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Al Francesco
Al Francesco (born Frank Schipani; December 2, 1933) is an American blackjack player and gambling strategist. Considered to be “The Godfather of Blackjack”, Francesco is recognized as the creator of the team play concept, the “big player” strategy, and the drop card method. Beginning in 1971, Francesco personally recruited and trained disciplined card counters to work together in teams to beat the casinos. Franceso's teams of blackjack players would station themselves at various blackjack tables to count the decks, and when the mathematical odds turned in their favor, the counters would signal a “Big Player” to come to the table and place large wagers until the edge was lost and once again favored the dealer. While most card counters would eventually be discovered by casinos through their betting patterns and banned from further play, Francesco's unique team concept helped his players evade detection and continue winning. At its peak, Al Francesco's team was taking ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary, Indiana
Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city has been historically dominated by major industrial activity and is home to U.S. Steel's Gary Works, the largest steel mill complex in North America. Gary is located along the southern shore of Lake Michigan about east of downtown Chicago, Illinois. The city is adjacent to the Indiana Dunes National Park, and is within the Chicago metropolitan area. Gary was named after lawyer Elbert Henry Gary, who was the founding chairman of the United States Steel Corporation. U.S. Steel had established the city as a company town to serve its steel mills. Although initially a very diverse city, after white flight in the 1970s, the city of Gary held the nation's highest percentage of African Americans for several decades. As of the 2020 census the city's population was 70,093, making it Indiana's ninth-largest city. Like other Rust Belt cities, Gary's once thriving steel industry has been significantly affected by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Professional Gambler
Advantage gambling, or advantage play, refers to legal methods used to gain an advantage while gambling, in contrast to cheating. The term usually refers to house-banked casino games, but can also refer to games played against other players, such as poker. Someone who practises advantage gambling is often referred to as an advantage player, or AP. Unlike cheating, which is by definition illegal, advantage play exploits innate characteristics of a particular game to give the player an advantage relative to the house or other players. While not illegal, advantage play is often discouraged and some advantage players may be banned by certain casinos. A skillful or knowledgeable player can gain an advantage at a number of games. Card games have been beaten by card sharps for centuries. Some slot machines and lotteries with progressive jackpots can eventually have such a high jackpot that they offer a positive return or overlay when played long term, according to gambling mathematics. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 family of card games also includes the British game of Pontoon, the European game, Vingt-et-Un and the Russian game Ochko. Blackjack players do not compete against each other. The game is a comparing card game where each player competes against the dealer. History Blackjack's immediate precursor was the English version of ''twenty-one'' called ''Vingt-Un'', a game of unknown (but likely Spanish) provenance. The first written reference is found in a book by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes was a gambler, and the protagonists of his "Rinconete y Cortadillo", from '' Novelas Ejemplares'', are card cheats in Seville. They are proficient at cheating at ''veintiuna'' (Spanish for "twenty-one") and state that the object of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Card Counters
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 valued cards dealt. They generally bet more when they have an advantage and less when the dealer has an advantage. They also change playing decisions based on the composition of the deck. Basics Card counting is based on statistical evidence that high cards (aces, 10s, and 9s) benefit the player, while low cards, (2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, and 7s) benefit the dealer. High cards benefit the player in the following ways: # They increase the player's probability of hitting a natural, which often pays out at 3 to 2 odds. # Doubling down increases expected value. The elevated ratio of tens and aces improves the probability that doubling down will succeed.Thorp (1966), pp. 24–27, pp. 41–47, pp. 98–99, pp. 102–103, p. 110, p. 115. # They pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 entertainment, such as stand-up comedy, concerts, and sports. and usage ''Casino'' is of Italian origin; the root means a house. The term ''casino'' may mean a small country villa, summerhouse, or social club. During the 19th century, ''casino'' came to include other public buildings where pleasurable activities took place; such edifices were usually built on the grounds of a larger Italian villa or palazzo, and were used to host civic town functions, including dancing, gambling, music listening, and sports. Examples in Italy include Villa Farnese and Villa Giulia, and in the US the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island. In modern-day Italian, a is a brothel (also called , literally "closed house"), a mess (confusing situation), or a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 perfecting techniques to do team card counting in numerous casinos worldwide, earning millions of dollars from the casinos, with some bets as high as $12,000 on a single hand. He was banned from casinos around the world and would adopt various costumes in order to conceal his identity and still be able to play. He filed a high-profile lawsuit against these casinos and successfully received a ruling from the New Jersey courts that absent a valid New Jersey Casino Commission regulation excluding card counters, casinos could not ban someone simply for counting cards at blackjack. In response, many casinos changed their systems, increasing the number of decks in games or changing rules to increase the house edge. In the early 1980s, Uston also aut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blair Hull
