Question of the Day - 05 July 2022

The Blackjack Ball was launched by Max Rubin, long-time casino executive and advantage player and author of our book Comp City. It was part of his grand vision to celebrate the all-time greatest 21 players, experts, and authors. The first event was held in January 1997 and it’s been held in January ever since.

The Ball is open, by invitation only, to a highly select group of advantage players and the like, 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, gambling lawyers, 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, but look again; considering the lengths to which the casinos go to portray advantage players as cheaters and thieves, the players are much more in danger from the casinos than the casinos are from the APs.

A contest of skills is held every year and the winner is presented with the Grosjean Cup. 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 proven 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 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. And we're publishing a couple of new books from James later this year. Watch for them. 

After several final-table appearances and multiple runner-up finishes in prior years, our own Anthony Curtis finally closed the deal in 2017 and won the coveted trophy — an engraved Nebuchadnezzar of Luc Belaire Champagne. The equivalent of 20 regular bottles of champagne, this monster sits in the conference room at Huntington Press and you can see how big and heavy it is in the photo. It was finally opened for the last office party.