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Best Blackjack Players in the World

Kevin LentzBy Kevin Lentz Writer at Casinos.US Updated: 07/24/2024
Kevin Lentz Kevin Lentz Writer at Casinos.US See Full Bio

Kevin has been involved in the gambling industry since the ‘80s. From winning tournaments to casino management, he’s ultimately done it all. Throughout the years, he’s written for various iGaming publications on topics such as the legal landscape of online casinos and strategies behind winning. His favorite game is blackjack.

Person playing blackjack The Best Blackjack Players in the World

You will find the Blackjack Hall of Fame at the Barona Casino in San Diego in a small room in the back. Opened in 2002, the Hall of Fame is home to the best blackjack players in the world. Who decides who the best blackjack players are? Well, only the top blackjack players in the world, who meet once a year in Las Vegas at the world famous Blackjack Ball.

An invitation, only from someone already in the Hall of Fame, and a chilled bottle of champagne is all that is required to attend the secretive gala held every year to bring together and celebrate the world’s best blackjack players.

One of the night’s functions is to nominate one new player to the Blackjack Hall of Fame. And now, with almost 30 inductees, voted on by the best of the best, there is little doubt which are the best blackjack players ever.

Who Are the Best Blackjack Players in the World?

We will take those thirty great players and list the seven best blackjack players ever. Describe each one’s contribution to the great game of blackjack and give you our opinion on who the greatest blackjack player ever is.

Great blackjack players are a sort of incongruous group. Most players who made our list have written extensively about blackjack and have attracted widespread notoriety throughout their blackjack careers. But to play blackjack, especially blackjack at a very high level, means flying under the radar.

It’s entirely possible that the best blackjack player in the world may be someone that neither you nor I nor the Blackjack Hall of Fame members have ever heard of. Some seemingly innocent tech bro, actor, or small business owner who has been taking the casinos for a ride for years and millions of dollars right under everyone’s noses. We think it’s unlikely, but it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility.

Who Are the Best Blackjack Players Ever?

Ultimately, playing blackjack is about making money, and money certainly makes it easier to keep score. But you will find that many on our list broke new ground in advantage play at blackjack, pioneering new plays or workarounds that may not have made them a ton of money but definitely helped the advantage play community overall.

You will also find a lot of mathematicians in the early group of the best blackjack players because it was their hard work at breaking down how to beat the game that allowed everything else that happened afterward.

Edward Thorpe must be on any list of great blackjack players. He is literally the man who took all the evidence that was beginning to mount from disparate papers and studies and his own research with early computers and first put it together in his seminal book Beat The Dealer in 1962, which showed the world that blackjack could be beaten in certain circumstances.

He was also an avid player, eventually being banned in Reno and Las Vegas but not before making tens of thousands of dollars at the tables.

Another early mathematician, author, and strong player was Stanford Wong. Born John Ferguson, his nom de plume earned him a first-round entry into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2002. His book Professional Blackjack was a serious and scholarly approach to the game that was long considered the Bible for 1970 and 80’s blackjack players.

He also pioneered the use of Wonging, basically back counting the game before beginning to play only once the count has gone positive and then stepping away again when the count goes negative. The Big Player Approach, the MIT team used to beat Vegas for millions, is a subset of Wonging. He also led early blackjack and video poker teams in Nevada, reportedly earning millions.

No story of great blackjack players would be complete without Ken Uston. While some people characterize his experiences listed in his books, The Big Player and later Million Dollar Blackjack, as more fictional than real, there is no doubt that Ken ran several very successful count teams, and if not the first person to use a disguise to avoid heat at the tables, at least one of the most effective and flamboyant.

His books sparked the popular imagination. His tales of the big player approach, where another counter would monitor the game, only flagging in the Big Player when the count was positive would inspire generations of other big player teams, including the MIT team and the Greek team who would later burn down the house with the technique.

Another of the first-round entries to the Hall of Fame was Arnold Snyder. For more than 40 years, Snyder has published his Blackjack Forums, which has kept the card counter community connected and resilient.

Some of his most important contributions to blackjack came in books like Blackjack Shuffle Tracker’s Cookbook, which took a detailed look at shuffle tracking and ace sequencing, and his Blackbelt in Blackjack, which is still read by most aspiring card counters today.

Many may see Anthony Curtis as more of a promoter than one of the world’s top blackjack players. But long before tens of millions read his Las Vegas Adviser newsletter, Anthony was a young counter and advantage player who played on teams run by Stanford Wong.

He parlayed that early success and some big Blackjack tournament wins into a household name and a brand worth millions, and continues to be interviewed by major networks whenever a gambling story comes up, along with teaching millions of his readers how to play the Las Vegas comp system for all it is worth in his publications. His articles on scoring free buffets have probably fed more people than many major food relief organizations.

Not every great blackjack player has to wear a disguise and count cards. Don Johnson beat Atlantic City for $15 million and Las Vegas for millions more while apparently never raising his bet with the count and in full view of the casinos who were falling all over themselves to get his play.

Using sophisticated modeling of the casino loss rebate programs that can go as high as twenty percent for people willing to show up with at least a million dollars, Don Johnson was able to set table conditions that enabled him to have the mathematical edge while flat betting.

Quitting when the computers said to take the 20% rebate on losses and winning until the models said stop, he also walked away on negative counts, used all sorts of shenanigans to force dealer errors, and generally played perfect strategy, but he won and kept winning until the casinos realized the error of their ways.

Who Is the Best Blackjack Player in the World?

The best blackjack player in the world will be a very subjective and lively debate. But as someone who has played and worked on both sides of the table for more than three decades and thrown out more card counters than I could remember, my money for the best blackjack player in the world is James Grosjean.

James is a player’s player. Yes, his 2000 book Beyond Counting was a colossal hit and showcased his technical skill as well as laying out attacks on blackjack and other casino games from hole carding, shuffle tracking, and mental games to get deeper cut card penetration and just about any way possible to beat the game of Blackjack.

And yes, he gained even more notoriety and fame with several high-profile court cases. One where a Las Vegas casino was found to have improperly detained him, resulting in a $300,000 verdict, and then the one that bankrupted the world’s most hated card counter hunters, the Griffin Investigation Agency who, a jury found had slandered Mr. Grosjean when they labeled him a cheat.

But Mr. Grosjean continues to play at casinos in Las Vegas and around the world just as he has for the past thirty years. There are even reports that he occasionally will play blackjack online if he finds a game that he feels is exploitable or a bonus that seems too good to be true. Flying under the radar and using a trusted team to do most of the work, he continues to exploit blackjack and any other poorly conceived table game for all its worth, which is a very rare feat for someone in the Blackjack Hall of Fame.

Not resting on his laurels, continuing to make money playing instead of selling out to become a trusted casino game protection guru, and his deep and undying commitment to looking at every aspect of the blackjack game to reveal flaws is what I think makes James Grosjean the best blackjack player in the world. 

Conclusion

Many of the best blackjack players have benefited from the early players and mathematicians like Edward Thorpe, Stanford Wong, and Arnold Snyder, who first cracked the game and all of its secrets.

Players like Ken Uston and Anthony Curtis then used those insights to open new and exciting ways to take advantage of not just blackjack but also casinos more generally. And then today’s players like Don Johnson and James Grosjean used computer modeling and increased computer power in general to explore all dimensions of the game, including g loss rebates and free play as well as side bets and shuffle points to show even more innovative ways to take advantage of the game.

And while it’s hard to imagine what new direction they will find, there is almost certainly a future Blackjack Hall of Famer out there right now, putting simulations and thought experiments together to find new ways to beat the dealer.

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