Another year, another Blackjack Ball. But wait … this year's 27th Ball was slightly different from previous years. Co-hosts Max Rubin and Richard Munchkin implemented some exciting changes and additions that included:
- The first-ever "World's Fastest Card Counter" competition
- Revamped Calcutta team betting
- Speech by Dr. Edward Thorp
- Different procedures to determine the winner of the Grosjean Cup, and a
- Bingo game.
This is the third consecutive year the Blackjack Ball has been held at the unique and spectacular Lou Ruvo Center in Downtown Las Vegas. Its large ballroom easily accommodated the 150 invitees, who included some of the most dangerous advantage blackjack players from here and abroad and others who have contributed to the craft. Guests paid $350 to attend, or they could purchase a table for $5,000 or $10,000, with premium reserved seating.
The Blackjack Hall of Fame (BJHOF) became a non-profit corporation in 2022, which allowed it to have a charitable objective. In 2022, $25,000 was donated to the University of Nevada Las Vegas Gambling Policy and Health, which is dedicated to studying problem gambling and developing policy recommendations for regulators and the industry to help minimize the harms of problem gambling.
In 2023, the BJHOF donated $37,500 to the National Council on Problem Gambling. As of this writing, the BJHOF committee had not decided how much and to whom would be donated based on this year's Ball. However, according to Max Rubin, "it will be substantial."
Additionally, Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, gave a brief talk at the Ball. His message was clear ... casinos target losers. Last year, there were 300,000 callers to the group's helpline, a substantial increase due, in part, to more players falling under the spell of online gambling. If someone you know has a gambling problem, speak to the person directly or a family member for help or treatment. There are plenty of resources at www.npcgambling.org.
A Look at This Year's Blackjack Ball
Last year, the Blackjack Ball was held in the fall, and guests wore formal attire. This year's Ball was held in the summer, and the dress was "business casual." Upon arrival, guests were escorted to an outside garden with an open bar to obtain a libation of their choice and hors d'oeuvres. Here, we all chatted with each other and met old friends we hadn't seen in a while. Jason England, an unparalleled master of the dark arts of taking down casinos from the outside, inside, and through cyber hacking, demonstrated some sleight-of-hand cheating moves that baffled even the best card counters.
At one point during his demonstration, I asked England to shuffle the cards, cut them, and deal three hands, with one being a blackjack on my spot. His sleight-of-hand casino cheating moves were accomplished flawlessly as I gazed at the blackjack hand he had dealt me.
Card Counting Competition
The first "World's Fastest Card Counting" (WFCC) competition began as soon as guests arrived. The WFCC was a single-elimination, "March-Madness" style competition where one player competed against another to determine the fastest and most accurate card counter.
"Anyone with skill, luck, or guts necessary to stand up to the hired guns of the game is welcome to play," Richard Munchkin said.
Guests placed their names on a board and when their name was called, they stepped up to the blackjack table to compete against other players. Each contestant was given a single deck of cards, and one card was randomly removed.
Cowboy Buzz was the dealer, and Max Rubin's daughter, Megan, kept time with a stopwatch. Contestants were allowed to hold the deck face down. When Buzz said, "Start," each competitor rapidly counted the 51 cards using a method of their choice. The first player who finished had to say whether his missing card was either a low, neutral, or high card. If correct, he advanced to the second round to compete against another round-one winner. However, if he misidentified the card, his opponent would automatically advance to the second round.
When the first round was completed, the second round began with the same rules, except two cards were removed from the single deck. The first player to call "Stop" had to say what the two cards were (low, neutral, or high).
Winners of the second round advanced to the third round, where three cards were removed from the deck. The semifinal round had four contestants: John Chang, Stan, Nick "the Greek", and Justin. After the WFCC, the following winners received their medals. Here are the winners:
- Gold Medal – John Chang (legendary former manager of the MIT Blackjack Team)
- Silver Medal – Stan (Blackjack Apprentice Pro)
- Bronze – Justin (co-manager of the Greek Team)
Since Chang won the WFCC contest, he was automatically awarded a seat for the subsequent Grosjean Cup competition (World's Greatest Blackjack Player).
(Note: The gold medal award for the winner of next year's WFCC will be renamed the "John Chang Medal" in honor of beating a very skillful group of competitors in this year's competition.)
