I might also add that blackjack analysis has been repeated over and over by lots of gambling writers, including myself, and we all- all the legitimate writers basically agree with each other. However, Ed Thorp was the first one to write a book about it including addressing card counting and broke all kinds of new ground in the game. There were four guys in the army in the 50s who did it before him and published it in the American Statistical Journal. Number one I'd like to correct something is actually, Ed Thorp was not the first person to publish the basic strategy. Why am I doing this? Because I'm getting a little tired of hearing dealers say that the basic strategy is a myth, that it was created by Ed Thorp, Beat the Dealer fame back in 1962 on an old UNIVAC computer or whatever and he must've made a mistake somewhere and this mistake has been repeated for decades by other gambling writers who never once thought to confirm his work and we've all just been repeating his work like parrots.

The purpose of this video is to create the blackjack basic strategy from scratch in Excel starting with just a blank spreadsheet. Michael Shackleford: Hi, this is Mike with the Wizard of Odds.