The Blackjack Ball, an annual get-together of professional gamblers, was historically hosted by Max Rubin over New Year’s, when the big card-counting teams would create their own fireworks all over Vegas. It was great fun while it lasted. But New Year’s became a victim of its own success. Vegas is so crowded on holiday weekends that getting a room, a parking spot, or a seat at a blackjack table is almost impossible, and certainly more trouble than it’s worth. And, the big-team model went extinct. The Uston team is no more (though some of its original players are still out there). The Czech team isn’t even a distant memory. The MIT team lives on only in the movies. Do any of the Greeks even play anymore? Hyland’s old gang is mostly doing other stuff. The Holy Rollers are now a decentralized swarm of counting zombies.
With no more counting teams to accommodate, The Blackjack Ball these days is scheduled to avoid the chaos of New Year’s. But the pandemic brought a whole new type of chaos. While the casinos probably would have loved to see a hundred of the world’s top APs (who are mostly 50+ years old) wiped out by a single superspreader event, it was not in the cards for 2021.
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