STREETWISE BLACKJACK

Streetwise Blackjack

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

By Peter Ruchman

Last seen, last week, our small group of Neolithic erstwhile counters was testing the tides of casino play with their new theories concerning the special properties aces and tens gave to the player versus the House in blackjack during the late 1950s.

Manny Kimmel, George Broughton,Joe Bernstein, Betty Brown, Junior Gettings, Jess Marcum, and Mel Horowitz were there at the start and each made his and her own contribution to our understanding of how to better play the game. Edward Thorp, now Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he and his wife Vivian moved from Southern California (See Part I of this series), remained intrigued by his trip to Las Vegas and the musings of the four Army theorists. Thorp tested some of his own theories on MIT's own IBM 704 mainframe computer, duplicating in three hours the 2,500 hours work performed on hand-held calculators by the gang of four.

His statistical research was collected and the preliminary findings delivered in a paper titled, "Fortune's Formula" at the annual meeting of the Mathematical Association in Washington, D.C. in 1961. At the meeting's conclusion, 300 mathematicians rushed the podium to grab the mimeographed copies of his report. The Associated Press got wind of the story and the news was re-printed in every newspaper across the country. The shy analytical scientist was thrust into the limelight and he and his wife had to leave their apartment to escape the constant phone calls and barrage of sudden interest.

Many sought to back Thorp and his strategies offering to bankroll him. He also began work on a book about his theories, outlining them as he went. It is at this point that my information, previously unknown, can shed some light on how blackjack counting came to the public.

Manny Kimmel, back in New York, fresh from his Las Vegas explorations with Joe Bernstein, Betty Brown and Lil' Jess Marcum read about Thorp's presentation and found that it wasn't too difficult to track him down at MIT. He hired a limousine in New York City and had the driver take him to Thorp's apartment near Boston.

Kimmel was kidnapped on a boat when he was just a child. He jumped ship in the Far East, probably Hong Kong. He hitched a ride on a cattle boat, where he had a job shoveling shit and from that point on, he raised himself. He had quite a life and was one of the best proposition men in the country, with a firm understanding of geometry, trigonometry and calculus.

There were some very basic differences in the strategies of the two men at that point. Thorp had arrived at the concept of counting 5s as the primary objective. He felt that they carried more weight than any other card as they will make all breaking hands and ruin all 10s and 11s or split aces. Kimmel had adopted Bernstein and Marcum's methodology, focusing on 10s and aces. There was much to discuss when Kimmel and Thorp met for the first time.

They talked for hours, sharing their experiences and debating on the merits of each one's system. At this point, Thorp's blackjack experience was mostly theoretical, having played live blackjack in a casino, for a total of 10 minutes. Manny Kimmel's experince was quite the opposite. A long-time gambler, very successful, he possessed all Thorp's mathematical brilliance and analytical abilities, but was also gifted with the street-smarts and gambling skills that Thorp lacked.

As the two men talked, each one stood firm on the merits of his own individual system, and after hour of discussion, they agreed to put their respective methods to a test. They went to a grocery store and purchased a box of wooden matches to keep score. Manny dealt to Thorp then they switched. Each man played his own system. They battled back and forth. Thorp had told Kimmel that he was planning to write a book on his theories and needed to play in order to prove them true. The one fly in his ointment was that he hadn't yet really played. Kimmel told Thorp that if he could prove that his system was better, he would bankroll Thorp, but Thorp would have to use Kimmel's system.

Manny won all of Thorp's match sticks, then repeated his victory the following day, forcing Thorp to admit Kimmel's system was indeed no match for his. The basis of Kimmel's theory was simple: it lay in the fact that there were more 10s in a single deck, sixteen, than any other card, including the four 5s. Despite his devotion to his own system, Thorp was now convinced by the live demonstration, and blackjack history was forever altered. Thorp began devoting his research to the 10-count Kimmel method which was a hybrid of the Bernstein-Kimmel-Marcum system.

Later on in life, when asked why he let Thorp adopt his count and use it in his book, Beat The Dealer, Kimmel told a close friend that he didn't think it would be worth two cents. He thought that Thorp was going produce a small pamphlet, and that it wouldn't amount to much. Manny thought no one would believe it. So Manny Kimmel let him go ahead and even helped him word some of the writing. He didn't realize that it would become the most important book on gambling ever written.

Thorp, Kimmel and another man named Eddie Hand went to Lake Tahoe and Reno to try out their new system. In his book, Thorp called Kimmel "Mr. X" and Hand was "Mr. Y," for camouflage purposes as both men were active gamblers. Hand was a man who owned a small fleet of trucks in New York and wanted to come along for the ride. Kimmel bankrolled the trip and their adventures in pioneering blackjack counting have been read and admired by millions since the book was first published in 1962.

It wasn't until later that it came out that there were people who allegedly offered Thorp some fair sums of money to delay his book's publication. They didn't want the secret of card-counting revealed, realizing that once it was out, they would never be able to practice their trade as freely. Thorp didn't accept the money but history will prove that their concerns were ultimately justified.

Next week, this series continues with a look at some of the more recent developments in card counting and the end of the world as we know it.