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Jess Marcum developed a basic strategy for blackjack and was counting cards a decade before anyone else.
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Why is it then that not many of the members of today’s gambling community have heard of him? The reason is basically because he was a very private person. In addition, throughout his active gambling career he endeavored to keep his accomplishments secret to protect the opportunities he had discovered.
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In 1947 he joined the highly respected Rand Corporation think-tank located at Santa Monica, California. He was not a founder of Rand, as reported in some articles, but he became Rand’s preeminent mathematician with an international reputation. This was an astonishing accomplishment in view of the fact he had only a BS degree and Rand was loaded with brainpower and Ph.D. mathematicians. His genius had emerged.
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His principal interest at Rand was statistical physics with emphasis on nuclear radiation propagation, nuclear effects and the processing of electromagnetic wave data. His premiere accomplishment was formulating the original equations for calculating the radar backscatter from a steady target in a noisy background, the so-called signal-to-noise ratio on which all radar design is based. Since the government classified this work as secret, it was many years before the scientific literature could acknowledge it as
the Marcum equation.
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Blackjack Forum : "The first card counter"