We covered Playing Blackjack To Win and Beat the Dealer (along with Bringing Down the House, Las Vegas Blackjack Diary, Blackjack Autumn, and The Blackjack Life) on other pages. On this page, we list and annotate the top 20 blackjack books that, in our estimation, were the earliest, most influential, most groundbreaking, most useful, and/or best-written of the many many books in the field. They’re listed in the order in which they were published.
Playing Blackjack as a Business by Lawrence Revere
Published a little less than 10 years (1971) after Beat the Dealer, Playing Blackjack as a Business took the game to a whole other level. Lawrence Revere was one of several pseudonyms for Griffith Owens, who was both a player and a pit boss—the original blackjack author with experience on both sides of the table. He also had a degree in mathematics from the University of Nebraska and he developed a count system (the Revere Point Count) and a number of strategies (with the assistance of Julian Braun, a computer genius who worked for IBM and also helped Ed Thorp; Braun is said to have run 10 billion hands of blackjack on an IBM mainframe in the ’60s). Though some of his work is now out of date, Revere influenced many players and authors who followed. Revere died of cancer in 1977.
The Theory of Blackjack by Peter Griffin
Peter Griffin was probably the pre-eminent blackjack theoretician of his time—or any time. He was another mathematician (a math professor at University of California Sacramento for most of his life) who took on blackjack as a challenge and a hobby. He was well-known for betting $5 a hand and jumping to $10 on a particularly juicy count; he admitted that he was a net loser, but his true love was the “pursuit of solutions to the myriad mathematical questions posed by this intriguing game.” He wrote The Theory of Blackjack in 1976 and it remains, to this day, the bible for 21 players who are also serious mathematicians. Theory includes the most complete and accurate basic strategy ever published for any number of decks and any set of rules, and explains the mathematics behind the basic strategy and the various card-counting strategies. He also introduced a pair of concepts, Betting Correlation and Playing Efficiency, by which card-counting systems could be compared. It was a great loss when Professor Griffin died of cancer in 1998 at the age of 61.
Turning the Tables on Las Vegas by Ian Andersen
The same year (1976), Ian Anderson came out with Turning the Tables, the classic book on casino comportment and the first book to broach the all-important consideration of how to get away with the money after winning it at the blackjack tables. The book went into extraordinary detail about playing and betting strategies, camouflage, interacting with pit personnel, maintaining a winning attitude, and much more. It was so influential and insightful that it’s said to have “launched a thousand blackjack careers.” After its publication, Andersen disappeared from the scene, as he plied his blackjack and poker trades for the next 20 years in complete anonymity, using a variety of identities and even nationalities (in 1979, Andersen’s name went on a ghostwritten novel, The Big Night, about a notorious gambler who trains a team of five women to beat Vegas out of a million bucks in one night). He surfaced again in 1999 with the sequel (see Burning the Tables in Las Vegas below).
The Big Player by Ken Uston
Ken Uston was the most famous, flamboyant, and controversial blackjack player in the 1970s and 1980s. He was also a brainiac who graduated from Yale and Harvard and had a highly successful career in business before joining up with the pioneer of team play Al Francesco (who never wrote a book). The team play used card counters who made small bets at tables; when the count got high, they signaled the “Big Player” to jump in and make monster bets. He revealed most, if not all, of the secrets of team play in 1977 in his first book, The Big Player. It’s a great adventure story of the never-ending battle between the team and the casinos, but in his quest for recognition, Uston managed to get Francesco’s team barred from all the casinos in Las Vegas. Uston went on to write a couple more blackjack books (Million Dollar Blackjack, 1982; Ken Uston on Blackjack, 1986), with more strategies all the way up to the Uston Advanced Point Count, and lots more stories from one of the greatest minds ever to tackle the game. Uston died in Paris at age 52 of a heart attack, though some suspect foul play.
Blackbelt in Blackjack by Arnold Snyder
If ever a book was written for beginning and developing card counters, this is it. Snyder was there early on (this book was published in 1983) and has, for 35 years, remained among the top two or three writers on blackjack and related topics in terms of knowledge, experience, inside info, and creativity. What’s so refreshing about this title and Snyder’s many other books on blackjack—Blackjack for Profit, 1982; Blackjack Wisdom, 1997; The Big Book of Blackjack, 2006 (see below); and Radical Blackjack, 2013, plus decades worth of his journal Blackjack Forum—is the power of Snyder’s prose. He is, and always has been, the most prolific, wide-ranging, and imaginative gambling writer of them all.
The World’s Greatest Blackjack Book by Lance Humble and Carl Cooper
It might not be the greatest, but it certainly is one of them, and it was, along with Blackbelt in Blackjack, the most comprehensive book on the game when it was published in 1987. It’s truly a college text that covers all aspects of the game, from memorization aids for basic strategy and card counting (Hi Opt I and II) to cheating dealers and the best places to play (at the time).