Most players used the High-Low count during the WFCC competition. Therefore, they had to identify whether a low card was in the range of either 2-6, a neutral card (7-9), or a high card (10-Ace). Players were not allowed to use the Ace-5 count. Most competitors counted down their deck in 10-20 seconds.
In my first round, I feverishly counted the cards in my deck, but with only a few cards left my opponent Cody finished before I did. However, he misidentified the removed card. I advanced to the second round to face off against my friend Rick "Night Train" Blaine. Again, I was down to a few cards when Rick yelled "stop" ahead of me. He correctly identified the two missing cards this time, so he advanced to the next round, and I was eliminated.
Blackjack Bingo
During dinner, a fun bingo game was conducted by Dr. Ed Thorp. We were given a bingo card , and Dr. Thorp called random numbers, which we marked out on our card. When the 11th number was called (G-54), I filled a row and yelled, "Bingo." However, so did a surprising number of other attendees. The joke was on us, however, Dr. Thorp made a good point when he said, "You are all winners."
According to Mark Billings, author of The Ultimate Edge and one of the Blackjack Hall of Fame nominees, "All of the bingo cards did not have the same numbers, nor did they all win in the same way. Some won vertically, diagonally, or horizontally, with different columns or rows filling in.
Four or five numbers were required to win (some winners go through the middle "free" square). Nine numbers had to be pulled, with G-54 the last number. We pulled 11 numbers. The extras were specifically chosen, so they did NOT cause anyone to win. There was a total of 10 unique cards.
Not accidentally, no table at the Ball had more than 10 people. That way, no two people at the same table would win similarly. I know this because I set up the bingo game. I've done this only twice in 20 years, but involving the inimitable Ed Thorp was a coup I'll never forget.
Hall of Fame Tribute
Max paid tribute to Blackjack Hall of Fame member Frank Schipani (aka Al Francesco), who recently passed away at 90. Al was a frequent participant at the Blackjack Ball, a true gentleman, and highly respected by everyone in the room for creating the "Big Player" concept of team play.
Just about every one of the members of the successful blackjack teams present in the room (Hyland, MIT, Czechs, Greeks, Washington State, Florida, and others) owe their careers to Al. Bill Erb also eulogized Francesco with stories of how he and Al attacked Panama casinos. Al Francesco will always be remembered as "one of the greatest blackjack players there ever was."
Joanna (Queen of Spades) then spoke highly of Maria "The Greek," a Blackjack Hall of Fame member and co-founder and one-time manager of the successful "Greek Blackjack Team."
Maria recruited only the top talent who had to pass a notoriously difficult set of tests to get on the team. She was also the first woman to have ever won the title of "World's Greatest Blackjack Player" at a previous Blackjack Ball. She was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame at last year's Blackjack Ball. Since she couldn’t attend last year, she gave her acceptance speech at this year's Ball.
Dr. Ed Thorp also gave a short speech. He credited Max Rubin for the idea to create the Blackjack Ball (the first Ball was held in 1997) and for keeping alive the memories of all those who have beaten, and are still beating, the casinos with legal advantage play blackjack. Thorp wrote his best-selling book Beat the Dealer in 1961 while teaching at MIT.
"The press thought I was a fool for writing the book," he said at the time. "I was a math professor, not a gambler. And I wrote the book to create ‘a team of card counters.'"
Mission accomplished as over 100 card counters in the room gave him a standing ovation.
Modified Calcutta 
This year's Calcutta, where you can bet on which team you believe will win the Grosjean Cup contest, was modified to pari-mutuel wagering.
Each player was slotted into an appropriate grouping (team seed), and you could place a wager on one or more seeds (see photo at right). For the first time, everyone received a free $5 wager on the team of his choice.
A betting window was set up with the odds posted for each seed. A total of $18,240 in bets was made. I usually wager on the "Gambling Writers" team (of which I'm a member), but for some reason I passed and placed a wager on another team. (Keep reading for the results.)
2024 Nominees for the Blackjack Hall of Fame
One of the highlights at the Ball was the voting for the newest inductee into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. Every guest who was either a member of the hall, a skilled blackjack player, or a contributor to the craft voted for one of the following seven nominees. (Note: Every person cast one vote, and the vote of Hall of Fame members present or absent counted as three votes.)
After you read each nominee's accomplishments, whom would you have voted for?
