STREETWISE BLACKJACK

Streetwise Blackjack

I'm Counting On You - How BJ Counting Really Started, Part II

By Peter Ruchman

The card-counting revolution of the 1960s through 90s is over. If you talk to the casino managers, gamblers, graybeards of the blackjack underground, the card-counters themselves, they'll tell you it's done. Or maybe not! Quite possibly, this is yet another respite in the 40-year war of the roses, one in which new strategists will emerge, with brilliant concepts equal to those suggested by the men and women who first struggled with the intricacies of card counting back in the 1950s.

Remembering back to the scenario I painted last week, when craps was king in the casinos of Reno and Las Vegas, as well as most of the roadhouses and illegal gambling joints scattered throughout every American big city and small town, blackjack played a very small role for professional gamblers. Spiritually descended from the Mississippi riverboat gamblers who trekked west after the Civil War and parlayed their skills into fortunes won and lost in the mining camps of California and Nevada's Gold Rush, these folks were struck by the bug. They lived to wager.

Their vision of post World War Two America wasn't wrapped tight with Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, "I Like Ike," and "What is good for General Motors is good for America." Rather, they were more aligned with Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the musical innovations of Charlie "Bird" Parker, and the laments of Chuck Berry. Manny Kimmel, George Broughton,Joe Bernstein, Betty Brown, Junior Gettings, Jess Marcum, and Mel Horowitz are the key names. While Edward Thorp was absorbing the scholarly work printed in the Journal of the American Statistical Association by the four Army theorists, these aforementioned folks were testing the waters of the legal and illegal clubs and casinos everyday. They were professional gamblers each and every one, who plied their trade throughout the country, trying to win more than they lost, but all sharing one thing in common: they loved to play with cards and dice.

And when an aerospace engineer named "Lil'" Jess Marcum sat down with an IBM mainframe in the 1950s attempting to work out a strategy for beating blackjack, his gambling friends snapped to attention. All bright and street-smart to a fine pitch, each possessing an individually fine analytical brilliance, mixed with a passion for gambling, Jess owned one unique capability not shared by the others in this loose association: the ability to program an IBM mainframe computer.

At the request of some of his friends, Marcum had fed thousands of punch-cards through the gargantuan IMB 704 computer at his Southern California employer's aero-space laboratory where the company was working on rocket designs to launch our space program. And he arrived at a startling set of conclusions: in trying to figure a ways and means to beat blackjack, he had discovered that some cards were more valuable than others, and that by assigning numbers of a plus and minus value to these and some of the other cards in a single deck, one had a better opportunity, percentage wise, to beat the House.

Meanwhile, young Joe Bernstein, a thoroughly degenerate gambler if there ever was one, a man who held $45,000 from his craps winnings one minute, and was stone cold broke several hours later, was in an illegal club in San Francisco around this same time. He was casually watching a blackjack game when it struck him that he hadn't seen an ace appear. It might sound funny now, but the only way blackjack was played in the 1950s was single deck. In those days, shoes were made for walking.

Betting sports and losing, $3,000 in arrears to his bookie, Bernstein had $1500 left, burning a hole in his pocket. If he paid his bookie what he had remaining, he would still owe $1,500 and not have a bankroll. Joe leaned over and placed his money in the betting circle. Snapper! He caught a blackjack. On to something good, with one hand left in the deck (Yes Virginia, 100 percent penetration then!) Bernstein split to 2 hands of $500 each, got a blackjack on one and an ordinary hand on the other. He played out the hand, won that as well, giving him enough to pay his debt (we're not sure if he did that), plus a fresh start. These three winning hands made a distinct impression on Bernstein. He walked away believing aces held the key to blackjack's treasure chest .

He returned to the club the next day and played and observed blackjack all day. He discovered that the situation he had stumbled onto, all four aces left to be dealt with less than a quarter the deck remaining, was highly unusual. So he began paying attention to the other half of the dynamic duo needed to pair up a blackjack: the ten.

Not nearly as successful as his first foray into blackjack, Bernstein decided to call on Manny Kimmel, one of the best proposition men in the country, Kimmel was a gambler's high mathematical wizard, able to figure the odds anything within reason. Kimmel was immortalized in Ed Thorp's ground-breaking book, Beat the Dealer, as Mr. X, but we're jumping ahead of ourselves. Later on in life, Kimmel went on to invest the winnings from his gambling career in a series of parking lots throughout the Northeast, still going strong today, the Kinney chain.

Kimmel flew out to Las Vegas to meet Bernstein and the two men combined forces and intellects. They struggled with inventing blackjack's wheel, trying to figure a way to beat the game using strategy and observation, not luck. The wrestled with their thoughts, finally arriving at isolating the 10s and aces, assigning those card numbers to track and separate them. Then, they enlisted the assistance of Betty Brown McKinney, sister of inveterate gambler Donald "Duck" McKinney. A notoriously fine gambler herself, Betty was accepted as an equal amongst these gamblers, well aware of her skills and daring.

The three teamed up and tried their hands at beating the casinos at blackjack. The two men played while Betty did the math, directing them with pre-arranged signals. They made some pretty good scores together, sharing their discoveries with Jess Marcum. Jess went to work, his sharp mind programming the IBM computer to test and then fine-tune a card counting system which was dependable.

He concocted a table which listed the various 2-card combinations he would receive giving him the necessary instructions on how to handle those cards against whatever single card was shown by the dealer. Then, Marcum ventured to downtown Las Vegas and tried his system after sharing it with his friends. It worked and he was a winner. He met with Bernstein, Brown, and Kimmel and the four swapped ideas back and forth.

This meeting of the minds was totally independent of Edward Thorp's participation so far. He was unaware that this group of people were working on the same issues in uncovering blackjack's secrets as himself. It would be impossible to cite who did what first, nor is it ultimately important.

But what happens next, might just re-write what most had previously thought about the invention of blackjack counting. You'll have to wait until the next exciting chapter in this space, Streetwise Blackjack's: "Green Felt: The Final Frontier!"