The history of Blackjack 

It’s not a secret that most of the card games have unique history. They’ve been developing through centuries gaining new properties and rules. Today we’ll try to dig to historical roots of blackjack.
Nowadays historians agree that blackjack first appeared in 17th century in France where a game caled Vingt En Un was played in French casinos. “Ving En Un” means 21 in French, which evidently was not the first ancestor of blackjack, but it’s clear that blackjack originated from it.
These games are very similar to each other, aside from a few minor differences:
* you would have to bet after each round;
* only the dealer was allowed to double.
But in both these games the goal was to reach a “natural” or a total of 21 by using blackjack’s hand ranking system. English name blackjack derived from a special feature of Vingt en Un, which was a special payout when one had a hand of a Jack and an Ace of spades, hence the term Black Jack. It’s the ideal hand of Vingt en Un.
At the same in Italy a game called Seven and a Half was played. In this card game, which was played with face cards and the 7’s, 8’s and 9’s cards, your goal was to reach a hand of seven and a half points. Regular cards (7’s, 8’s and 9’s) were valued as one point while face cards valued half a point. The King of Diamonds could substitute any card, like a Joker card and it was basically a wild card. When players exceeded seven and a half points they were “busted”. It is believed that the term “bust” of blackjack derived from “Seven and a Half”.
After the French Revolution the game migrated to North America and since it wasn’t prohibited by any laws it gained great popularity. Soon the blackjack basic strategy was developed by professional gamblers who understood the potential of the game. The gamed continued to gain popularity and in the
beginning of the 19th century the government of the US has banned and outlawed gambling activities. It was belived by the US government that gambling corrupted society and encouraged organized crime.
This way blackjack became an underground game and gained even more popularity than before. In 1931 Nevada decided to legalize gambling and Las Vegas was born as a gambling capital. Once again the game continued to gain popularity until science has desided to investigate it as well.
In 1953 Roger Baldwin and his associates used statistics theory and calculating methods in order to reduce blackjack’s house edge. In 1956 this work was published in the Amercian Statistical Association. The article was entittled “Optimum Strategy in Blackjack”, the first ever blackjack strategy guide.
After the first step in this direction there were others who has tried understand blackjack via math and science. In 1962 Professor Edward O. Thorp published his book “Beat the Dealer” in which there was the first actual system - the blackjack card counting system. “Beat the Dealer” not only had impact on blackjack players but aslo hit the casinos with terror. To reduce the damage to the casinos blackjack rules were modified.
In spite of such huge success of the Thorp’s book, it was uneasily to read or inderstood by the public and the main effect it had was raising blackjack’s popularity up into the sky. The public of blackjack players were raged upon the casinos’ new ‘bogus’ blackjack variations. And 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.
Next work was created by Julian Braun, who used his computer skills and studied blackjack with a simulator. His work was inluded into second edition of “Beat the Dealer”. Another work, which inspired many players from all around the world was done by Lawrence Revere and was called “Playing
blackjack as business”.
The hero of blackjack, Ken Uston, had also a great part in blackjack’s history as he inspired millions of people in his books “Million Dollar Blackjack”, “Ken Uston on Blackjack” and “The Big Player”. Ken Uston and his colleagues used computers that were inserted to their shoes, and by using them they made thousands of dollars every month while playing blackjack at Nevada’s casinos.
Ken Uston wasn’t the last to use such methods and in the 1990’s another group of players hit the casino halls using card counting techniques - The MIT Blackjack Team. The members of this team made millions of dollars until 1997 when they were banned from the casinos after they were detected by the
Griffin Investigation, a private detectives company that identify card counters and secure casinos around the world from gamblers that cheat.
Today blackjack is an amazzingly popular game which is played everywhere in the world. Recently the new era of blackjack has began - an online blackjack. Due to it’s simplicity and extension it has gained many fans (part of which came from real casinos) and continuing to grow in popularity. Try online
blackjack yourself and you’ll make sure that it’s an interesting and fascinating game!