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How Twenty-One Became Blackjack
According to Richard Epstein, blackjack became popular during World War I, and was called “black-jack” from the practice of paying a prize to a player who held an ace of spades with a jack of spades or clubs. John Scarne, puts the year when this curious rule first appeared at 1912, when twenty-one tables appeared in horse-betting parlors in Evanston, Illinois. I believe Epstein’s information is taken from Scarne, and Scarne states that he discovered the origins of blackjack in America as a result of his private discussions with old-time gamblers, not from any published texts that can be looked up today.
I really don’t believe in what Scarne has written about blackjack, so I’ll quote from Mickey MacDougall’s MacDougall on Dice and Cards (Coward-McCann, 1944, NY): “Many professionals dress up the game by giving prizes for certain hands. A favorite stunt is to offer ten times the size of the wager to anyone holding a natural twenty-one with a black jack. This adds interest to the game, but it also tempts a player to increase his stakes.”
Thorp also included a Simple Point Count in this new edition of his book, but at the time that strategy seemed way too simple to most players to gain much of an edge, or to be taken seriously by players who wanted to beat the game. The Complete Point Count was easier to use than the ten-count, but it was not a lot easier. It required players to keep two separate counts. In addition to the running count of the cards’ point total, the player had to keep a count of the exact number of cards remaining to be played. And in order to play his hand, he had to memorize a chart of 158 different strategy changes to be made according to the count. Still, the casino’s fears were mostly unfounded.
Later, the power of Thorp’s simpler method of adjusting the running count, without keeping a separate count of the exact number of cards played, would be shown.
