He expected to be addressing a meager audience of academics. He wore disguises as his fame spread, but casinos took countermeasures once it became clear that blackjack card counting could hurt them. These sometimes involved violence or, as Thorp maintains, druggings.
Once the mobsters were gone and public corporations took over the industry, the countermeasures became more dignified, and more effective. Thorp presently turned his attention to roulette. Working with the mathematician and information theorist Claude Shannon, he developed a computer that could predict roulette outcomes based on the speed of the wheel and the bouncing ball. In Nevada, where systems such as card counting that depend on brainpower are lawful, electronic devices are not.
Using his blackjack winnings as seed capital, Thorp began to dabble in stock investing. Gamblers and investors share the same psychological makeup, he reckoned, so after immersing himself in books about securities analysis and market trends, he plunged … and lost. The market, however, was amenable to careful mathematical analysis. By , Thorp was a millionaire with a hilltop home in Newport and a new red Porsche.
He developed a formula for trading stock options that prefigured the work of Fischer Black and Myron Scholes , which became the foundation of the public options markets. Rudolph Giuliani and convicted, though their convictions were later overturned. Fast-forward to The reason for this is that cards that were used in previous rounds did not get shuffled back into the deck but were removed from play and will not be available in the next round.
For example if a 10 card was dealt during the last round, there is now one less 10 card in the deck which affects the odds. There were many gamblers before Thorpe that came to a similar realization but none of them was ever able to turn their knowledge into a system that takes advantage of this phenomenon in a practical way that will aid the player to win. Thorpe, who was also an amateur blackjack player, knew that high cards favor the player and low cards favor the dealer and if he would be able to track which cards have been played and removed from the deck, he would be able to work out which cards remain in play.
If there are many high cards left in the deck then the player has an advantage over the dealer and should raise their bets according to how much of an advantage they have. He based his blackjack game theory on the Kelly Criterion which is a formula for calculating the optimal bet size for a series of bets. In addition Thorpe developed a card counting technique that was described in great detail in his book Beat the Dealer.
As card counters became more sophisticated so did the casinos. In recent years most casinos started using special software that measures betting patterns and can alert the casino if a player is showing signs of card counting.
Due to the fact that casinos are private businesses, they have the right to refuse service to anyone they choose to. Casinos were initially scared by the influx of gamblers filling their blackjack tables.
They feared that card counters would win huge profits off them. Gambling venues began changing rules, harassing suspected counters, and introducing new games to help thin out the blackjack tables. While knowing a counting system can help, it only works when a gambler is skilled enough to keep up with the count. The end result is that blackjack became far more popular and gambling establishments still made money, despite the larger number of people counting. The main value of Beat the Dealer was introducing the Ten Count system.
This was the first strategy that players could use to gain a true edge in blackjack. The Ten Count gives successful players an advantage in single deck games, which were common in the s and before.
But you can see an example of how it works in practice:. Instead, you simply increase your wagers towards the end of the deck when the count is positive.
The death knell for the Ten Count today, though, is that the vast majority of blackjack games feature multiple decks. This single deck tables that do exist today have poor rules in comparison to the games Thorp played. However, you need favorable rules in order to gain an advantage with this system. Blackjack players have evolved card counting strategy in order to counteract the multi-deck shoes and unfavorable rules that are present today. Both the Hi-Lo and Knockout are easy systems to learn while still being accurate enough to help you win money.
Each of these systems has the same goal of helping you spot opportunities when the deck has more aces and value cards. Aces and value cards improve your chances of getting a natural blackjack and gaining an edge on dealers. The Hi-Lo system involves tracking low, neutral, and high groups of cards. An equal amount of cards have a positive count 5 and negative count 5. The latter accounts for how many decks are remaining in a shoe.
A true count can be used to determine your bet size. Higher spreads allow you to make more profits during a positive count. But bigger spreads also make casinos more suspicious. Regardless, you need to spread your bets to some degree to be successful. You generally want to keep your bet spreads at or lower to avoid drawing immediate suspicion. Other than this difference, though, the KO is relatively similar to the Hi-Lo. This is where the unbalanced nature of KO is created.
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