How Blackjack Began

The French Revolution is widely credited with bringing the game of blackjack to the Americas. People fleeing to the New World brought the game with them to Canada and the U.S. The game they brought was called vingt et un, French for 21. The game became known as blackjack.

The game wasn’t very popular when first introduced and to get the punters to the tables a special bonus was added to the game.

The name blackjack derives from the special bonus payout of 10-1 if you could get the Ace of Spades and a Jack of spades or Jack of clubs.

The game began to grow in popularity and became a regular feature in gaming establishments until gambling was prohibited. This like the famous Prohibition of alcohol, achieved nothing, except to spoil people’s fun, as it was pushed underground where it flourished until 1931. That was the year that the state of Nevada legalized gambling and with it started the modern day phenomena that are casinos. The casinos quickly realized that blackjack was very popular and filled their halls with blackjack tables, thus making it the most popular game to be played in the casinos.

Then the internet sprang up and with it the on-line casinos that are all over the net today giving the average joe the chance to play the magnificent game of blackjack.

Throughout history people have wanted to beat the dealer and some have succeeded in doing it. The movie 21 is just one example of people who did beat the dealer.
MIT Blackjack Team.

Immortalized by the movie 21, the famous MIT Blackjack Team began in 1979 when a group of students at the Boston-area campus put their minds together to play blackjack. They were near geniuses in their field and found ways to beat the casinos by calculating the odds. Using card counting, strategies and shuffle counting, they were light years ahead of the field, although in their first field trip to Atlantic City’s casinos they failed.

Not to be discouraged, they honed their techniques and went back with $5000. this time it worked and they tripled their money in a few weeks. As they became better and better they recruited more and more members to the team which grew to 25 at one stage. In one weekend the team hit Las Vegas and made $400,000 – not a bad weekend’s work. They played consistently throughout the 1980s and 90s but they became noticed by the casinos and their success became their downfall.

They were investigated by Griffins Detective agency who identified the members and had them barred from the casinos. The team began to fall apart and lost the discipline that saw it remain undetected for so long. The team members were beginning to be spotted together and were eventually spotted at a swimming pool which saw them all identified.

Eventually, in 1999 when this happened the team disbanded and that was the end of the most successful group of blackjack players to beat the dealers.