Bill Erb
Mentioned in Ken Uston's books, Bill was trained by Al Francesco as a card counter and became the first Big Player (BP) on Al's blackjack teams — essentially, the first BP in history. In 1974, over 10 days in the casino at Dieppe, France, Al and Bill literally put the casino out of business.
Bill also became an expert hole card player and may have been the first blackjack player to get a significant edge on the house by milking loss rebates. Bill was creative, courageous, and ahead of his time. According to Al, Bill and Blair Hull were the two best BPs he had ever worked with in terms of total money won.
Bryce Carlson
Bryce Carlson is widely recognized today as one of the world's top authorities on advantage casino blackjack. The subject of a 1999 feature article in the Los Angeles Times by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael Hiltzik, Carlson burst on the scene in 1992 with his book Blackjack for Blood, which not only showcased an extremely strong, practical, and readily-playable system (the Advanced Omega II ) but also included a detailed presentation of camouflage and betting techniques designed to make it very difficult for pit bosses, the "eye-in-the-sky", and other "counter catchers" to detect winning play.
Blackjack for Blood has now sold over 100,000 copies and has gone through many printings and editions. With each new edition, Carlson carefully updates the book with new material that reflects current changes in the casino game.
Carlson's playing career spans several decades now, and he's still active as a professional player, with a solo career win estimated by those in the know of more than $750,000 (and growing). But for Carlson, it's not just about the money; it's also about thoroughly investigating and understanding the game from a practical and mathematical perspective.
As a noted player and author, he's also a researcher who has published several important papers on the mathematics of casino blackjack and advantage play in general.
In addition to extensive contributions to Blackjack Review, BJ21.com, and Blackjack Forum, Carlson has also published several important papers documenting his discoveries regarding incomplete multiple-deck shuffles (The Card Clumping Myth), multiple-hand play (Risk, Ruin, and Trip-Stake Wipe-Out), modified Kelly betting (Kelly Betting vs. Real-World Betting), and the potential (or not) of beating casino craps (Why Casino Craps Can't be Beaten).
Colin Jones
Colin founded and co-managed "The Church Team," one of the most prominent and prolific card-counting teams in the 21st Century. In 2008, Colin began building BlackjackApprenticeship.com, which has grown into the premiere blackjack training and community worldwide. It regularly graduates professional blackjack players to winning careers and costs casinos millions of dollars each year.
BJA's secretive and infamous boot camps have sold out for the last seven years and counting. Colin authored The 21st Century Card Counter: The Pros’ Approach to Beating Today's Blackjack and continues to be the voice and leader for the next generation of card counters.
Mark Billings
Starting in 1981, Billings enjoyed a blackjack career that included many usual suspects (counting, shuffle-tracking, steering, etc.). In addition, he traveled the world as one of the very early computer players. He was instrumental in pioneering advanced non-counting methods of getting an edge.
Many of these exploits are recounted in his book, The Ultimate Edge. Roulette was next, taking over where Doyne Farmer and the Eudaemons had left off and succeeding in a way that had to be seen to be believed. That adventure can be found in his latest book, Follow the Bouncing Ball. Throughout a 26-year career, Billings has played in over 500 casinos on six continents and has been thrown out of some of the best of them.
Norm Wattenberger
Norm is the foremost blackjack software developer in the world today, and his line of Casino Vérité products has come to be known as the quintessential tool for analyzing virtually any problem associated with the game of blackjack. The incredible graphics and the realism of the practice modes of CV have received the highest praise from the thousands of satisfied customers who have honed their skills on this magnificent product.
Norm has made many of his computer studies and applications available free of charge on the Internet, and you will be amazed at the sophistication of his analyses when you visit his website at www.qfit.com. A consummate programmer, Norm is an industry legend who continues to provide computer simulations and studies to answer problems on his blackjacktheforum.com site while continuing his blackjack research.
His two-volume Modern Blackjack is perhaps one of the most original and comprehensive treatments of the game in print and represents hundreds, if not thousands of hours of computer-generated insights into the game not to be found anywhere else.
Rick Blaine
Rick Blaine, known throughout the elite blackjack circles as "Night Train," is a skilled, disciplined, and winning blackjack player. Rick has taken professional play as a part-timer to new levels while staying under the radar.
