Professional Blackjack Player
- Ten Rules to be a Successful Blackjack Player Learn how to count cards:. You must learn how to count cards to be a consistent winner in live blackjack. Build a bankroll:. If you do not have 50x the minimum table bet in bankroll money you are not ready to play live.
- A professional blackjack player comes in many forms, so try not to get disillusioned by a player making thousands each week. The reality is that playing blackjack at casinos is a grind, and the.
Bill Zender, a former casino executive is now a well-known professional blackjack player and card counter. He has just released a new book entitled 'Advantage Play For The Casino Executive.' In this interview from 2002, he speaks with Robert V. Lux about his career in blackjack. Meet Tommy Hyland - The 'King' of the Card Counters.
This page is dedicated to some of the most famous blackjack players or professionals in the world. This page should continue to grow and you will be able to read about what each person did or what kinds of books they wrote. You can also view some of their accomplishments and find their websites where you can possibly contact them. Also, you will find many other experts besides blackjack players. These will include groups of people, mathematicians, statisticians and scientists who made breakthroughs in this card game. A few examples of these include land mark discoveries such as the card counting systems or those who fathered winning strategies and more.
Browse through the directory of professionals below. This list will be ordered alphabetically to find famous people in blackjack easier. Click on their name to read more details about them.
Al Francesco - Al is one of the most important players and experts of blackjack. He was the one who invented the 'Big Player' blackjack team concept and put Ken Uston under his wings. When Ken wrote about Al's secrets, in his book, this previously unknown system was broken by the casinos only after Al made millions from them. Francesco is also one of the orignal seven inaugural members of the Blackjack Hall of Fame.
Barry Meadow - One of the most famous harness racing and horse racing gamblers in the world. He wrote numerous books about racing, gambling, blackjack and casinos. Barry Meadow was also a writer of sitcoms, Sports Illustrated, weekly newsletters. He even played professional tennis and did standup comedy. Meadow also appeared in the Ultimate Blackjack Tour.
Big Chuck Gorson - Gorson is an impressive professional gambler who made a living making six figure income for 15 straight years by playing blackjack and other casino games. He also played in the Ultimate Blackjack Tour and appeared on many TV shows including The Casino.
Brian Zembic - Most famous for taking strange and odd wagers. One of his most famous bets was taking a dare by his buddies to get breast implants and keep them for a year in exchange for $100,000. He also appeared on 'The Man Show' and is a professional magician and gambler. Brian Zembic is also an avid blackjack player and online gambler as you can see from his profile.
Cathy 'Cat' Hulbert - A great female blackjack player who is dubbed 'the best female gambler on earth'. Cathy started off as a blackjack dealer who noticed a player making strange bet variations, who happened to be part of the famous Czech card counting teams. Hulbert became a member of Ken Uston's blackjack team and also became a great poker player who actually won the 1993 World Series of Poker bracelet.
Charlie Ergen - A blackjack player with a peculiar history. He was caught counting cards and was thrown out of casinos in Las Vegas. This man once worked at Frito Lay and eventually became the CEO of Echostar and eventually Dish Network, a company that runs satellite TV systems.
Edward Thorp - Author of 'Beat the Dealer' and the man who practically invented card counting. Thorp is a mathematics genius who taught as professor for years while playing blackjack on the side. He also wrote books on beating the stock market and how he made 20% annual returns for nearly 30 years in the market. Edward is also one of the seven inaugural members inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame.
Erica Schoenberg - One of the top female players of blackjack and known as the 'Blackjack Babe'. She is also known as the 'Poker Babe' as well because she is excellent at both. Erica is also very talented at mathematics and has attracted training from some MIT team members. As one of the most successful professional gamblers of all time, Schoenberg has won nearly a million dollars in her career.
Henry Tamburin - A doctorate in chemistry and great student of mathematics once lost all of his money at blackjack on a first trip to Las Vegas before they even walked into a hotel room. He got personal with blackjack and made it a quest to master the game and come up with optimized strategies to beat it. He eventually did and wrote many books and over 700 articles over the years to become a big name in the gambling world.
Hollywood Dave Stann - You may have seen Hollywood Dave Stann on Television numerous times. In fact, he is a professional actor and also a professional gambler with a talent for mathematics as well. The 'bad boy of blackjack' is known for trash talking and using psychological warfare and acting along with his game to become a great and popular player in the world of blackjack.
