Mammoth is probably the first person in history who applied mathematic analysis to the game blackjack was Jess Marcum (originally Marcovitch) was born on 30th December 1919.
It happened at the turn of 1949 and 1950, when Jess, being an excellent mathematician and physicist-theorist got to Las Vegas. Then his mathematic flair prompted him that most possibly not everything depends on intuition in blackjack.
Julian Braun is quite a unique personality. He had hardly ever played a deal in real blackjack. But he played millions and maybe even billions of deals on the computer. Braun was a good mathematician and programmer and he got interested in Thorp’s idea and offered him cooperation in the sphere of calculations and programming.
