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Maria Jaryi
Statistics 1001
Milton Parnes
12/08/10
Blackjack: The History and Playing The Game
Blackjack is a game that has a long history, and is still played and studied a
great deal. To understand the history and its origins, you first need to understand
how to play the game. Blackjack is a game played with one, two, four, six, or eight
decks of cards. Some casinos use a continuous shuffling machine. In single and
double deck games the dealer holds the cards and deals them out. In multi-deck
games the cards are dealt out of a tray like box that is called a shoe. In hand held
games the cards are dealt face down and the player is allowed to pick up his cards.
In a shoe game the cards are dealt face up to the player and you are not allowed to
touch your cards. The basic play for either game is the same.
The objective of Blackjack is to beat the dealer. If your cards total higher than
the dealer's cards, without going over 21, you win. You are not trying to get close to
21. If your hand or the dealer's hand goes over 21 you "bust. (Werthamer 23)" If you
bust you automatically lose. If the dealer busts and you do not you win, the player
must act first. If the player busts he loses regardless if the dealer busts or not.
The suits of the cards have no affect on the game. Cards from 2 to 10 are
counted at face value without regards to their suit. All face cards, such as king,
queen and joker, have a value of ten. An ace can count as either one or eleven. A
queen and a five would equal 15. An ace and a five would total either 6 or 16. A hand
that does not have an ace is referred to as a hard hand because it has only one
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value. A hand that contains an ace is referred to as a soft hand because the value
can change. If you draw to a soft hand and the three cards total a number where
counting an ace as eleven puts you over 21 then the hand becomes a hard hand.
Heres an example: you are dealt an ace and a three. You have 4 or 14. If you then
draw a ten you now have a hard 14 because if you count the ace as 11 you would
have 25, which would bust you (Werthamer 26).
If you or the dealer is dealt an Ace and a ten-value card, then you have 21,
known as a Blackjack. This is called a natural. If you get the Blackjack you will be
paid 3 to 2 for your bet providing the dealer does not get one at the same time. If
you and the dealer have Blackjack it is a push. If only the dealer has Blackjack, all
players will lose. To take a hit means that you want to draw another card. To
signal the dealer for a hit you will tap the table in front of you or make a beckoning
motion with your hand. If you wish another card after the first you would motion in
the same manner. Once you are satisfied with either your fist two cards or after
hitting, you signal the dealer that you wish to stand. Standing is done by waving
your hand over the top of your cards (Werthamer 31).
When you double down you are doubling your bet after receiving your first
two cards. You then receive only one card on your hand. Most casinos will allow you
to double down on any two cards, which is a rule called DOA. Some casinos limit
your doubling to hands that total ten or eleven. DOA is favorable to the player
(Werthamer 35). To signal that you are doubling down you will place an additional
bet next to your original bet. Most casinos will let you double down for less than
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your original bet providing it meets the table minimum. This is not smart. You only
double in favorable situations and it is to your advantage to double for the
maximum.
If you are dealt two cards of the same rank, also called a pair, you can split
these into two separate hands. You must make an additional bet equal to your
starting bet. You signal the dealer that you are splitting by placing your second bet
next to your first bet in the betting circle. You will now play each hand one at a time.
The dealer will give you a second card to go with the first split card. You will then
decide to hit or stand. After you play out this hand and stand you will move on to the
next split card and the process will be repeated. Some casinos will allow you to
double down on your first two cards after splitting. You would play this as you
would if you were doubling down on your first two cards. This rule is favorable to
the player.
There are a lot of rules in Blackjack, and at first it is difficult to memorize.
Casinos also differ in their own rules of Blackjack. Its not a simple game, as its
already taken me three full pages to explain the game in detail to you. Still, it is a
widely known game played all around the world. Its played in almost every casino,
and with any game, some people wonder, where did it originate? Blackjack started
getting recognized in the 17
th
century.
The French are usually credited for inventing Blackjack. The game "vingt-et-
un" (twenty-and-one) originated in French casinos around 1700 A.D., and migrated
to the United States in the 1800's. Vingt-et-un while sounding similar to Blackjack,
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was actually quite different. The goal was to reach a "natural" with cards totaling 21,
but the cards were dealt in rounds followed by betting on each round. Only the
dealer could double and if he got a natural, the other players would pay him triple
(Kingma 84).
