The history of Blackjack

Blackjack is the most popular two player gambling game throughout history. Played against the dealer, the game has been played for over 300 years. It has gained popularity both online and in casinos throughout the world.

The origins

The Origins Blackjack was first known as ‘twenty-one’ and is thought to have originated around 1700 in french Casinos. This version of the game spread to Americas through French colonialists and was soon carried throughout the continent.
There's another theory stating it might have been a variant of the spanish ‘one and thirty’, in which the goal was to sum up 31 with three or more cards.
Others say it was probably invented by romans, and altough it is very known they liked gambling a lot, this can not be confirmed either.

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When gambling was legalised in Nevada in 1931, Blackjack was already extremely popular. Many casinos offered their patrons a special bet; a hand featuring either the Jack of Spades or Clubs as well as the Ace of Spades would pay 10 – 1 odds on the lucky players bet.

The Card Counting

Edward O’ Thorp founded the notion of card counting using early computers in his book, ‘Beat the Dealer’ published in 1962. His book was based on single-deck only games and became extremely popular throughout, hitting the New York Times Bestseller list. Everyone tried out card counting and casinos were overwhelmed by the influx of maths aficionados.

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Although many players attempted to card count successfully, many failed. Casinos however, were keen to keep players coming back and attempting to win big. In the early years, computers were also not illegal to use and many people began devising machines that they could hide under their clothing and feed information to through body movements.

Today

Today Blackjack is as popular as ever with people playing it in casinos, in friendly games with their friends as well as through popular blackjack online casino thanks to the Internet. Which have given it a boost with no precedence due to the fact anyone can play it from anywhere, anytime without the need of years of practice as with other games like poker.