During his career as a high-powered executive in the financial world, Rick was introduced to winning methods in the 1980s. While traveling worldwide, Rick mastered the art of expense-free play by combining business trips on corporate America's dime with profitable casino visits.
After being recruited on an existing high-stakes blackjack team, Rick learned the ins and outs of team play. That experience and managerial expertise prompted him to organize teams in the late 1990s.
Sharing his unique insights, Rick authored Blackjack Blueprint: How to Play Like a Pro … Part-Time, which many consider the most comprehensive book on the game. At the Blackjack Ball in 2015, he won the intense competition to claim that year's title of World's Greatest Blackjack Player. He's appeared as a guest on the Gambling With an Edge podcast hosted by Richard Munchkin and Bob Dancer.
Night Train is still active and is often sought out as a player by high-stakes teams due to his low profile.
Robert Loeb
"Bob" Loeb is a criminal defense lawyer, law professor, successful card counter, and lawyer for the AP community for over 25 years. He is the co-author, with I. Nelson Rose, of Blackjack and the Law. This original book covered the legal issues of card counting, countermeasures, barrings, arrests, searches, chip and cash seizures, civil forfeitures, taxes, Indian gaming, and Internet gaming.
Bob first became an advocate for APs in a case involving a bogus airport seizure by federal authorities of over $100,000 from a Tommy Hyland team member. Since then, Bob has represented dozens of players in cases, resulting in the recovery and return of over $1 million illegally seized or which casinos have initially refused to redeem.
He has defended APs against numerous serious criminal charges. One case involved five defendants who won $1.2 million in machine play and were charged with 84 counts of cheating, computer fraud, computer tampering, theft, and structuring.
At trial, Bob obtained findings of not guilty on all 84 counts. He has also defended criminal charges for hole-carding. Except for one misdemeanor conviction in a tribal court, he has won every hole-card case he has tried in state courts.
Bob has also been a consultant with attorneys on several civil and criminal gambling cases in several states and has been an expert witness for attorney Bob Nersesian in a case regarding the right to play anonymously. He has regularly fielded hundreds of calls from the blackjack community over the years, counseling them at no charge on their legal rights in casinos.
After the votes were counted in the Blackjack Hall of Fame voting, Max announced that Rick Blaine had garnered the most votes, and he was thus inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. The updated Hall of Fame members list and the year each person was inducted are listed below.
- Al Francisco (2002)
- Peter Griffin (2002)
- Tommy Hyland (2002)
- Arnold Snyder (2002)
- Edward O. Thorp (2002)
- Ken Uston (2002)
- Stanford Wong (2002)
- Max Rubin (2004)
- Keith Taft (2004)
- Julian Bruan (2005)
- Lawrence Revere (2005)
- John Chang (2006)
- James Grosjean (2006)
- Roger Baldwin, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel, and James McDermott, collectively known as the "Four Horsemen of Aberdeen" (2008)
- Richard Munchkin (2009)
- Darryl Purpose (2010)
- Zeljko Ranogajec (2011)
- Ian Andersen (2012)
- Robert Nersesian (2014)
- Don Schlesinger (2015)
- Bill Benter (2016)
- Don Johnson (2017)
- Wally Simmons (2018)
- Rob Reitzen (2019)
- Anthony Curtis (2020)
- Blair Hull (2022)
- Cat Hulbert (2022)
- Maria "The Greek" (2023)
- Rick Blaine (2024)
Rick Blaine had only two more votes than Colin Jones. You can view the Blackjack Hall of Fame at the Barona Resort and Casino in San Diego, California.
Part 2 of this article will contain the World's Greatest Blackjack Player competition – who won it and received the Grosjean Cup.
Acknowledgments
I want to acknowledge that assistance of Michael Dalton (blackjackreview.com) for formatting images, photos, and slides, and Max Rubin and Don Schlesinger for reviewing the article and providing me with some additional information prior to publication.
(Note: To avoid the awkward use of "his or her," I referred to attendees at the Ball in the masculine gender. Rest assured, there were some brilliant and very successful female blackjack players present. Additionally, a pseudonym was used to protect the playing careers of some of the players mentioned in the article.)
For Part 2 of this article, click here.
Henry Tamburin is the author of the Ultimate Blackjack Strategy Guide. To read more of his articles on blackjack and video poker click here.
