The Blackjack Ball was launched by Max Rubin, as part of his grand vision to celebrate
The inimitable Max Rubin
the greatest 21 players, experts, and authors. The first event was held in January 1997 and it’s been held in January every year since.
The Ball is open, by invitation only, to a highly select group of people, but has grown to well more than 100 people. Besides full-time blackjack pros, the list includes hedge-fund managers, software developers, Fortune 500 executives, the lawyer for the players (also a member of the Hall of Fame), and others who’ve used advantage blackjack as stepping stones in their evolution in business and high-finance.
Security, as you might imagine, is extremely tight; attendees are notified of the location shortly before the Ball, have to pass through several screenings to gain admittance, and are required to bring a chilled bottle of premium champagne. At first glance, all the precautions might seem excessive, especially considering the lengths to which the casinos go to portray advantage players as cheaters and thieves. But the fact is that the players are much more in danger from the casinos than the casinos are from the APs.
Anthony Curtis, in his office
A contest of skills is held every year and the winner is presented with the Grosjean Cup. After several final-table appearances and multiple runners-up finishes in prior years, our own Anthony Curtis finally closed the deal and won the coveted trophy—an engraved Nebuchadnezzar of Luc Belaire Champagne. The equivalent of 20 regular bottles, this monster sits in the conference room at Huntington Press and is so heavy, you can barely pick it up, let alone pour it into a champagne flute. We predict it’ll remain sealed for a long time to come.
The Cup is named after James Grosjean, considered by most players in the know the greatest AP of all time—the professional-gambler equivalent of Michael Jordon or Tom Brady. He’s proved it too: Grosjean won the Blackjack Ball’s skills contest three times before he was banned from playing and had the trophy named after him. He graduated from Harvard University, then got his Masters degree from the University of Chicago’s prestigious School of Economics. He’s also the author of Beyond Counting, the most comprehensive book on advantage play in existence.
Ed Thorp, the man who started it all
The 2017 Ball was also the 21st year of its existence. The significance of the number, coupled with the release of Edward O. Thorp’s new book, A Man for All Markets, made the Ball one of the social events of the year for the game’s elite. Thorp was in attendance and addressed the 130 or so attendees.
The Blackjack Hall of Fame inductee was Don Johnson, who made headlines a few years back when he beat the Atlantic City casinos for upwards of $5 million and has since been the subject of numerous print and TV stories detailing his methods and high-rolling lifestyle.
Don Johnson, blackjack multi-millionaire
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