Learn about the legendary Ed Thorpe

In order to play blackjack successfully, you will need to know information about blackjack, before and after the card counting methods of Ed Thorpe.

Ed Thorpe is considered to be the legendary player of blackjack. The methods of card counting using their values were introduced by Ed Thorpe. He is an American mathematician and professor. He is very popular for his books that changed the world of blackjack in a great way. It also made the players of blackjack look at the game in a different manner. His complete name is Edward Oakley Thorpe

The History of Blackjack Before Ed Thorpe

Before the introduction of card counting strategies by Ed Thorpe, the world of blackjack was full of guesses and hunches. Later during the year 1957, a book about playing and wining blackjack was published. The book was considered to be written by none other than the popularly known “the four horsemen” comprising, James McDermott, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel and Roger Baldwin. Their strategy comprise of mathematical ways of winning at card games. However, Ed Thorpe made use of those thoughts and refined it into a great level and rather simple strategy, which may be used by anyone.

The Introduction of Ed Thorpe’s Strategy

Ed Thorpe developed a system which comprised of sixteen different types of strategies depending upon the cards that were present on the table shown at single point of time. This system was considered to be very crude and hasn’t given much advantage to the players. Later Ed Thorpe published another popular book with the name beat the dealer with a small print initially and the ideas in the book made the players to increase their chance of winning and think of the game in a different way. This book is considered to have made Ed Thorpe into a celebrity over a night. It also made the casinos fear about the card counting players.

After two years of publishing of the book, the casinos in Las Vegas tried to make changes in the standard rules as only Aces will be split and the use of doubling down will not be entertained to those totally 11, hands. The response from the players as well as blackjack community was not good and hence the rules were abandoned. But Ed Thorpe was still preparing his new strategies and in the year 1966 he published another version of beat the dealer which comprised of new strategy of card counting called Hi-Lo count.