The history of blackjack began around the beginning of the 18th century in France, where it appeared in the form of a game called "vingt et un" or "twenty one". The name "Blackjack" comes from an early version of the game in which the player received a payoff of 10 to 1 if he had a black jack of spades and a black ace of spades. Blackjack made its way from France to the United States in the 19th century, where it was mainly found out in the American West. In 1931, gambling became legal in Las Vegas and blackjack became one of the staples of the new casino scene.

Blackjack began to raise in popularity after research undertaken by a trio of Americans showed that the casino's advantage could be overcome. Roger Baldwin was the first to begin analyzing blackjack and in 1956 published "The Optimum Strategy In Blackjack". In 1962 Edward Thorp further developed the strategy into the first card counting techniques, which were published in his book "Best the Dealer". Julian Braun added to the earlier research on basic strategy in his book "Playing Blackjack as a Business".

In 1970's, Ken Uston and his merry band of creative gamblers used hidden computers to win hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their ingenuity attracted the attention of the FBI, which examined the computers and decided that they were not cheating devices, and therefore were fair and legal. Players rushed to apply the lessons of Uston's method, but many casinos decided to adopt a multi-deck system of play, which complicated methods to improve the player's chances. Uston himself was banned from several Las Vegas casinos and was eventually found dead in a Paris apartment in 1987. But the game lives on, and prospers in almost every self-respecting casino, traditional or online.