At the Blackjack Ball one year, Tommy Hyland came up to me saying he had a question. The preface “I have a question for you” is always a little unnerving, especially coming from someone you don’t talk to very often. So then he asked me … [wait for it …]
“Why do you recommend KO?”
Continue reading Colin Jones (S1 E9): Knockout KISSPeople online think that I have great disdain for card counters. That isn’t true, per se. I have disdain for posers, and it just so happens that almost everyone who brags on YouTube about counting cards, or who claims online to be a “blackjack expert,” is a poser. My respect for the late “MathProf” (Dr. Michael Canjar) went up greatly when I saw him wearing his cargo pants, anonymously blasting 2x$800 on the double-deck at the Atlantis in Reno. One of my teammates had an interesting encounter in the wild with the late Peter Griffin. When someone is out there, putting cold, hard cash on the felt, and consequently growing the chip inventory on the kitchen table, that’s instant credibility in my eyes.
As Tommy Hyland wrote in the Foreword to Colin Jones’s The 21st-Century Card Counter, “the guy walks the walk.” I haven’t encountered Colin in the wild (yet), but I know Tommy is right on this one. It’s easy to talk the talk online, on Green Chip, or the Discord, and sound uber-smart, and knowledgeable about counting and all kinds of advanced plays, but the talk rings hollow if you try to get it past an actual practitioner. I can’t read 10 posts on any online forum without getting the urge to rant, but I resist that urge and refocus my chi.
Continue reading Colin Jones (S1 E1): You Had Me at “Zippered Pockets”This is the second part of a story about this year’s Blackjack Ball. If you didn’t read last week’s installment, check it out here
The game of 21 Questions as devised by Max Rubin is very difficult. Success requires some specific knowledge, often some mathematical ability, and a lot of fortuitous guessing. In 2013, I won this part of the competition (only to blow out quickly in the skills contest). In 2014, my guessing hat must have been on backwards and I didn’t do well at all. In 2015, I barely missed qualifying for the finals. In fact, if I had only correctly answered the question that I had submitted, I would have advanced to the skills contest. I’ll soon describe how this happened. Continue reading Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part II of II
Every year, somewhere in Las Vegas, there’s a gathering of blackjack professionals, past and present, along with some gambling attorneys and a few other miscellaneous gambling professionals, including one video poker writer. Predominantly male, many bring wives or dates, but most come alone. Perhaps it speaks poorly of how often I get out of the house, but it’s a high point of my social calendar. The 2015 version of this event occurred recently. Continue reading Attending the 2015 Blackjack Ball — Part I of II
Every few months, some rookie posts online about a surprising backoff incident, and then speculates, “I probably got nabbed by FRS (Facial Recognition Software).” I think I’ve got a soapbox sitting around here somewhere. Continue reading FRS, NSA, Salamanders and Scapegoats
