Question of the Day - 28 September 2023

James Grosjean is considered by many to be the top professional casino player in the world today. The youngest-ever inductee into the Blackjack Hall of Fame, Grosjean knows more about what’s going on in the gambling trenches than anyone else in the business — and that’s pretty much on both sides of the tables.

Grosjean became a casino pro while studying as a graduate student at the University of Chicago's prestigious Department of Economics. 

Here’s an excerpt from a chapter on Grosjean in another book we're bringing out soon, Wired To Win by Michael Kaplan, the journalist who's been covering the advantage-play scene for the past couple of decades.

“He’s smart, computer savvy, mathematically skilled, hateful of casinos, adept at looking like a degenerate player, and blessed with a killer work ethic. While his playing partners sleep off their late nights at the table, he’s up early, eating cereal, hunched over his laptop, trying to make incremental improvements to enhance an already winning approach.  
           
“At the same time, Grosjean works his way through a roster of on-deck projects, figuring out unique ways to conquer yet-to-be-cracked gambits that other APs view as hopelessly unbeatable. Grosjean especially loves a virgin game, one that has yet to be molested by his competitors (FYI, he views every other AP out there as a competitor – albeit, an inferior one), and he conquers casino-placed roadblocks with an intensity that few others can match.”

Which brings us to The Ultimate Report—"The Book” for Casino Carny Games. 

First, we should point out that Grosjean’s previous books, Beyond Counting: Exploiting Casino Games from Blackjack to Video Poker and Beyond Counting: Exhibit CAA, sold for hundreds of dollars per copy when they were first published and you had to know someone to even qualify to buy one. So few were printed that today, they go for thousands on the resale market. That’s how valuable the information is; no one else in this scene comes close to what James does.

The Ultimate Report is his opus on a dozen of the most popular casino “carnival” games based on poker. They’re fun, so they attract lots of players, but most are expensive to play, since the strategies have been obscure or non-existent. No longer.

The book provides optimal basic strategies for the following games: Three Card Poker, Caribbean Stud, Let It Ride, Crazy 4 Poker, Four Card Poker, Cali Poker, Flop Poker, Mississippi Stud, Jackpot Hold’em, Heads Up Hold’em, Ultimate Texas Hold’em, and Criss Cross Poker. 

If you play any of these games, you’ll recoup the cost of this book in a half-hour (per Anthony Curtis) or five minutes (per Grosjean) of play by applying these strategies properly.

Thing is, the explanations are pretty dense with math and formulas. Luckily, the final chapter offers “MISS” (Make It Simpler, Stupid) strategies for the dozen games, which give you the quick-and-dirty basics for helping to protect your buy-ins. 

And here’s the other thing. In addition to improving your play, The Ultimate Report provides a fascinating look into the mind and methods of a world-class advantage player. If you’ve ever wondered what APs do and how they do it, you won’t get a better (and more of a bargain) look at that than in this book.