That all this happened as the computer age was flourishing in the 1960s isn't coincidental. Those changes would prove to be short-lived, but Thorp's book would go on to become a massive bestseller, and remains a key guide to the game of blackjack to this day. The system worked so well that Las Vegas casinos actually changed the rules of blackjack to give the dealer an added advantage.
Two years earlier, Thorp's book, Beat the Dealer, was published, explaining the system for winning at blackjack he developed based on the mathematical theory of probability. Thorp, the quiet man on the right, every bit the mathematics professor with black-rimmed glasses and close-cropped hair, is the real deal.
It's 1964 and Edward Thorp is on the television game show To Tell The Truth, sitting alongside two other well-dressed men also claiming to be Edward Thorp, a man so adept at card counting that he'd been barred from Las Vegas casinos.
