Lawrence Revere (born Griffith K. Owens; November 5, 1915 – April 23, 1977) was an author,
casino
A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...
pit boss
''Pit Boss'' is an American television series docudrama that follows Shorty Rossi, owner of Shorty's Rescue, an organization set up for Pit Bull rescue. The series aired on Animal Planet from January 16, 2010 to March 30, 2013.
Series overview
S ...
, and professional
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 ...
player best known for his book ''Playing Blackjack as a Business''. Revere played under multiple aliases, including Leonard "Speck" Parsons and Paul Mann.
Education and personal life
Revere had a degree in
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
from the
University of Nebraska
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
.
He died of
cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
on April 23, 1977.
Card counting
Revere promoted the following
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 ...
strategies developed with Julian Braun, which were detailed in ''Playing Blackjack as a Business'':
*The Revere Point Count
*The Revere Five Count Strategy
*The Reverse Plus-Minus Strategy
*The Ten Count Strategy
Revere Point Count was highly popular in the early days of counting and is still considered a benchmark strategy. His book only gave the single-deck version. He sold the multi-deck version and it is still sold decades later by relatives. He also sold high-level strategies referred to as Revere Advanced Point Count (RAPC.) These are now generally considered obsolete due to unnecessary complexity – although they are still valid and in use today.
Revere was a controversial figure as he worked both sides of the game at once (casino and player), advising both sides. But he was also known as a master of avoiding detection by casinos, and as an early proponent of composition-dependent strategy and floating advantage.
[Schlesinger, Donald "Blackjack Attack." 3rd edition, March 2, 2005, RGE Publishing.] And he trained many of the early counters, some of whom use his strategies to this day.
References
External links
Official site - No longer available
{{DEFAULTSORT:Revere, Lawrence
1915 births
1977 deaths
University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni
American gambling writers
American male non-fiction writers
American blackjack players
20th-century American male writers