If anything, antsy casino managers often made the game less welcoming. There were no new layouts, no attempts to make the game more social, no outreach to customers. Blackjack quickly became the most popular game in the casino, though casino managers’ initial panic mellowed to wariness as they realized that not all players are as smart of disciplined as they’d like to believe.īlackjack’s popularity from the 1960s onwards is instructive: nothing about the game itself changed. Smart, disciplined players could be guaranteed-at least statistically-to beat the casino.

This was the casino equivalent of splitting the atom: an awesome, unpredictable power unleashed. Ed Thorp published Beat the Dealer, a best-selling paperback that explained to the general public how, by counting cards (keeping track of how many high-value cards remained in play), players could actually have a statistical advantage over the house. Basic strategy, perfectly executed, cut the house edge to almost zero, which turned a few heads.

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