Blackjack, formerly also Black Jack and Vingt-Un, is the American member of a global family of banking games known as Twenty-One, whose relatives include Pontoon and Vingt-et-Un. It is a comparing card game between one or more players and a dealer, where each player in turn competes against the dealer. Players do not compete against each other. It is played with one or more decks of 52 cards, and is the most widely played casino banking game in the world.
David Sklansky is an American professional poker player and author.
Linda Johnson is an American professional poker player, journalist and consultant, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2011.
Thuận B. "Scotty" Nguyễn is a Vietnamese American professional poker player who is a five-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, most notably as the winner of the 1998 World Series of Poker Main Event and the 2008 World Series of Poker $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. World Championship. He is the first, and currently only, player to win both the WSOP Main Event and $50,000 Players' Championship.
Russ Hamilton is an American poker player. He was the 1994 World Series of Poker main event champion, defeating Hugh Vincent in heads-up play to win $1 million in first-prize money, as well as his body weight in silver. Following his World Series win, Hamilton served as a consultant for Ultimate Bet, an online poker server. In 2008, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission found Hamilton largely responsible for cheating players on Ultimate Bet out of $6.1 million through software that allowed access to opponents' hole cards. In 2009, Kahnawake increased the $6.1 million estimate to $22,100,000.
Andrew Elliot Bloch is a professional poker player. He holds two electrical engineering degrees from MIT and a JD from Harvard Law School.
Dave or David Mat(t)hews may refer to:
John Ferguson, known by his pen name, Stanford Wong, is a gambling author best known for his book Professional Blackjack, first published in 1975. Wong's computer program "Blackjack Analyzer", initially created for personal use, was one of the first pieces of commercially available blackjack odds analyzing software. Wong has appeared on TV multiple times as a blackjack tournament contestant or as a gambling expert. He owns a publishing house, Pi Yee Press, which has published books by other gambling authors including King Yao.
Bobby "The Wizard" Hoff was an American professional poker player, based in Long Beach, California. According to Hoff, his nickname "The Wizard" refers to his ability to make mountains of chips disappear.
John Anthony Cernuto also known as Miami, is an American professional poker player based in Las Vegas, Nevada, specialising in Omaha hi-lo events. Cernuto has won over $5,500,000 in live tournament winnings, his largest score was for $259,150 from his $2,000 No Limit Hold'em bracelet victory in the 1997 World Series of Poker.
James Gibson Van Alstyne is an American professional poker player based in Las Vegas, Nevada.
David Benyamine is a French professional poker player with a World Poker Tour title. Benyamine was a professional tennis player in his early career but had to retire because of shoulder pain. He was also a successful top ten billiards player in France. He learned poker at the age of 12 and plays high-stakes cash games on a regular basis. Benyamine is a Pot-Limit Omaha specialist.
King of Vegas was a gambling series that first aired on Spike TV in the United States on January 17, 2006. It was hosted by boxing commentator Max Kellerman and co-hosted by handicapper Wayne Allyn Root, who gave color commentary and his odds-on favorites for each game. The tournament director was Matt Savage, who has also directed tournaments at the World Series of Poker.
Arnold Snyder is a professional gambler and gambling author. He was elected by professional blackjack players as one of the seven original inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Fame which is hosted at Barona Casino for his record as a blackjack player and his innovations in professional gambling techniques. He was the first blackjack authority to publish the importance of deck penetration in card counting, in his 1980 book The Blackjack Formula. He was also the first blackjack researcher to publish that radical simplification of blackjack card counting systems did not hurt earnings.
The World Series of Blackjack is a televised blackjack tournament created and produced by the cable network GSN. It is a closed tournament; players are either invited to play or can attempt to win a spot via a satellite tournament. Rounds are edited into 1-hour episodes and broadcast on GSN. Matt Vasgersian and Max Rubin provided commentary for the first two seasons. Tiki Arsenault was the dealer for Season 1 as Deanna Bacon was the dealer for Seasons 2 and 3 while Jessica Knight was the dealer for Season 4.
The Ultimate Blackjack Tour was a televised series of Elimination Blackjack tournaments that aired in syndication. It debuted on September 16, 2006. The show consists of a series of televised Elimination Blackjack tournaments. The winner of each weekly tournament returns for the final Tournament of Champions.
Anthony Curtis is a blackjack player, gambler, author and publisher. He publishes the Las Vegas Advisor, a newsletter founded in 1983 that covers discounts in Las Vegas, and Huntington Press, a publishing house that has released books about gambling, as well as true crime, including The Killing of Tupac Shakur, a Los Angeles Times bestseller by author Cathy Scott.
Blackjack Forum was a trade journal for professional blackjack players, founded in 1981 and published by noted blackjack author Arnold Snyder. Originally a 100-page quarterly journal, it expanded into an online forum which is frequented by professional gamblers, attorneys, industry people, mathematicians and other aficionados. It was considered one of the major newsletters or journals for the blackjack market, along with Stanford Wong's Current Blackjack News.
Richard W. Munchkin is an American writer, director, producer, radio host and professional gambler.
Erica Schoenberg Lindgren is an American professional blackjack and poker player. She is a former model, personal trainer, Schoenberg received professional blackjack training from a member of the MIT Blackjack Team. She has gone on to compete in the World Series of Blackjack.