Beating the Game
Dietrick E. Thomsen · Science News · 1975
The man who broke the bank at Monto Carlo is a musical fantasy that grew out of the avid interest many people have in the things that happen on green baize tables. The man who, according to folklore, was told not to return to Las Vegas because he had won too much money there is real. He is Edward Thorp, a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Irvine. Lately Thorp has been looking for the best way, in a theoretical and practical sense, to beat the blackjack table. He has devised a way of comparing the several blackjack systems against each other and a theoretically best possible system. At the same time his interest has turned to that ancient, but recently trendy, game, backgammon. He shared some of his latest insights on these topics with fellow mathematicians at the recent National Mathematics Meeting at Washington. The blackjack systems depend on counting the cards as they fall. As play proceeds, the deck is depleted, and with the fall of each card the player's expectation of success changes. Removal of different denominations from the deck changes the expectations in different amounts. Removal of two nines does not have the same effect as removal of three fives. From the way the expectations change, a particular numerical value can be assigned to each denomination of card. As the cards fall from the deck a running total of these numbers is kept. Different systems assign different numbers to different denominations. They also differ in how they use the