Michael Dalton (born 1955) is a gambling author, publisher and founder of the Blackjack Review Network. He is best known for his Encyclopedia of Casino Twenty-One (formerly titled Blackjack: A Professional Reference) and Blackjack Review Magazine, which was published from 1992 through 1998.
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value on an event with an uncertain outcome, with the primary intent of winning money or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, risk (chance), and a prize. The outcome of the wager is often immediate, such as a single roll of dice, a spin of a roulette wheel, or a horse crossing the finish line, but longer time frames are also common, allowing wagers on the outcome of a future sports contest or even an entire sports season.
An author is the creator or originator of any written work such as a book or play, and is also considered a writer. More broadly defined, an author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility for what was created.
Dalton became interested in blackjack and advantage play while working for NASA in the 1980s. After receiving his master's degree in Space Technology in 1985, Dalton found card counting to be an exciting diversion. Dalton's passion for blackjack (and now poker) prompted him to create and maintain a blackjack and poker website providing free access to his Encyclopedia of Casino Twenty-One and public blackjack and poker forums.
Blackjack is the American variant of a globally popular banking game known as Twenty-One, whose relatives include Pontoon and Vingt-et-Un. It is a comparing card game between usually several players and a dealer, where each player in turn competes against the dealer, but players do not play 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. The objective of the game is to beat the dealer in one of the following ways:
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.
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.
In 2004, Dalton published the controversial book Blackjack Ace Prediction by David McDowell. This book received initial praise from the leading blackjack authorities until Arnold Snyder's analysis in 2005 indicated some technical problems with the strategy.
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.
Dalton is a recipient of the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and a graduate of Florida Institute of Technology . He resides in Merritt Island, Florida and is married. He also enjoys playing the great highland bagpipes and performing with the City of Melbourne Pipes and Drums and the Space Coast Highlanders . Dalton has a 2nd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and retired in 2009 after 31 years with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal is an award of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration established in 1991. The medal is awarded to both civilian members of NASA and military astronauts.
The Florida Institute of Technology is a private nonprofit doctoral/research university in Melbourne, Florida. The university comprises four academic colleges: Engineering & Science, Aeronautics, Psychology & Liberal Arts, and Business. Approximately half of FIT's students are enrolled in the College of Engineering. The university's 130-acre primary residential campus is located near the Orlando Melbourne International Airport and the Florida Tech Research Park. It is about 50 miles (80 km) from the Kennedy Space Center and 75 miles (121 km) from Orlando.
Merritt Island is a census-designated place (CDP) in Brevard County, Florida, United States, located on the eastern Floridian coast, along the Atlantic Ocean. The population was 34,743 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Palm Bay – Melbourne – Titusville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. The name "Merritt Island" also refers to the extent of the peninsula, misnamed an "island."
In card games, a burn card is a playing card dealt from the top of a deck, and discarded ("burned"), unused by the players. Burn cards are usually not shown to the players.
Crown Melbourne is a casino and resort located on the south bank of the Yarra River, in Melbourne, Australia. Crown Casino is a unit of Crown Limited, and the first casino of the now-international Crown brand.
The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School, 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.
Stuart Errol Ungar was a professional poker, blackjack, and gin rummy player, widely regarded to have been the greatest Texas hold 'em and gin player of all time.
Edward Oakley Thorp is an American mathematics professor, author, hedge fund manager, and blackjack player. He pioneered the modern applications of probability theory, including the harnessing of very small correlations for reliable financial gain.
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.
Michael Shackleford,, also known as "The Wizard of Odds" – a title taken from Donald Angelini, is an American mathematician and an actuary, best known for his professional analysis of the mathematics of the casino games. He is also an adjunct professor of actuarial science and mathematics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He became interested in the mathematics of gambling at a young age, specifically after reading John Scarne's Guide to Casino Gambling.
Lawrence Revere was an author, casino pit boss, and professional blackjack player best known for his book Playing Blackjack as a Business. Revere played under multiple aliases, including Leonard "Speck" Parsons and Paul Mann. Revere had a degree in Mathematics from the University of Nebraska.
James Grosjean is a gambling expert and author best known for his 2000 book Beyond Counting: Exploiting Casino Games from Blackjack to Video Poker. He became a professional player while studying as a graduate student at the University of Chicago's Department of Economics. Grosjean's book provides a mathematical treatment of various forms of legal advantage play in casino games. His latest book, Exhibit CAA: Beyond Counting provides information for playing modern casino games with an advantage.
Kevin Blackwood is a professional blackjack player, card counter and gambling author. He is best known for his novel, The Counter, and his instructional book, Play Blackjack Like the Pros.
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.
Jerry L. Patterson is an American writer. He authored several gambling books as well as a gambling newspaper column.
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.
The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino is a casino resort near Hollywood, Florida, United States, located on 100 acres (40 ha) of the Hollywood Reservation of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. The property currently has one hotel tower, a 140,000 sq ft (13,000 m2) casino, large poker room, a 4 acres (1.6 ha) lagoon-style pool facility with a center bar and many private cabanas, restaurants, shops, spa, bars and nightclubs, and the "Hard Rock Live", a concert venue.
Poker Palace is a locals casino located at 2757 North Las Vegas Boulevard in North Las Vegas, Nevada, near Nellis Air Force Base.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is the name given by gambling authors to the four U.S. Army engineers who first discovered in the 1950s the best playing strategy in the casino game of Blackjack that can be formulated on the basis of the player's and the dealer's cards. The so-called Basic Strategy, which was subsequently refined through the use of computers and combinatorial analysis, loses the least money to the casino in the long term.