>--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.
>>
>> >how to
>> >countdown a blackjack deck before "Beat the Dealer" was published,
>>
>> What was the state of card counting then? Is there evidence that
>> anyone besides Dr. Thorp knew how to do it? If he wasn't the first
>> one to discover it, who was?
>
>Tom,
>
>It is widely accepted that the first basic strategy for blackjack was published in 1956 by
>Roger Baldwin, William Cantey, Herbert Maisel, and James McDermott. Their paper "The
>Optimum Strategy in Blackjack" appeared in the Journal of the American Statistical
>Association in September of that year.
>
>Thorp revised, refined, and popularized their work in 1962 with his book "Beat the Dealer,"
>further being refined and reprinted in 1966, which is the version that is still sold by
>Random House today.
>
>If you are interested in reading the original paper, you can find a pdf version of it online
>here:
>http://www.bjmath.
>
>Bettie
That was interesting, particularly how far off the supposed experts
were and how differently the game was generally played than it is now.
Splitting 8s was rare, splitting tens was not uncommon, and doubling
down was not common. Peter Griffin, in his "The Theory of Blackjack,"
mentions this paper as "remarkably accurate," but I find it surprising
how different its figure for the overall value of the game was from
Griffin's. Griffin has higher figures for the player advantage
against a dealer up card of from 2 through 6, so maybe he refined the
strategy against those up cards. He also mentioned a book written in
the next year by the same authors that he says "may have been the
first public mention of the possibilities of card counting."
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