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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.
Card counting is a casino card game strategy used primarily in the blackjack family of casino games to determine whether the next hand is likely to give a probable advantage to the player or to the dealer. Card counters are a class of advantage players, who attempt to decrease the inherent casino house edge by keeping a running tally of all high and low valued cards seen by the player. Card counting allows players to bet more with less risk when the count gives an advantage as well as minimize losses during an unfavorable count. Card counting also provides the ability to alter playing decisions based on the composition of remaining cards.
Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a huge increase in the number of poker players worldwide. Christiansen Capital Advisors stated online poker revenues grew from $82.7 million in 2001 to $2.4 billion in 2005, while a survey carried out by DrKW and Global Betting and Gaming Consultants asserted online poker revenues in 2004 were at $1.4 billion. In a testimony before the United States Senate regarding Internet Gaming, Grant Eve, a Certified Public Accountant representing the US Accounting Firm Joseph Eve, Certified Public Accountants, estimated that one in every four dollars gambled is gambled online.
The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, California Institute of Technology, 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.
Stuart Errol Ungar was an American professional poker, blackjack, and gin rummy player, widely regarded to have been the greatest Texas hold 'em and gin player of all time.
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.
Ken Uston was an American blackjack player, strategist and author, credited with popularizing the concept of team play at blackjack. During the early to mid-1970s he gained widespread notoriety for perfecting techniques to do team card counting in numerous casinos worldwide, earning millions of dollars from the casinos, with some bets as high as $12,000 on a single hand.
Andrew Elliot Bloch is a professional poker player. He holds two electrical engineering degrees from MIT and a JD from Harvard Law School.
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.
Joseph Charles "Joe" Beevers is an English professional poker player and a member of The Hendon Mob.
Max Rubin is a gambling expert and author best known for his book Comp City: A Guide to Free Gambling Vacations. The book teaches players how to maximize casino perks with little actual wagering. Rubin is also a gambling analyst for television; he served as commentator for the first two seasons of the GSN's World Series of Blackjack, along with Matt Vasgersian, and co-hosts the Ultimate Blackjack Tour with Nick GAS' Mati Moralejo on CBS. Rubin is a member of the Blackjack Hall of Fame and hosts the annual Blackjack Ball.
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.
Monica Reeves is a Canadian professional poker and blackjack player.
Donald "Don" Schlesinger is a gaming mathematician, author, lecturer, player, and member of the Blackjack Hall of Fame who specializes in the casino game of blackjack. His work in the field has spanned almost four decades. He is the author of the book Blackjack Attack - Playing the Pros' Way, currently in its third edition, which is considered one of the most sophisticated theoretical and practical studies of the game to date.
Malaysian Pontoon is a card game related to Pontoon and blackjack and, like those games, a descendant of Vingt-Un or Twenty-One. It is played by those in Australia, Malaysia and Singapore, where it is usually just called pontoon. This game is similar to match play 21 or Spanish 21, while original pontoon, played in Britain, holds closer to the traditional Twenty-One rules, but can be quickly distinguished by the use of the terms "twist" and "stick".
Mike Aponte, also known as MIT Mike, is a professional blackjack player and a former member of the MIT Blackjack Team. Aponte was part of a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students that legally won millions playing blackjack at casinos around the world by counting cards. He is the basis for one of the main characters, Jason Fisher, in the book, Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich, which inspired the motion picture, 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.
Colin Jones is a Blackjack card-counting expert, teacher, and entrepreneur. He was a founder and manager of The Church Team, a successful Blackjack card-counting team based in Seattle, Washington which won approximately 3.2 million dollars from casinos between 2006 and 2011. Jones is featured prominently in the 2011 award-winning documentary, Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians. He owns the website Blackjack Apprenticeship and holds regular Blackjack boot camps in Las Vegas.
References
- 1 2 Kevin Blackwood. "Author Biography" . Retrieved 2008-03-07.
- ↑ "WSOB Past Tournaments". Blackjackworldseries.net. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
- ↑ "Pro gambler donates winnings to charity". The Register-Guard. Farlex, Inc. 2005-04-17. Retrieved 2008-04-18.
- ↑ "Television Schedule". Ultimate Blackjack Tour, LLC. Archived from the original on 2007-10-12. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
- ↑ "Kevin Blackwood" . Retrieved 20 July 2020.
- ↑ "Casino Gambling for Dummies Review" . Retrieved 2011-05-27.