Edward O. Thorp - Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One

I am indebted to Roger R. Baldwin, Wilbur E. Cantey, Herbert Maisel, and James P. McDermott for making available the computational details of their work on blackjack and to the M.I.T. Computation Center for making available an IBM 704 computer.

I wish to thank the many friends and colleagues who have made valuable suggestions, particularly Professors Claude E. Shannon, Berthold Schweizer, Abe Sklar, and Elbert Walker. I am indebted to Vivian and James Thorp for the long hours they spent playing the part of the house. For showing me many of the methods and devices used by casinos in cheating and for giving me a large amount of general information on the world of gambling, I owe a great deal to Michael MacDougall, former special investigator for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, to some of the old-time Nevada count players, and to a certain crooked Nevada card mechanic. Conversations with a certain federal investigator have given me a large amount of information about the inside activities and the out-of-state connections of certain Nevada casinos. Last, but not least, I wish to thank the two millionaires who financed the highly successful casino test of my system that is reported in .

The results of the first edition have been sharpened and improved by the extensive researches of Julian Braun of the IBM corporation. He has made most of the calculations for the point-count method and has made numerous detailed and valuable suggestions. I am grateful to him for allowing his work to be incorporated into the second edition.

I particularly wish to thank William E. Walden for the related work he has done with me on Nevada baccarat.

Thanks to Paul ONeil for the integrity and journalistic clarity with which he portrayed Beat the Dealer and its author in Life magazine. Thanks also to Life for its courageous stand in printing the truth despite hostile Nevada mobsters and politicos.

I wish to thank many readers for their helpful suggestions, ideas, personal experiences, and testimonials, and for proving the book again and again in the casinos.

Finally, thanks to the readers of the first edition of Beat the Dealer who, in their enthusiasm, bought so many copies that they put it on the national best-seller list.

Preface to the Vintage Books
Edition (2016)

For more than half a century, the question I have been asked most is whether the strategies in Beat the Dealer can still beat the casinos. Despite the passage of time, the answer is a qualified Yes.

Once a year some of the best players in the world gather at The Blackjack Ball, held at a private location by invitation only. To winas they often dohundreds of thousands of dollars per year requires more dedication, planning, and hard work than before. A declining percentage of blackjack tables offer the original rules. The game has been changed for the worse at the others. Nonetheless, using this book, you can quickly learn to play close to even in the better games without keeping track of the cards. You can get a modest edge by adding the simplest card counting skills. Those with talent who do the hard work of practicing and training can reach the professional level.

With more than a million copies in print, thousands of readers have shared with me how Beat the Dealer influenced them. Some used it as a textbook for making money. Others were more interested in reading the stories and gaining insights into the world of gambling. Math, science, and tech readers enjoyed learning about the novel use of computer programming and probability theory.

My favorite stories were about readers who applied what they learned from this book to the world beyond the casinos: Blackjack bankrolls launched billion-dollar horse racing syndicates, stock option trading firms, and hedge fund managers. The method I used and popularized in blackjack for deciding how much to bet in each situation is now used in the stock and bond markets by investors, traders, and asset managers.

The Blackjack Ball attendees and others I know about have, collectively, won hundreds of millions at the blackjack tables. Some have taken their winnings and gone on to reap billions from sports betting and in the securities markets. Though it is more difficult than when I played, professionals are still making their living from the casinos.

Take from it what you will, I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures and my ideas.

Edward O. Thorp

March 2016

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

S HAKESPEARE (Julius Caesar)