James Grosjean - Most famous for his advancements in blackjack player's civil rights, bankrupting Griffin Investigations and challenging other big casinos in the court of law. Grosjean is also a mathematical genius who wrote the book 'Beyond Counting' and was the youngest person ever inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2006.
Keith Taft - One of the first people to develop hidden blackjack computers was Taft. He was a physicist who worked with micro-computers and developed high tech blackjack computers with microchips. He helped players win millions of dollars and may have been the first person to ever record digital video into computer with hidden cameras.
Ken Smith - A very skilled player in blackjack who owns one of the most famous blackjack websites on the internet along with his own message board where many pro blackjack players hang out at, including Ken. Smith is known for his legendary blackjack tournament strategies and skills as well as appearing on televised events such as the World Series of Blackjack and the Ultimate Blackjack Tour.
Ken Uston - This player was a famous and interesting player who wrote the books 'The Big Player' and 'Million Dollar Blackjack'. He is also one of the first inaugural members during the founding of the Blackjack Hall of Fame, an expert card counter and the one who beat the casinos in court to make it illegal for casinos to bar card counters in Atlantic City.
Lawrence Revere - Revere was responsible for developing numerous card counting systems under his name and writing the best selling gambling book ever 'Playing Blackjack as a Business'. Lawrence played on both sides of the table as a dealer, professional gambler and even a pit boss. He is easily one of the greatest men of the game.
Max Rubin - One of the most famous faces in blackjack. Max has hosted and served as a commentor on countless television events related to blackjack, written a book and hundreds of articles in magazines and uses his skills as a consulting. He is actually one of the members of the Blackjack Hall of Fame and hosts the annual world class Blackjack Ball tournament.
Michael Konik - Konik is an professional blackjack and poker player who happens to also be a great entertainer. His passion has always been in arts, music and literature. Michael as spent years writing over 100 publications including 'The Man with $100,000 Breasts'. He has also participated in the World Series of Blackjack, World Blackjack Tour and six times in the World Series of Poker.
MIT Blackjack Team - The MIT blackjack team has a long and inspiring history. This article explains the history of the team that the movie '21' as based off of. Learn how the team began, when it was at a peak and who the people were that started the most famous blackjack team in the history of the game.
Sam Vaughn - A great player who started off in craps but began playing blackjack tournaments as his 'second game'. It turns out he won millions of dollars playing blackjack over the years, including a single million dollar grand prize at the Hilton Million Dollar Blackjack Tournament III series.
Stanford Wong - One of the greats in the sport of blackjack. Stanford has a Pd.D in statistics and knows the complex math behind the game. Wong also wrote many books about blackjack including 'Professional Blackjack' and is an avid card counter. He found a system to beat the house after the single deck shoe was being replaced with four deck shoes at casinos to fight card counters. He is also one of the seven inaugural members inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame.
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I've been gaming since 21 and always been playing roulette, i've always had an incredibly lucky streak in that game.
I learned blackjack and basic stratagey at a young age but never really cared for blackjack and continued playing silly casino games that involve no skill until recently (haha)
I just want to be led into the right direction from experienced players and professionals.
I'm trying to turn blackjack into a living and want to make at least 100k a year playing.
I currently had my BIGGEST loss of 7k in 1 night at a NY casino. I'm over my 'big loss' and want to move on and complete winning weekly to add onto my annual work related salary.
I'm looking for tips to roll with the big boys, I dream big and want to work both my job and have a side job out of blackjack
want to know how much you would recommended bringing each week/ day/ month, ect ect.0
all tips and hints will be valuable.
thank you all for your time
You're definitely in the right place for advice as there are a bunch of professionals and talented math minds alike on these forums. I'd be happy to lend you some advice on blackjack, an area of my expertise.
The first thing I'd probably do is point you at the 3 articles I wrote and can be found in the Articles section of this very site. They're designed to pull in a TON of information from all over the internet and hundreds of threads in this very forum and act as an 'A to Z' when it comes to counting cards in blackjack:
Article 1
Article 2
Article 3
Next, I'll go with some practical advice. Clearly you have some funds if you're gambling and winning $27k in 1 night on Roulette (ouch, a 5% HE game). It does indeed seem as though you've been quite lucky in your gambling history and congrats on that. As many others will point out, and I'll try to do so gracefully, though you may have been lucky in your past, if you're playing games such as roulette straight up (no advantage play) then you will go absolutely no where but to your Expected Value (EV) as you continue to play in the future. This means you'll go no where but towards, and past, 0.
