Career
From 1969 to 1974 he worked as a writer, editor, and eventually publisher of Island Magazine, a Long Island news magazine. He also had his own radio program "Frank Scoblete Live!", and worked for a time as a high school teacher, teaching English and an innovative class in Science Fiction at Lawrence High School on Long Island where he was known as "Mr. Scobe" or just "Scobe". [4] [5]
In 1975 Scoblete experimented with acting, and in 1979 co-founded The Other Vic Theatre Company, a professional touring troupe that played dinner theatres, resorts, and charities. During his time with the Company, Scoblete produced, directed, and acted in approximately 50 plays. In 1985, while researching the role of a gambler for the play The Only Game in Town, Scoblete and his co-star Alene Paone went to Atlantic City to do some research, which made them realize that they liked gambling more than acting. The play toured for four months.
Scoblete sold his share of the theatre company in 1989, and starting writing columns for gaming magazines such as WIN Magazine . [6] He spent the majority of his time from 1986 to 1992 in the casinos. His first book on the subject was Beat the Craps Out of the Casinos, published in 1991 by Paone Press, a mail-order publishing house founded by his future wife Paone, who has also taught at Lawrence Middle School. [2] Scoblete and Paone married in 1993, and spent their honeymoon playing blackjack on a Mississippi riverboat. [4]
Books
Along with his books and columns, Scoblete has also written for television, such as the Travel Channel's "What Would You Do If ...?" program, in which he also appears as an expert. [7] He has been cited as a consultant in newspapers such as the Detroit News and Kansas City Star . [8] In 2003 during the gambling scandal involving ex-Education Secretary William Bennett, Scoblete was cited as a source in The Washington Post , which described Scoblete as "a widely published authority on casino games." [1]
Scoblete also self-published, via Paone Press, a quarterly magazine called The New Chance and Circumstance. [9] He also writes articles about gambling for websites such as worldcasinodirectory.com, [10] gambling.co.uk, [3] and his own site goldentouchcraps.com. [11] As of 2007, he writes the "Ask Frank" column for Casino City Times. [12]
He is a frequent speaker on the subject of card counting and dice control, and gives weekend seminars on the exact techniques. [5] [13] He has been known to sponsor "gamblers jamborees" where he is joined by fellow authors and analysts such as Dr. Henry Tamburin, John Grochowski, Dr. Donald Catlin, John Robison, and Jean Scott.
He sponsored a "World Craps Championships" weekend in 2006, which drew 166 players. [14]
The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and other leading colleges who used card counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos at blackjack worldwide. The team and its successors operated successfully from 1979 through the beginning of the 21st century. Many other blackjack teams have been formed around the world with the goal of beating the casinos.
John Scarne was an American magician and author who was particularly adept at playing card manipulation. He became known as an expert on cards and other games, and authored a number of popular books on cards, gambling, and related topics.
Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa is a hotel, casino, and spa in Atlantic City, New Jersey, United States. It is owned and operated by MGM Resorts International. The casino hotel features 2,798 rooms and is the largest hotel in New Jersey. Borgata opened in July 2003 and is the top-grossing casino in Atlantic City.
Breaking Vegas is a television series that premiered on The History Channel in the United States in the spring of 2004. The series covers the great lengths people have gone to make money, sometimes illegally, from casinos. It premiered in Pakistan on January 19, 2006 and was renamed Decoding Casinos in India on May 9, 2006. It later aired on The History Channel and The Discovery Channel in Canada.
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.
The Casino du Lac-Leamy is a government-run casino in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada.
Golden Nugget 64 is a multiplayer virtual casino video game for the Nintendo 64. It was developed by Westwood Studios, published by Electronic Arts, and was released on December 1, 1998 in North America. Golden Nugget 64 is unique because it is the only gambling/casino game released in North America for the Nintendo 64. The game starts off by having the player create an account with $1000 which is saved on the controller pack. Players have the choice from one of ten different popular casino games. Each game has its own set of rules and a guide to learn how to play.
John Grochowski is a gambling columnist and author. His weekly newspaper column began at the Chicago Sun-Times and is now syndicated nationally. In 1994, the monthly Las Vegas Advisor reported that Grochowski was the first casino gambling columnist at a major U.S. newspaper. In 2012, he also began a weekly Sun-Times column on baseball sabermetrics, the first of its kind in a daily newspaper.
Henry Tamburin is a gambling author with a background in mathematics and a doctorate in chemistry. He is best known for his book Blackjack: Take the Money and Run which explains basic blackjack strategy, managing a bankroll, side bets and advanced tactics like card counting.
Jerry L. Patterson is an American writer. He authored several gambling books as well as a gambling newspaper column.
The Blackjack Hall of Fame honors the greatest blackjack experts, authors, and professional players in history. It was launched in 2002, and its physical premises are in San Diego, California.
Alene Paone is married to author, Frank Scoblete. She and Scoblete live in New York where she works as an adult reference librarian in a public library. She is also a part-time swim teacher. Scoblete often refers to Paone in his books, by the initials of "A.P." After 13 years of marriage, Alene dropped the name Paone and took Scoblete as her surname.
Bonus Books is an American book publisher based in Los Angeles, California. The company publishes approximately 30 books per year, primarily "how to" books on subjects such as casino gambling, sports biographies, broadcasting and journalism. Frequent authors include Frank Scoblete and John Grochowski. An additional imprint is Volt Press.
Blackjack Forum was a trade journal for professional blackjack players, founded in 1981 and published by 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. Along with Stanford Wong's Current Blackjack News, it was considered one of the major newsletters for the blackjack market.
Peter A. Griffin was a mathematician, author, and blackjack expert and is one of the original seven members of the Blackjack Hall of Fame. He authored The Theory of Blackjack, considered a classic analysis of the mathematics behind the game of casino 21.
Advantage gambling, or advantage play, refers to legal methods, in contrast to cheating in casinos, used to gain an advantage while gambling. The term usually refers to house-banked games, but can also refer to games played against other players, such as poker. Someone who practises advantage gambling is often referred to as an advantage player, or AP. Unlike cheating, which is by definition illegal, advantage play exploits innate characteristics of a particular game to give the player an advantage relative to the house or other players. While not illegal, advantage play is often discouraged and some advantage players may be banned by certain casinos.
Comps are complimentary items and services given out by casinos to encourage players to gamble. The amount and quality of comps that a player is given usually depends on what game(s) they play, how much they bet, and how long they play.
Splitting aces and eights is part of blackjack basic strategy. Rules vary across gambling establishments regarding resplitting, doubling, multiple card draws, and the payout for blackjack, and there are conditional strategic responses that depend upon the number of decks used, the frequency of shuffling and dealer's cards. However, regardless of the various situations, the common strategic wisdom in the blackjack community is to "Always split aces and eights" when dealt either pair as initial cards. This is generally the first rule of any splitting strategy.
A natural is a term in several gambling games; in each case it refers to one or two specific good outcomes, usually for the player, and often involves achieving a particular score in the shortest and fastest manner possible.
Cassius Tocqueville Ionescu Tulcea was a Romanian-American mathematician, specializing in probability theory, statistics and mathematical analysis.