Another game, which may have contributed to Blackjack, as we know it, is the
game "Seven and a Half," which originated from Italy (Kingma 84). This game was
played with only 8's, 9's, 10's and face cards, with face cards counting as the "half".
The King of Diamonds was considered wild. This is said to be the first game where
the player would automatically "bust" if the cards totaled over the preferred
number of seven and a half.
The Spanish game "One and Thirty" had similarities to Blackjack, though the
desired total was 31 rather than 21, and the game was played with 3 cards instead
of 2. Vingt-et-un traveled from Europe to America in the 1800's. The game appeared
in gambling halls in 1910, first reported in Evansville, Indiana. Initially the game
was not very popular and gambling houses tried various bonus payouts to attract
players (Kingma 85).
Blackjack is a unique game that is centuries old, so some historians dont
have a full trace of the game. They believe Blackjack is named so because if a player
got the Jack of Spades and the Ace of Spades as his first two cards, he received one
such bonus payout. The original payout for this Blackjack was 10 to 1. Some houses
recognized both the Jack of Clubs and the Jack of Spades for the 10 to 1 payout.
While a Jack is no longer specifically required and any ten-value card with an Ace
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now makes up a winning hand, the name Blackjack remains as a testimony to the
game's origins. Casinos now traditionally offer a payout of 3 to 2 on a natural
Blackjack, regardless of suit or color. In Russia the game is called "21" or "Ochko"
(The Hole). Other card games similar to Blackjack include Pontoon, which may be
one of the early variations of the game (Kingma 85). California Aces is another
variation, as is Spanish 21.
Another important point in the history of Blackjack was that after the French
Revolution, the game migrated to North America; there it gained much popularity
since no laws prohibited card games during that time. Professional gamblers
understood the huge potential in Blackjack, and soon they developed the Blackjack
basic strategy for improving their winning odds. The game had started to gain
popularity during the beginning of the 19th century, when the government of the US
had banned and outlawed gambling activities. The US government believed that
gambling corrupted society and encouraged organized crime.
With numerous laws against it, Blackjack became an underground game. It
became even more popular as government's restriction tightened around it during
the 20's, and eventually Nevada decided to legalize gambling in 1931 and Las Vegas
was born (Uston 103). The game attracted more and more interest as the years
passed, until science decided to investigate as well.
In 1953 the first attempt to study Blackjack was made by Roger Baldwin and
his associates, a great point in the history of Blackjack as well. In 1956 they
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published their findings in the American Statistical Association under the title
"Optimum Strategy in Blackjack", the first ever blackjack strategy guide (Uston 106).
The next step in this road to understand Blackjack via math and science was
made by Professor Edward O. Thorp. He used Baldwins findings and used new
calculating systems and machines. In 1962 Thorp published his book - "Beat the
Dealer" - in which there was written down the first actual system - the Blackjack
card counting system. "Beat the Dealer" became a huge success and in 1963 it took
the first place of the New York Times' seller list of books (Uston 132). Not only
Thorp's work had impact on Blackjack players and Blackjack's history, but it also hit
the casinos with terror.
Casinos across the US devised plans to reduce the damage and soon after
"Beat the Dealer" was written and published they modified the Blackjack rules.
Thorp's Ten-Count was hard to learn by average Blackjack players, his book was
uneasily read or understood by the public and the main effect it had was raising
Blackjack's popularity up into to the sky. The public of Blackjack players were raged
upon the casinos' new 'bogus' blackjack variations. So the casinos, after realizing
that "Beat the Dealer" was no threat to them, and losing much money on the way,
reinstated the use of the 'traditional' Blackjack. During the 60's, 70's and 80's
Blackjack was the rising star of card games among the casinos (Uston 135).
Most notoriously known for their success with Blackjack was The MIT
Blackjack Team. The members of this team made millions of dollars until 1997 when
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they were banned from the casinos after they were detected (Uston 24). They even
had a movie made about them in 2007, appropriately named 21.
Today Blackjack is a classic game played in the US, Canada, Australia, Europe
and many other places on the globe. Internet Blackjack is growing in popularity
during the last few years, and hopefully Blackjack would continue to be the classic
game it is today.
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Works Cited

Kingma, Sytze. Global Gambling. 1st ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. Print.
Uston, Ken, and Roger Rapoport. The Big Player. 1st ed. New York, NY: Rinehart
and Winston, 1977. Print.
Werthamer, Richard. Risk and Reward: The Science of Casino Blackjack. 1st ed.
New York, NY: Springer, 2009. Print