The Church Team was a

card counting Card counting is a blackjack strategy used to determine whether the player or the dealer has an advantage on the next hand. Card counters are advantage players who try to overcome the casino house edge by keeping a running count of high and low ...

blackjack Blackjack (formerly Black Jack and Vingt-Un) is a casino banking game. The most widely played casino banking game in the world, it uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as Twenty-One. This fami ...

team that operated from 2005 to 2011. It was started and managed by Ben Crawford and Colin Jones. Over the years the team included approximately 30 investors, 40 players, and various levels of managers and trainers. The team was primarily based out of the

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

area but had almost 15 players from the

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

area as well as players from

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, NY,

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

and

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

. The team, at its highest point, was playing with $1.2 million of investors money and in the course of the 6 years won more than $3 million from casinos. The team would come together and meet quarterly in the Seattle area to discuss goals, business model changes, introduce new players, and test old players out. The group's story is the subject of ''Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians'', directed by a former member of the group, Bryan Storkel.Mary Pilon (March 9, 2012
"A Card-Counting Mix of Bibles, Blackjack and Cash"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. Retrieved 2013-10-13. The Church Team officially disbanded after 6 years in 2011.

References

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External links

CNN: My Take: Jesus would be OK with card countingReview: “Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians” Christian card counters
* ttp://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/466/transcript This American Life Transcript: Blackjack American blackjack players