Professional Blackjack by Stanford Wong
Wong published three blackjack books in quick succession between 1992 and 1994. His first, Basic Blackjack, focused on proper basic strategy for all the rule variations, side bets, coupon play, and the like, and how to estimate what you gain or lose in expectation from them. It’s a handy reference for traveling pros, but the second book, Blackjack Secrets, is more of a learning book, covering basic strategy and card counting, mostly for beginners. Some of the info is dated, but the concepts are timeless—and Wong’s stories from personal experience are instructive. By the third book, Professional Blackjack, Wong had really hit his stride. Some of the material overlaps with Blackjack Secrets, but in this one, he delves deeply into the Hi-Lo count, providing index numbers for every rule variation. At more than 20 years old, it’s a bit dated, but it’s considered a classic for advanced players.
Blackjack Attack by Don Schlesinger
This book was published in 1997 and is still a strong seller, purchased by intermediate and advanced blackjack players who want to take their game to another level. It’s a tough go, but worthwhile for anyone interested in all the nuances of card counting and the thorny mathematical questions that have puzzled serious players of the game: optimal betting, camouflage, risk analysis, team play, systems comparison, and much more. The third edition was released in 2005 and contains a complete reexamination of Peter Griffin’s theoretical work, including what’s now the most accurate basic strategy and effects-of-removal charts ever devised.
Knock-Out Blackjack by Olaf Vancura and Ken Fuchs
Published in 1998, this book introduced a new count developed by Olaf Vancura, who earned his Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University, then joined the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; in short, he’s a literal rocket scientist. The Knock-Out count is unbalanced, which means it’s not necessary to perform the continuous mental gymnastics of converting the running count to the true count. Some purists insist that the K-O count isn’t as powerful as the hi-lo systems, but they all agree that it’s easier to use.
Burning the Tables in Las Vegas by Ian Andersen
This sequel to Turning the Tables was written 21 years later after Andersen resurfaced from a couple of decades in which he circled the globe as that rarest of gamblers: a high-roller with a big edge. Comportment in the casino came a long way in the intervening years and Andersen discusses everything from how blackjack changed between the first and second books and the psychological profile of the high roller to “crazy surrender” and guises and disguises. One chapter, “The Ultimate Gambit,” was written with Stanford Wong, who did the statistical work on Andersen’s deviations from basic strategy for cover. He also delves into managing risk, changing your name, and staying healthy on the hunt.
Blackjack for Blood by Bryce Carlson
Bryce Carlson is one of the most successful blackjack pros and authors still practicing his craft in the casinos worldwide. He does so as a hobby (he owns a computer company in southern California), but he’s been playing since the 1970s; he goes back so far that he bought the Revere Advanced Point Count directly from Larry Revere himself. He’s never been outed; no one knows what he looks like and he’s never been picked off by surveillance or counter catchers. So when he tells you how to become a blackjack pro, you can believe him. Originally published in 1992, Blackjack for Blood is still one of the best-selling blackjack books of all times; Carlson not only offers instructions on basic strategy and beginning and advanced counts, he has an extensive section on camouflage: “When you play casino 21, you’re really playing two games: blackjack against the dealer and poker against the pit.” We’re extremely proud to be the publishers of Blackjack for Blood.
Blackjack Blueprint by Rick Blaine
Rick Blaine has followed almost directly in Bryce Carlson’s footsteps. A (retired) executive at a Fortune 500 corporation, he too plays blackjack as a lucrative hobby and his book, first published in 2005, looks at blackjack from every angle: basic strategy, card counting, tournaments, team play, shuffle tracking, comps, location play, disguises, outwitting the eye in the sky, getting reimbursed for airline tickets to casino destinations, negotiating and optimizing rebates on gambling losses, hiding chips and camouflaging wins, security on blackjack-related websites, mitigating the risk of identity theft by casino and credit-agency employees, protecting your personal privacy when making large cash transactions at casinos, cheating, and much much more—it’s all in what’s considered one the most comprehensive blackjack book ever written.
Big Book of Blackjack by Arnold Snyder
Twenty-three years (2006) after coming out with Blackbelt in Blackjack, Snyder published his masterpiece, which competes with Blackjack Blueprint for the title of most comprehensive. The first six chapters cover the history of the game, from vingt-un in the Middle Ages to the rampant expansion of casinos in encyclopedic detail. Section 2 gets into the nitty-gritty of the playing basics; basic strategy; a whole chapter on even money; a whole chapter on card values that leads in card counting; the good, bad, and ugly rules; how to beat the most popular side bets (Royal Match, Super Sevens, Lucky Ladies); and how to beat the carnie offshoots (Super Fun 21, Double Exposure, Spanish 21, and Blackjack Switch). Section 3 delves into the blackjack battlefield (“winning is dangerous”); cheating and surveillance; team play; and advantage-play techniques. Section 4 caps off the book with various odds and ends, including the Blackjack Hall of Fame (of which Snyder is a charter member); blackjack poetry (only Snyder would have the talent and balls to include that chapter); and a Q&A. All we can say is, phew.
Dynamic Blackjack by Maverick Sharp
Published in 2013, Michael Shackleford called it “the first new significant blackjack book in years.” Its claims to fame are that it’s 600 pages (many of them tables) and covers the game in deep detail, and that it introduced the Dynamic Matrix Pro Count, a level-3 system in which card values range from -2 to +3) that claims to be “the most powerful single-parameter strategy published.” Sharp says that more than a trillion rounds of blackjack were simulated in developing the DMPro. Again Shackleford: “I’d recommend this book for serious students of the game, especially those interested in progressing to something stronger than a level-1 count.”
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