Famous blackjack players

The people who matter in blackjack history are mostly not the biggest winners but the ones who published, organised or litigated: the analysts who worked out the mathematics, the team captains who turned it into a business, and the few whose court cases or negotiated games changed what casinos could do. The profiles below are limited to facts that can be attributed; winnings are reported figures, not audited ones. Edward Thorp and the Four Horsemen have their own articles.

Ken Uston (1935–1987)

Born in New York City on 12 January 1935, Uston went to Yale, earned an MBA from Harvard and became senior vice president of the Pacific Stock Exchange in San Francisco. He met Al Francesco at a poker game; Francesco had just launched “the first ‘big player’ type of blackjack card counting team” and recruited him (Wikipedia). Uston became one of the team’s three big players alongside Bill Erb and Blair Hull, then told the story in The Big Player (1977, with Roger Rapoport), which exposed the method and, per Francesco’s Wikipedia entry, got the team barred. Million Dollar Blackjack followed in 1981.

His lasting contribution was legal. In Uston v. Resorts International (1982) the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Atlantic City casinos “did not have the authority to decide whether card counters could be barred” without a valid Casino Control Commission regulation. Because the Commission has never issued one, Atlantic City casinos still cannot bar counters and rely on countermeasures instead; see casino countermeasures and legality. Barred in Nevada, Uston “adopted a wide variety of physical disguises in order to continue to play”. He was found dead in a rented Paris apartment on 19 September 1987, aged 52; the listed cause was heart failure. He was one of the seven original Hall of Fame inductees in 2002.

Stanford Wong (born 1943)

Stanford Wong is the pen name of John Ferguson, who earned a PhD in finance from Stanford while teaching in California; a friend chose the name partly from the university (Wikipedia). Professional Blackjack (1975) became the standard practical reference for Hi-Lo play. From 1979 he published the monthly Current Blackjack News, which became one of the main journals for professional players, reporting which casinos offered which rules and penetration.

“Wonging” is the technique he popularised in the 1980s: watch a table without betting until the count turns favourable, play while it stays favourable, leave when it falls. It avoids the negative-expectation hands a seated counter must sit through, which is one reason some casinos restrict joining a shoe part-way through. He is an original 2002 Hall of Fame member.

Peter A. Griffin (1937–1998)

Griffin taught statistics, calculus and differential equations at California State University, Sacramento, from 1965 until his death on 18 October 1998 (Wikipedia). The Theory of Blackjack (1979), subtitled The Compleat Card Counter’s Guide to the Casino Game of 21, is the mathematical foundation of modern counting: the effect of removing each rank, the efficiency of different counts for betting and playing, and the limits of what any count can achieve. It “is considered to be a classic in the field”. Griffin was one of the original seven Hall of Fame members.

Arnold Snyder

Snyder has edited Blackjack Forum, “the quarterly trade journal for professional gamblers”, since 1981, moving it online in 2004 (Wikipedia). His first book, The Blackjack Formula (1980), was the first to stress the importance of deck penetration, how far into the pack a dealer deals before shuffling, which is now understood as the single biggest determinant of whether a game is worth counting. Blackbelt in Blackjack is his guide to counting and other advantage methods in real casinos. He was an original Hall of Fame inductee in 2002, and his Las Vegas Advisor columns are the source for much of what is known about the Four Horsemen and the history of 6:5 blackjack.

Tommy Hyland

Hyland began playing in 1979 and has run blackjack teams ever since; his Wikipedia article says “the longevity of the Hyland team is unusual among blackjack teams” (Wikipedia). The teams moved beyond counting into ace sequencing and shuffle tracking. In 1994 members were arrested at Casino Windsor in Ontario; the judge ruled their play was intelligent strategy, not cheating. Hyland was elected by professional gamblers as one of the seven original Hall of Fame inductees. He also provides a first-hand description of Atlantic City’s 1978 opening rules, early surrender and dealer-hits-soft-17 on four-deck and six-deck games, quoted in how casino blackjack rules evolved.

Don Johnson

Johnson is the exception on this list: he beat Atlantic City not by counting but by negotiation. Offered high-stakes play in 2010, he secured rule changes including the dealer standing on soft 17, six decks, re-split aces and “a 20% rebate where casino would refund 20% of his losses” above $500,000 (Wikipedia). Over about six months in 2011 his reported wins were:

These are figures reported by Wikipedia from press accounts, originally publicised by The Atlantic in 2012; they have not been audited. The mathematics is instructive: a loss rebate changes the expectation of a session, because losses are partly refunded while wins are kept, so a large enough rebate on a game with a small house edge makes aggressive play profitable without any counting. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2017.

Max Rubin

Rubin is best known for Comp City: A Guide to Free Gambling Vacations, which explains how to obtain casino perks while risking as little as possible (Wikipedia). He hosts the annual Blackjack Ball, the invitation-only gathering at which Hall of Fame votes are cast, was a commentator on the first two seasons of GSN’s World Series of Blackjack, and co-hosted CBS’s Ultimate Blackjack Tour. He also consults for casinos. He was inducted in 2004, the Hall’s second year.

The Blackjack Hall of Fame

The Hall was founded in 2002 and is housed at Barona Resort & Casino in San Diego County, California (Wikipedia). In winter 2002, 21 candidates were nominated and the public voted online for about a month, with final voting at the January 2003 Blackjack Ball. Since 2006, existing members nominate and Ball invitees vote. Barona awards each inductee “a permanent lifetime comp for full room, food, and beverage”; in return each member agrees never to play at Barona’s tables. The casino gets a museum; the members get a hotel; the tables are protected.

The list is from the Hall’s members page. Al Francesco, inducted in 2002, deserves a line of his own: his teams of six counters and one big player were the template for Uston, Hyland and the MIT team.

What the profiles have in common

None of these players beat blackjack by playing hunches or systems. Each either computed something (Griffin, Wong, Snyder), organised something (Francesco, Hyland), negotiated something (Johnson) or established a legal precedent (Uston). The game itself, played with basic strategy under ordinary rules, remains a small house edge; the edge any of them held came from conditions, not from the cards being kind.

Related reading

• Edward Thorp and Beat the Dealer
• The Four Horsemen of Aberdeen
• The MIT blackjack team
• Casino countermeasures and legality