Blair Hull (born September 3, 1942) is an American businessman, investor, Democratic politician, and philanthropist. Hull founded Hull Trading Company in 1985 and served as the firm's Chairman and chief executive officer before selling it to Goldman Sachs in 1999 for $531 million. The company, which leveraged technological innovations and quantitative models, was one of the world's premier market-making firms, trading on 28 exchanges in nine countries. Hull went on to found Hull Investments, LLC in 1999 which serves as a family office for three generations of the Hull family, and acts as parent company to a number of financial entities. In 2009, Hull founded Ketchum Trading, LLC, a proprietary trading firm that traded and provided liquidity in futures, options, cash equities and exchange-traded funds. And in 2013, Hull created Hull Tactical Asset Allocation, LLC. HTAA operates an actively managed ETF and utilizes advanced algorithms as well as macro and technical indicators t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MIT Blackjack Team
The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and other leading colleges who used card counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos at blackjack worldwide. The team and its successors operated successfully from 1979 through the beginning of the 21st century. Many other blackjack teams have been formed around the world with the goal of beating the casinos. Blackjack and card counting Blackjack can be legally beaten by a skilled player. Beyond the basic strategy of when to hit and when to stand, individual players can use card counting, shuffle tracking, or hole carding to improve their odds. Since the early 1960s, a large number of card counting schemes have been published, and casinos have adjusted the rules of play in an attempt to counter the most popular methods. The idea behind all card counting is that, because a low card is usually bad and a high card usually go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
“21”
Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same character. Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media. History The single quotation mark is traced to Ancient Greek practice, adopted and adapted by monastic copyists. Isidore of Seville, in his seventh century encyclopedia, , described their use of the Greek ''diplé'' (a chevron): 3⟩ Diplé. Our copyists place this sign in the books of the people of the Church, to separate or to indicate the quotations drawn from the Holy Scriptures. The double quotation mark derives from a marginal notation used in fifteenth-century manuscript annotations to indicate a passage of particular importance (not necessa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blackjack Hall Of Fame
The Blackjack Hall of Fame honors the greatest blackjack experts, authors, and professional players in history. It was launched in 2002, and its physical premises are in San Diego, California. History The Blackjack Hall of Fame is housed at the Barona Casino, in San Diego, California. The Barona Casino awards to each inductee a permanent lifetime comp for full room, food, and beverage, in exchange for each member’s agreement never to play on Barona’s tables. In winter 2002, a diverse selection of 21 blackjack experts, authors, and professional players were nominated for membership in the Blackjack Hall of Fame. The public was allowed to vote for about a month through the Internet. The final voting was completed at the January 2003 Blackjack Ball, an event open only to selected professional blackjack players and experts and hosted by blackjack author Max Rubin, at which the first 7 members were inducted. The following year, at the 2004 Blackjack Ball, 2 more inductees were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward O
Edward is an English given name. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon name ''Ēadweard'', composed of the elements '' ēad'' "wealth, fortune; prosperous" and '' weard'' "guardian, protector”. History The name Edward was very popular in Anglo-Saxon England, but the rule of the Norman and Plantagenet dynasties had effectively ended its use amongst the upper classes. The popularity of the name was revived when Henry III named his firstborn son, the future Edward I, as part of his efforts to promote a cult around Edward the Confessor, for whom Henry had a deep admiration. Variant forms The name has been adopted in the Iberian peninsula since the 15th century, due to Edward, King of Portugal, whose mother was English. The Spanish/Portuguese forms of the name are Eduardo and Duarte. Other variant forms include French Édouard, Italian Edoardo and Odoardo, German, Dutch, Czech and Romanian Eduard and Scandinavian Edvard. Short forms include Ed, Eddy, Eddie, Ted, Teddy and Ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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