Blackjack is a casino banking game. It is the most widely played casino banking game in the world. It uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as "twenty-one". This family of card games also includes the European games vingt-et-un and pontoon, and the Russian game Ochko. The game is a comparing card game where players compete against the dealer, rather than each other.
A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shops, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertainment, such as stand-up comedy, concerts, and sports.
Games available in most casinos are commonly called casino games. In a casino game, the players gamble cash or casino chips on various possible random outcomes or combinations of outcomes. Casino games are also available in online casinos, where permitted by law. Casino games can also be played outside of casinos for entertainment purposes, like in parties or in school competitions, on machines that simulate gambling.
Let It Ride is a casino table game based on poker, where the player wagers on a five-card poker hand formed by their own three cards and two community cards. It is a product of Bally Technologies, under its Shuffle Master brand.
Frank Lawrence Rosenthal, also known as "Lefty" Rosenthal, was an American professional sports gambler, Las Vegas casino executive, organized crime associate, and FBI informant. Rosenthal, who was once called "the greatest living expert on sports gambling" by Sports Illustrated, is credited with bringing increased exposure to sports betting to Las Vegas in the 1970s.
The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students. The students were from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and other leading colleges; they 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 around the world have been formed with the goal of beating the casinos.
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.
Edward Oakley Thorp is an American mathematics professor, author, hedge fund manager, and blackjack researcher. He pioneered the modern applications of probability theory, including the harnessing of very small correlations for reliable financial gain.
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 Four Queens is a hotel and casino in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, on the Fremont Street Experience. The property includes a 690-room hotel and a 27,269 sq ft (2,533.4 m2) casino. The Four Queens was developed by Ben Goffstein, who named it in reference to his four daughters. The casino opened on June 2, 1966, followed by the eight-story hotel two months later. The hotel opened with 115 rooms, and a 10-story addition was completed in 1969. Another 18-story tower was added in 1981.
The Best Western Plus Casino Royale is a casino and hotel on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. It is owned and operated by Tom Elardi. The casino, measuring 19,000 sq ft (1,800 m2), caters to low rollers. The hotel includes 152 rooms.
The table limit is the minimum and maximum bet that a gambler can make at a gaming table. It is a form of yield management in that the limits can be changed to optimize the profit from a gaming table. Gaming tables have a limited resource to sell: the seats used by the players.
Super Fun 21 is a variation of blackjack. The game is played using a standard 52 card deck. Aces can be counted as either a one or eleven depending on which value would best benefit the player's hand. All the face cards in the deck each count as ten. The remaining cards are taken at face value. The player must first place a bet and is then dealt two cards face up. The dealer is dealt two cards as well, but one is face up and one face down. The player then has the option to either "hit", or "stand". The player's hand must beat the dealer's by coming closer to 21 without "busting". A winning hand with a total of 21 is called a blackjack, or natural.
Anthony Curtis is an American 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 Switch is a casino gambling game invented by Geoff Hall and patented in 2009. It is based on blackjack, but differs in that two hands, rather than one, are dealt to each playing position, and the player is initially allowed to exchange ("switch") the top two cards between hands. Natural blackjacks are paid 1:1 instead of the standard 3:2, and a dealer hard 22 pushes all player hands except a natural.
Peter A. Griffin was an American 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 used to gain an advantage while gambling, in contrast to cheating. The term usually refers to house-banked casino games, but can also refer to games played against other players, such as poker. Someone who practices 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 may result in players being banned by certain casinos.
Richard W. Munchkin is an American writer, director, producer, radio host and professional gambler.
SHFL entertainment, Inc. was a manufacturer of shuffling machines, table games, slot machines, and other casino products, based in Paradise, Nevada. Founded in 1983, it was acquired by Bally Technologies in 2013. Bally was itself acquired the following year by Scientific Games, now Light & Wonder, which continues to use the Shuffle Master name as one of its core brands.
Mike Goodman was an American professional gambler, a pit boss for a Las Vegas casino, and an author of books that gave advice on gambling and told stories of gamblers and their escapades. He is most known for his 1963 book How to Win: At Cards, Dice, Races, Roulette, which went through many printings and sold over a million copies.
