Word: blackjacking
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...mathematics professor named Edward O. Thorp claims to have made this important breakthrough by feeding the equivalent of 10,000 man-years of desk-calculator computations into an IBM 704 computer and arriving at a set of discoveries about the way the odds fluctuate in the game of blackjack, or twenty-one. This system enables the initiate to bet heavily when the odds are with him, lightly when they are against him. What's more, the cost of the system-including a set of palm-sized, sweat-resistant charts to take to the casino-is only $4.95, which happens...
Hard Hands & Soft. Thorp's system is based on the fact that blackjack is not what mathematicians call an "independent trials process," in which, as in craps or roulette, each play is uninfluenced by the preceding plays. As each card is played in blackjack, it changes the possibilities for both player and dealer by diminishing the number and the variety of cards that may be dealt...
Hence the basic blackjack strategy, according to Thorp's computer, is that the fewer cards valued at two to eight that are left in the pack, the greater advantage to the player. On the other hand a shortage of nines, tens and aces gives the dealer an advantage. A scarcity of fives, Thorp's figures indicate, is more advantageous to the player than a shortage of any other card; when all four fives have been played, the player has an edge of 3.29% or, as expressed roughly in odds, 52-48 in the player's favor. Thorp...
...present total only 665,282 men (389,738 in the Guard and 275,544 in the reserves), and stringent new physical and proficiency requirements also announced by McNamara should trim the total even more. Half a dozen Governors voiced objections; Oregon's Republican Mark Hatfield called it a "blackjack effort." But there seemed little doubt that McNamara's plan would go through...
...door and on the playing fields of Georgia. Ex-Governor Griffin, running for a return trip to Atlanta, assured an audience that there was only one way to handle integrationist "agitators." Said he: "There ain't but one thing to do and that is to cut down a blackjack sapling and brain 'em and nip 'em in the bud." Griffin hastily added that he didn't mean to be taken literally-but obviously, in some circles, he was. For as Griffin let out all the segregationist stops in the closing days of one of Georgia...