According to Richard Epstein (Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic, Academic Press, 1977), blackjack became popular during World War I, and was called “black-jack” from the practice of paying a bonus to a player who held an ace of spades with a jack of spades or clubs. John Scarne, (New Complete Guide to Gambling, 1961, Simon & Schuster), puts the year when this curious rule first appeared at 1912, when twenty-one tables appeared in horse-betting parlors in Evanston, Illinois. According to Scarne, by 1919a Chicago gambling equipment distributor was selling felt table layouts embla¬zoned with the announcement: “Blackjack Pays Odds of 3 to 2.” 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.
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Peter was the math genius who first proposed using the mathematical shortcuts developed by statisticians for estimating answers to highly complex problems in analyzing and comparing blackjack card-counting systems. He was the first to break down the potential gains available from any card-counting method to two prime factors: the betting correlation (ВС) and the playing efficiency (PE). These two parameters facilitated highly accurate estimation of any system’s potential win rate in any game using any betting spread, without extensive computer simulations. He described how these methods could be used to evaluate the differences between single-level and multi-level counting systems, as well as the value of using multi-parameter methods (keeping more than one count). This book was a milestone for system researchers, developers, and players as the most important analysis of card-counting systems since Thorp’s Beat the Dealer.
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Al is one of the most highly respected blackjack players in the history of the game. This is the guy who literally invented team play at blackjack and taught Ken Uston how to count cards. Ken once said to me, “I owe everything to Al, Arnold. He really might be the greatest blackjack player there ever was, and he’s also a real gentleman.”
Al is primarily known to the general public through Ken Uston’s books as the mas¬termind who created the big player (BP) team concept. Al started his first blackjack team in the early 1970s, and until Uston’s first book, The Big Player, was published in 1977, Al’s teams were completely invisible to the casinos and extracted millions of dollars from them.
Virtually all of the most successful blackjack teams that came after The Big Player was published—the Hyland team, the MIT team, the Czech team, the Greeks—used Al’s BP concept to disguise their attacks, and that approach is still being employed profitably by teams today.
Professional players know Al for his highly inventive approaches to beating the casinos, though all of his methods cannot be written about because they are still in use by players. An in-depth interview with Al Francesco appeared in the Summer 2002 issue of Blackjack Forum and can be found in the BlackjackForumOnline.com Library.
This rule is important to remember. Don’t alter your strategy based on prior results. If you keep busting your stiffs when basic strategy tells you to hit, don’t start standing on these bad totals. Never try to second-guess the mathematics of the game. Trust that basic strategy is the best strategy in the long run, and stick to it.
Mistake: The most common mistake beginners make is to stand too often on their stiff hands (12,13,14,15, and 16). Players are naturally afraid to hit these hands because every one of them could bust (make a total of 22 or more) with a single hit. But when the dealer has a high card (7, 8, 9,10, or ace) showing, your best odds of winning come from hitting and giving yourself a chance of making a better total.
Some beginners think the best way to play is to play the same way the dealer plays: Hit all sixteens and stand on all seventeens. This is not true. The object of the game is not to make a hand as close to 21 as possible, but to beat the dealer. Often the best way to do this is to stand with a low total, sometimes as low as 12.
Tip:
Here’s how many players think:
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Contrary to what many gamblers may think, blackjack is not just a guessing game. Most casino games are guessing games. But with any blackjack hand there is a correct strategy and an incorrect strategy. Basic strategy is the correct strategy. The correct strategy is the mathematically optimal strategy—that is, it will maximize your wins and minimize your losses on each hand over time.
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Julian Braun died in 2000 and his only book, How to Play Winning Blackjack, is long out of print. For ten years in the early days of card counting, he did a vast amount of the computer work for some of the top authors. He did the program-ming for the second edition of E.O. Thorp’s Beat the Dealer. His programs were used to develop all of Lawrence Revere’s systems, as well as the Hi-Opt systems. Of the “pre-Stanford Wong” professional players (the pros playing before the first edition of Wong’s Professional Blackjack came out in 1975), most were using either Thorp’s Ten-Count, Thorp’s Hi-Lo, Hi-Opt I, Hi-Opt II, Revere’s Point Count, Revere’s +/-, or Revere’s Advanced Point Count. These were the most popular and widely dissemi-nated systems in use for about ten years, and Julian Braun’s programs were used to develop all of them!
