Who Solved Blackjack?

In the early 1900s, a man named Edward Thorp came up with a new strategy for playing blackjack. He called it “card counting.

” Card counting is simply the process of keeping track of the number of cards that are dealt and then making decisions based on that information. Thorp’s theory was that by doing this, he could beat the house.

In 1931, another man named Benny Binion independently came up with a similar strategy. He called it “the theory of probability.

” Binion’s theory was that by understanding the odds of each card being dealt, he could make better decisions about which cards to hold and which to discard.

Both Thorp and Binion were able to improve their blackjack skills remarkably over the years, and before long, they were able to beat the house handily. In 1956, however, another player named Claude Kelly proved that no one could consistently beat the casino odds by playing blackjack using only basic strategy.

This effectively ended the card counting era as a method for winning money at blackjack.

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