Blackjack Idols
Tommy Hyland - Blackjack Team Player
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Speaking about famous and popular people of blackjack, it is impossible to forget about Tommy Hyland, a man, who is known not only as a professional and good blackjack player by himself but also as a wonderful manager, the owner of the most successful blackjack team in the history of this card game.

Tommy Hyland is a rather known figure in the field of blackjack: in 2003, he was chosen to become one of the initial Blackjack Hall of Fame members for his achievements and wonderful organizer’s talent; he has been running his blackjack team since 1979, and this fact gives Tommy a right to be called the most successful blackjack team manager ever mentioned.

Beginning

Thomas Hyland was born and grew up in New Jersey where he became interested in gambling from the very childhood. At first, it was not blackjack or any other casino card game but different sport events: Tommy bet on sport together with his friends and when he was at high school already, he began making bets seriously and even became a local bookmaker who accepted bets from other students and worked as the house actually. Moreover, Tommy Hyland was a sportsman by himself: he played golf but also did not miss his chances to make bets on this sport.

Hyland entered the college of Wittenburg (Ohio) to study political science where he began playing poker and other card games; and we would not probably have a chance to know about Tommy to be a famous blackjack player, if he did not read the book of Lawrence Revere Playing Blackjack as a Business.

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Blackjack

In 1978, when Tommy Hyland had read Playing Blackjack as a Business, he began to visit Atlantic City to play this card game but did not forget also about improving his knowledge of this card game by reading also other books on this topic, observing other players’ games and gathering the info from card counters.

Tommy read the books of Stanford Wong and Ken Uston and came to the conclusion that blackjack team play is very important if you want to reach much at this game. So, it was the birth of Hyland’s first blackjack team of 4 members, each of whom gave $4 000 as a start capital. In less than a year, this sum of money grew up to $50 000.

Hyland’s Blackjack Team was rather successful though had to overcome a lot of difficulties: some of team members were arrested for ace sequencing in Canada; Hyland was threatened, kidnapped and so one… Some members of his blackjack team had given everything up and Tommy had to look for other people to join his team….

In spite of all those problems, Hyland did not ever think to give up: he always supported the players’ rights, had “wars” with different casinos and always had a reputation of a kind and loyal person who was able to support his blackjack team and make it to be the longest-running and most successful one in history.

 

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