Jerry L. Patterson is an American

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...

. He authored several

gambling Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three el ...

books as well as a gambling

newspaper column A column is a recurring piece or article in a newspaper, magazine or other publication, where a writer expresses their own opinion in few columns allotted to them by the newspaper organisation. Columns are written by columnists. What differe ...

Bibliography

His first book, ''Blackjack: A Winner's Handbook'', was published in 1977. Patterson wrote ''Casino Gambling: A Winner’s Guide to Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, Baccarat and Casino Poker'' in 1980. This book was revised in 2000 to reflect changing gaming rules, methods, and conditions. He also wrote a gambling column in the late 1970s and 1980s, which was featured by several

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...

s, including ''The New York Daily News'', ''The San Francisco Chronicle'', ''The Orange County Register'', ''The Los Angeles Herald Examiner'', and ''The Atlantic City Press''

Blackjack strategy

Besides his work as an author, Patterson has also conducted clinics in blackjack, and he collaborated with Will Cantey and Herb Maisel to build the first blackjack computer simulation model. This model was used to validate the card counting methods published by Ed Thorp and Julian Braun in ''Beat The Dealer''. Patterson discussed this model on a panel with Ed Thorp, Julian Braun and other gambling notables at the 1964

Fall Joint Computer Conference The Joint Computer Conferences were a series of computer conferences in the United States held under various names between 1951 and 1987. The conferences were the venue for presentations and papers representing "cumulative work in the omputerfield ...

. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Patterson developed and published a method for tracking favorable clumps of cards and cutting them into play and tracking unfavorable clumps of cards and cutting them out of play. This is known as "shuffle-tracking". In 1982, a lawsuit initiated by

Ken Uston Ken Uston (January 12, 1935 – September 19, 1987) was an American blackjack player, strategist and author, credited with popularizing the concept of team play at blackjack. During the early to mid-1970s he gained widespread notoriety for perfe ...

prohibited the Atlantic City casinos from barring card counters but allowed the casinos to establish new blackjack rules making it much more difficult to attain an advantage in the multi-deck shoe game, except for players willing to play to the long-term. Since most of Patterson's clients and book readers are recreational, short-term players, he published a special report advising them of the potential impact of these new rules on their blackjack play. Patterson also responded to these restrictive new blackjack rules by developing (with Eddie Olsen), a non-counting strategy called TARGET 21. This non-counting blackjack strategy caused the division of blackjack players into two groups which Patterson refers to as traditional players and new era players.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Patterson, Jerry L. American gambling writers American male non-fiction writers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)