, Resorts International was soon the most profitable casino in history, winning an average of $650,000 per day.

A team of professional blackjack players whose founders were from Czechoslovakia that had been playing in Las Vegas flew all of their members to Atlantic City to take advantage of this new surrender rule. This team, which later became known in the casino industry as simply the Czech Team, found the Resorts’ game to their liking and stayed for months.

Indeed, it was a combination of that easy-to-beat early surrender game and Ken Uston’s The Big Player that had just been published in 1977 that worked together to create an environment where new teams of smart young kids could make millions playing blackjack.
It was also in 1978 that the first MIT blackjack team was started. This team actually consisted of students from MIT, Harvard, and other East Coast colleges. Johnny C.j now a legendary player who joined the team in 1981, plays high-stakes blackjack to this day and continues organizing teams of professional players. The Czechs, the Hyland teams, and the MIT teams would be the scourge of the casino industry for decades to come. Many believe these teams owe their existence to the Resorts’ game with its early surrender rule that made the game so easy to beat. College kids found that they could pool their money, play blackjack with a modicum of intelligence, and get rich quick.

People often get seduced by the idea of something for almost nothing. That is why they often drop a coin or two into a slot machine as they walk into a real land-based casino. The myths are “out there”. Lightning can always strike you. There are real stories to back up the myths so, perhaps, it is always worth dropping a coin or two just on the off-chance…

Now we must all stay calm. These players are the exception that makes the rule that everyone who plays the slots ends up a loser. Ren and Klaus have joined a fairly exclusive band of players that have “hit the big time”. For the record, Klaus was the thirteenth player to become an instant millionaire on this particular online progressive (let no-one say that thirteen is always an unlucky number). But, by any standards, a win of more than $5m is fairly impressive. It brings the total winnings since the system came online to $27m.

One of the major companies in the casino games industry is Playtech. In WinAJackpot.com, they have produced the first progressive network to link online, mobile and real-world jackpots. The network has just made a jackpot payout of slightly less than US$2.5m.

When you do start looking at the facts, the online casino games industry is maturing fast. As millions more players on cross-platforms start to play, the progressive jackpots will rise more quickly. There will be more big payouts. You see that when your luck is in, you can suddenly find yourself rich for a small stake. When I was younger, cinemas used to run movies back-to-back in a rolling program through the day. You could go in and watch the cycle through as many times as you wanted. So this is where I came in when I started writing this article. People are fascinated by the prospect that, for a small outlay, they might hit it big. Subject to that, it never hurts to drop a coin or two into one of the online casino games. You never know, today might be your lucky day when fantasy does become reality and changes your life.

That last sentence puts the win in its proper context. There were twelve previous winners of more than $1m plus the latest win. That makes $17.7 as a minimum or less than $10m paid out to all the other jackpot winners over the last few years. The win of $5.5m is one of the largest the online industry has seen. It took months for the progressive to build up to that level. It took millions of “pulls”. There were an uncountable number of players who did not win.

Indian casinos are becoming more and more wide-spread so it’s worth a word about their poker machines. In the Indian Gaming Act of 1988, the Federal Government classified three types of game:
- social gambling that’s not for profit;
- games that don’t rely on a House bank such as bingo and lotto;
- the traditional casino style of gambling games including slots and video poker machines.

The headlines say that these machines don’t have a fixed hold percentage. All the machines are linked to a central piece of software that plays bingo games among all you players. Whether you win or lose is decided by the virtual ball the software “picks”. Each game ends when a “winning” pattern in the game is achieved. It’s all very ingenious and, using this technology, the manufacturers of the games claim that the payouts are identical to the third class of game. Just one ending thought: if the class two and three games are identical in the way they play, how come this is not illegal?

To run the third class, the tribe has to negotiate a compact with the local State Government and, to be fair, many have done this. But some decided that regulation was not for them. To get around the legislation, they devised electronic bingo games that look and feel like slots and video poker machines. If nobody told you, you wouldn’t know you were not playing a Vegas style of machine. Except that, once you lift the lid, the insides are very different.

