The Original Card Counting Computer

The Verge covers technology in use at casinos to prevent cheating, and some of the technology developed to aid beating the house (h/t Ritholtz):

One of those thousands was a Raytheon engineer and devout Baptist from Mountain View, California, named Keith Taft. "Keith Taft was about 10 steps ahead of everybody back in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s," says Snyder. "He was astonishing. He's a legend."
Taft’s job at Raytheon involved integrated circuits. On a family vacation in 1969, he happened to play a few hands of blackjack. He won all three, pocketing $3.50 in profit. Though he’d never used it himself, he remembered a little bit about Thorpe’s strategy from Beat the Dealer. One of his first thoughts about card counting was: couldn’t a computer do this?
At the time, the word "computer" still conjured up images of men in white lab coats standing in front of reel-to-reel machines, clipboard in hand. Intel’s first RAM chip appeared in 1970, followed soon after by the 4004 and 8008 microprocessors. The first personal computer, the little-known Kenbak-1, debuted in 1971, retailing for $750. (Forty were sold.) The hardware that would power Taft’s wearable blackjack computer had just begun arriving in the marketplace. He’d also moved into R&D at Fairchild, which gave him the computing power to develop his software algorithms.
Two years later, he had his blackjack computer, a system he called "George" — 15 pounds of circuitry and batteries strapped around his midsection, with wires running down his leg and into his shoe, where he input card values with a pair of switches strapped to his toes. During George’s first test run, a casino employee happened to place a hand on Taft’s back, vindicating the decision to not strap the computer there. Oh, and there was the battery acid that leaked through his shirt and scarred his chest.

Where there is money to be made, there is somebody around to try to take advantage of it.  That is an amazing story.  The whole story is interesting, but the main takeaway is that unless you have an actual information advantage, the house will eventually win.