I'd also caution you with how much information you posted. From here I can tell how old you are, what city you live in, and what your member status is at certain casinos. Notice I didn't repeat your information so that you can edit it out of your Opening Post =). If you want to play blackjack professionally, your identity and personal information is very important to you.
Continuing on, I want to quickly touch on another topic you mentioned... You stated you're over your big loss and want to move on and 'complete winning weekly,' etc. I want to point out something very important. Just because you're counting cards does NOT mean you're going to win every hand. In fact, you'll LOSE more than HALF of your hands. The reason counting works is because you bet more when you have an advantage, but that doesn't mean you'll always win more hands. The dealer is just as likely to get a good hand as you, but you can double, split, and get paid 150% for blackjacks. This is all covered in my articles, but the main point I want to make is you will still have BIG losing nights from time to time. Overall though, I can mathematically prove you'll win if you're playing correctly. Card counting does not ensure one to win in the SHORT TERM (anything under like 50,000 - 100,000 hands).
As far as your bankroll, how much to take each session, etc, that really depends on a lot of information you haven't shared with us. We need to know how much money you can put towards your bankroll. I'll just let you know now... If you have a big bet of about $400, then you're going to need around a $40,000-$50,000 bankroll (pending spread, games, etc, etc). Do you have that much money on hand? Are you willing to commit to that much money over the course of time if needed (i.e. playing out of a theoretical bankroll)?
I welcome you to the community and am happy to hear you want to learn a new skill, but this is not an endeavor to be taken lightly. You will not make $100k/year unless either you're full time, or you're betting a lot of money (max bet like $5k), in which you'll surely get burned out from most places and only be able to do that for a year or two. We have a counter on these forums (kewlj) that will hopefully chime in, but I believe he's mentioned his big bet is 'mid blacks' so I'm assuming around $400-$500, and he's updated the forums with his results of around $100k per year. Though to be fair he also has supplemental machine play, but it's about 80% from BJ if I recall correctly. He does this full time. So not only are you playing 30-40 hours per week, you're scouting games, record keeping, traveling, etc, which will take you another 10-20 hours per week. I'd estimate (because I'm not full time) you're still going to need to put in 60 hour weeks to hit that goal unless you're again, betting huge. p.s. for a max bet of $5,000 you'd need like a $500,000 bankroll.
Please review my 3 articles, and re-read them again. After that, you should have a pretty good idea of what you're getting yourself in to. Feel free to ask any questions on the articles, in this thread, or my A-Z thread in the Gambling->Blackjack section of this site.
Again, welcome to the forums.
I'm trying to turn blackjack into a living and want to make at least 100k a year playing.
This is pretty difficult to do if you're not a full time advantage player.
Counting alone can't get you there.
You'll need a huge bankroll to generate 100K in EV in your free time, but your bet sizes will attract significant attention and you'll probably burn out quickly. Look up some of KewlJ's posts if you want to get an idea of what it takes to generate 6 figures a year counting blackjack solo.
Your other option is to build a library of advantage plays and be more opportunistic. Counting can be supplementary but you'll generate way more EV hole carding carnival games, edge sorting card rooms, or learning how to steer cards with precise cuts at the beginning of SD/DD games. Also look into side bets.
I think what most people don't realize is that to be a truly successful advantage player, you need to be scouting more than you're playing. You're better off scouting for a Holecard Mississippi game for 9 hours and slamming it for an hour (50%+ edge) than grinding blackjack for 50 hours (1%-2% edge)
And if you want to be in the true elite tier of APs, you need to learn how to analyze games yourself. Sidebets and Carnival games with enormous math errors pop up occasionally, and if you can do the EV analysis on the game and generate a winning strategy before anyone else does, you'll get rich very very fast. Teliot from APheat recently posted an article about a side bet that paid X to 1 instead of X for 1. This gave the player a 10% edge instead of a -5% edge, but you wouldn't know that unless you could do the analysis yourself and hit the game hard before it was fixed.
Romes, I will definitely be reading your articltes and practicing what you preach. However....I'm still new to 'the count' and am very intimated by keeping up with the count.