Some people think that slots are a game that you need control over; a game that only allows the best players to win. Those people, though, would be wrong. Slots are a game that offers the ultimate in the “trying your luck” experience. You could literally be anyone, walking around, with nothing to do. You could also have nothing in your pocket but some spare change. Chances are you could find yourself spending that change in a slot machine, trying your luck. If your slots machine is made with a horseshoe on its side, you’ll be able to make a great profit this day. When you play slots, you are giving away total control to the fates. And if you are lucky, you can have a life-changing experience. The same simply cannot be said about other casino games. You should have a sense of the game and some skill about the ways the games are played. The options for slots have grown and are now endless. You can play slots online and try your hand at luck from the comfort of your own home. Don’t mistake luck for dumb-luck, though. Now you are ready to play your best at slots slots around at the right places. Slots online is one of the places where you can find the games best suited for your skill level and your lucky day!

You can easily know that you’ve made a great casino player: you want to see your pockets lined with cash but you don’t mind it so much if you walk away with thinner pockets. It’s all about fun, but you definitely have paid your dues and practiced enough to know how the online casino games are played. You’ve experienced all of the sides of the casino. You know when to double-down and you know when to walk away from the table. Now, the stakes are higher because you’re done playing free slots. You want the progressive slots and you want to win the big jackpot. When you’re done with that you are ready to move onto the “bog boy” table, playing for real money and playing for keeps at online blackjack and online poker. But wait! Don’t you work hard every day to get your money? You simply can’t allow yourself to stay in casino longer than it is possible. How do you remedy this? Easy. Online casinos are real, virtual reality worlds in which you can win real cold hard cash. Start playing online slots and winning now.

Stanford University came out with Professional Blackjack.

The counting system Wong published was the Hi-Lo Count, and like Revere’s count, used the easy divide-by-remaining-deck(s) approach to running count adjustments. This book was the next big advance for card counters. Wong described his playing style, which included table-hopping shoe games to avoid playing at negative counts. As four-deck shoes were the most widely available games in Las Vegas by that time, this original approach was brilliant. The casinos looked for card counters by watching for their betting spreads. It had never occurred to the casinos that a counter might be watching a table from the aisles, waiting for an advantageous count before jumping in to bet.So, at last, some twelve years after Harvey Dubner had proposed the Hi-Lo count values, his system was available in a format both fully optimized with strategy indices, and presented with a simple methodology of play. Wong’s table-hopping approach to shoe games was in many ways similar to Al Francesco’s BP team approach, but allowed a solo card counter to attack shoe games invisibly, and without a team of spotters. This playing style has since become widely known as wonging.

Playing casino games for real money. It sounds really good! I guess when I was starting out, the illegal kind was always more exciting until you got to know everyone then it was down to a routine. After that, going to a real casino had the edge.

I suppose some of the motivation for regulation is the sense that online gaming is not regulated. Go into any real world casino, and you should always be “safe” except from your own gambling habit, of course. There are security cameras everywhere making sure no-one is going to cheat you. Regulators check the slots to make sure they are all working properly. Once you are online, there are no external eyes looking after you. You have to protect yourself. Except you do not know who the company is behind the online casino.

But just because of the overheads for running an online casino are significantly less than the real paying salaries to all those countless people is not required, the online payout schedules are more generous. Online predators can afford to return more of the stake money to the players and still make a good profit. This means you get better odds on the slots and at the roulette table than you would in the real world. But even more importantly, once you are online, you can switch games at the click of a mouse. You no longer have to wait on other players or croupiers. There is always another game ready to play. Because you do not have people looking over your shoulder (and judging you), you have more freedom to learn new games or try out different strategies without people getting impatient with you. And finally, you can get free money. In the real world, you can get drinks, food and, sometimes, accommodation comped. Online, the only thing the casino can give you is a credit of money.

Another explanation for the US Government’s action is protectionism that too many online dollars means less profit for the real world gaming establishments in the US.

So why should anyone want to play online? All you have are a few animated versions of the casino games that lack any sense of physical involvement. Worse, some of the games just are not the same. For example, thanks to the random number generator, counting the cards in online blackjack is a waste of time.

So does that mean online gaming is a “good thing”? The only thing wrong with it is that it is too easy to play. There you are at home or sitting in a hot spot with your wifi laptop and there is no-one to tap you on the shoulder to warn you that you are riding a losing streak into bankruptcy. But, so long as you have your gambling under control, you say when, where and how long you play. What can be better than that?