The rules in the city state that skilled players cannot be banned from playing in any casino. How Blackjack Works in Atlantic CityĪtlantic City has a particular set of rules that means that casinos need to be a little bit more wary of their players’ abilities. Whilst card counting is still possible with multiple decks, it does not offer as significant an opportunity to gamblers as in the single-deck games. Casinos would soon introduce multiple-deck games, change minimum bets and alter pay-outs to protect themselves from card counters. Before long, as casino bosses started to see the profits get eaten into by teams of card counting gamblers, changes had to be made. However, card counting with a single deck was not an incredibly intellectual task that required a computer-sized brain thus, it was quite an accessible system and a danger for casinos. Until the release of Thorp’s book, almost every casino in the world would only have offered single-deck blackjack.

Gamblers across the world soon adopted Thorp’s system, including one of the most famous gamblers in history – Bill Benter. In this book, Thorp mathematically proved that players could use a points-based system to beat the house in blackjack. In 1966 the brilliant mathematician, Edward Thorp, released his ground-breaking book ‘Beat The Dealer’. So, lets examine why that is and also how many decks are used in two of the most famous gambling cities, Atlantic City and Las Vegas. While friendly games of blackjack are usually only played with one deck of cards, when you step into a casino you will find double deck deals, alongside four, six and eight deck games.

It seems like a simple question: how many decks in blackjack? Casual players may be surprised to find that there can be one, two, four, six or eight decks used in a game of blackjack.

How the casino deals in blackjack