I know 100,000k per year sounds unreasonable but you must forgive me, i'm young and trying to live the Dan Bilzerian dream...lol
How about we be a little more reasonable here, if I'm looking for make a quick 200-500 dolllars per week, easily playing BJ - what would be my best route and way to go?
If i can amass a bunch of small wins they will add up opposed to me living this fantasy of a bunch of giant 5k and up wins in a night.
You'll need multiple casinos in your rotation with this kind of spread though. If you hit the same place every weekend you'll burn out fast. I don't know much about NY casinos, but East Coast games in general suck so this might be an obstacle for you.
If you're looking to make money, counting really isn't the way to go unless you're willing to make it your full time job, and even then its a grind. If you're looking to have some fun playing blackjack, gain some stories for your grandkids, and make a few extra bucks (possibly) you'll have a much better time overall.
On being intimidated by 'The Count', don't be. You're literally adding and subtracting one repeatedly. After a few hours of practice you'll be able to count down a deck in 20-30 seconds. After about 100 hours of practice it'll be second nature. No dealer will ever be able to deal faster than you can count, its physically impossible.
This is 'The Count' you should be scared of though:
I'm looking for tips to roll with the big boys
Don't set out with the goal of playing big.
Play as well as you can, at a level that is appropriate for your bankroll.
To do that, you need to understand the game, understand your plays, and understand what your betting ramp should be.
If that doesn't make sense, stop and save money from your day job. Maybe hire an investment advisor.
I won't give you any actual BJ advice other than don't count on being successful purely on counting. It's incredibly rare nowadays for someone to be successful given all the pitfalls and small advantage. There's very few successful BJ players who concentrate solely on counting many very talented people with resources and connections have failed. 
I know we have guys like KJ who's told us of his success. He seems to be 100% dedicated to his craft. That alone probably isn't enough. I believe have what it takes or you don't, 99% don't. It's like being a SUCCESSFUL singer.
He's in the perfect location.
I'm assuming he ate, drank and slept BJ at the beginning. I assume he struggled at the beginning.
Pro Blackjack
I know you say you're over you're 'big loss' and want to move on. I'm really skeptical that someone who's quickly won 27k and tattooed a roulette number on their body is over anything related to gambling, especially at such a young age.I certainly hope the living Dan Bilzerian dream comment was a joke. Unless you are playing super high with a huge BR or find something incredible, you won't have time for partying.
PS You you've already made your big mistakes and publicity commented about something that could easily identify you in a casino. Anyone working in a casino who reads this will certainly remember if the ever see someone with a 23 tattooed to their wrist.
Professional Blackjack Player Without Card Counting
So I am concerned that in your opening remarks you said something to the effect that you didn't like blackjack much. If you are looking at it as just a means for making money or a living, I honestly don't know if you can or will last all that long.
Second pretty big red flag I saw, was your mention of something to the effect of 'making money weekly'. Maybe you just made a poor choice of words, but that is far from how blackjack works.....just about as far away as you can get and it is paramount that you really have an understanding of how blackjack works....how it's all about 'long term' and in the short term anything can and WILL occur including tons of losing before you finally begin to inch towards 'the long term'.
Professional Blackjack Player Kc
Navigate to the card counting school or tutorial or whatever it's called.
Read that.
Lotsa people have dreams and desires to count cards. Many try to learn and figure out it's more difficult than they expected.
Blackjackinfo.com
Navigate to the card counting school or tutorial or whatever it's called.
Read that.
Lotsa people have dreams and desires to count cards. Many try to learn and figure out it's more difficult than they expected.
The 'mechanics' of counting cards are ridiculously easy. You count the cards as played. You memorized a few dozen index plays (more than a few if you want to squeeze extra pennies). I mean literally, a monkey could learn to do this.
It becomes a little more difficult to do this in an environment where there are people that don't want you to do this. LOL.
I would say the most challenging part is dealing with the swings involved. It does take some doing to be able to handle big downturns and LONG downturns (months of losing). Few people are prepared for that and don't really know if they can handle it until they go through it a few times. The best you can do is to try to know what is possible and be prepared for it by having the necessary bankroll to withstand it.
Professional Blackjack Tips
I don't know if it is against the rules of promotion, but software is a very valuable tool in that preparation and Norm's Qfit products are the best I have come across. Anyone serious or even remotely considering this avenue, needs to make that investment. Just playing around you will learn so much and it will answer questions that you didn't even think to ask.
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