Chapter IV

Blackjack also known as 21 is a card game. It is also the term for a leather-covered bludgeon with a short, flexible shaft or strap, used as a hand weapon. Trying to win consistently at 21 is akin to hitting yourself repeatedly with a blackjack. The interesting thing about the game though is that in a perfect world where mathematics reigns supreme you can gain an edge on the house playing blackjack. This is because a genius by the name of Edward Thorpe developed a system of assigning numerical values to cards whereby with some practice, and good memory those cards could be counted. That ever changing card count during a game of blackjack is related to the number of face cards and aces left in the deck. The player can then bet, and make drawing decisions based on the card count at any given time. Although Thorpe, and others were able to win respectable sums from the casinos back in the sixties before the technique was widely known it didn't take long for the casinos to realize that they were losing to a new mathematical card strategy. At that point the party was essentially over for card counters in major gambling centers with the exception of a dedicated few who were willing to go up against all of the various counter measures directed against them by casinos. These casinos were sometimes backed by organized crime, and aside from changing blackjack rules, or shuffling frequently they could resort to more serious measures such as barring the offending player, or having "security" threaten them, or beating them senseless on occasion. That's a tough way to make a living. The irony of this is that the card counters were simply using information supplied to them by the dealt cards to gain an advantage, but the casinos called it a form of cheating. The fact is casinos reserve the right to bar anyone they choose, and that right could sometimes apply to a winning player who simply gets lucky without using any strategy. Casinos are not the players friend. They are in the business of making money, and that is the bottom line. Now I have met friendly dealers, pit bosses, casino hosts, and cashiers, but in their minds behind that friendliness there is often a hidden veil that labels the player as an adversary. If you're going to gamble in a casino don't kid yourself as to what kind of a situation you're dealing with. They do not want you to win.

I was a legal teenager eighteen years of age in Alberta when I played my first blackjack game back in the seventies, and unfortunately I didn't have a clue how to play the game. It was sponsored by the newly minted government gaming commission, and took place in a field house during Klondike days which is an annual festival celebrating the gold rush. No one running this casino knew what the hell they were doing, and the organizers were obviously in over their heads. Even doing something seemingly simply like dealing cards, and collecting bets actually requires a lot of protocol, experience, and methods to do properly. It was completely disorganized. The dealers were naive, sloppy, and made all sorts of errors including improper bet pay outs often in the players favor. The boys in Vegas would have cringed. A cheater or card counting pro could have taken them for a bundle, but I knew nothing about the game then. It didn't take long though for a few permanent casinos to set up shop, and clean up the operations. The players didn't know what hit them...