Who is Edward O. Thorp in Blackjack?

The Legend

A lot of professional blackjack players and even the public, in general, see Edward Oakley Thorp as the father of counting cards because of his 1963 book called "Beat the Dealer". Here, he presented the Ten-Count system to the world, which became the very first winning system of blackjack that was highly powerful and shared with the general public. In fact, every single system of counting cards put to use in today's day and age are all variations of Thorp's Ten-Count system. But he does not neglect the blackjack rules.

The Writings

After Thorp's book turned into a bestseller, every casino in Las Vegas tried to change their standard blackjack rules; however, a lot of customers refused to accept these changes and play the newer version. Because of this, the Las Vegas casinos had to revert to their old rules. However, instead of dealing hand-held single-deck games, they dealt four-deck shoes, which the players accepted. Unfortunately for them, though, Thorp ended up revising his book and published "Beat the Dealer"'s second and revised edition. Here, he presented Julian Braun's High-Low Count, which was even more practical and powerful in attacking the newer shoe games.

For a lot of years, Thorp had a column in the magazine "Gambling Times", as well, and a lot of these can now be found in the 1984 book by Lyle Stuart called "The Mathematics of Gambling".

The Invention

In the year 1961, Thorp worked with C. Shannon to invent the very first wearable computer. This device ended up successfully predicting the results in roulette games. Thorp was also a teacher of quantitative finance. We can easily put in him into the Blackjack Hall of Fame.