Who are Blackjack Idols?
Blackjack, as well as many other fields, has its own heroes who should be recognized by faces. Many kind and thankful words might be told to all of these people as they had inscribed their names to the history of blackjack forever.
As well as the Hollywood Wall of Fame honors film stars, the Blackjack Hall of Fame honors the stars of blackjack: each year one more person becomes a Hall of Fame nominee at the annual Blackjack Ball and gets an opportunity to live, eat and drink at the Barona Hotel (the place in San Diego, California, where the Blackjack Hall of Fame is located) for free if promises never to play at the Barona Casino.
Founded in 2002, the Blackjack Hall of Fame awarded 7 people at once; these 7 people had left substantial heritage for blackjack games and had a right to be called gurus, masters and even idols of blackjack. They had been chosen to become the initial members of the Blackjack Hall of Fame because of the great work they had done for blackjack.
And though the game of blackjack may boast with its new generation of outstanding gamblers, experts, strategists and book authors, the names of these 7 blackjack masters should be known by every person who is a fan of this noble and exciting card game.
So, the 7 initial Hall of Fame nominees and blackjack idols at the same time were:
Arnold SnyderThis person is a professional blackjack player by himself but he is known as a great blackjack writer and expert of this game. Arnold Snyder had written 9 books about blackjack and many articles on this topic; many online resources can be found today where Snyder describes different tactics, formulas and strategies of playing blackjack. Read more  |
Edward O. ThorpIn 1962, the book of Edward Thorp Beat the Dealer was published and became available to everyone; he described 10 counting systems there and really became a nightmare of all casinos because he destroyed the myth of impossibility to beat them out of their money. Edward O. Thorp is considered to be the father of card counting: he wrote many books about blackjack. Read more  |
Ken UstonKen Uston began his blackjack career by being a member of Al Francesco’s blackjack team. Thanks to this great experience, he has become one of the greatest blackjack players who used card counting and gathered his own blackjack team afterwards. He used Al Francesco’s concept of Big Player and wrote a book of the same name which made him popular. Read more  |
Al FrancescoAl Francesco should be definitely considered as the greatest and most respected player in the history of blackjack. He was the one who invented the concept of blackjack team play known as Big Player. Ken Uston told about Al Francesco to be his teacher of card counting whose blackjack techniques were used by many blackjack teams to play and win. Read more  |
Stanford WongWong is the author of Professional Blackjack: this book described his own blackjack technique known as “Wong-ing”, Stanford Wong is also known as a great analyst of blackjack methods and techniques. "Stanford Wong" is his pen name: real name of this wonderful person is John Ferguson. Wong is widely known as a famous blacklack author. Read more  |
Tommy HylandHe is manager of the most successful blackjack team in the history of blackjack game: every year Hyland’s team beats many casinos out of great sums of money. Tommy Hyland administrates and trains all team members by himself, and they use such techniques as card counting, big player, computer play and key-carding. Read more  |
Peter GriffinPeter Griffin is the author of the book named The Theory of Blackjack where he continued the work of Edward Thorp and described the complete theory of blackjack and mathematics usage during a game. Though blackjack was not Griffin's main passion, he deserves the right to be called a legend of this noble and exciting card game. Read more  |