The Blackjack Ball: Costumes, Legends, And The Man Who Beat The Dealer

Imagine it’s 1951, and you’re a young physicist studying general relativity or quantum mechanics or the Big Bang theory and you find yourself at a dinner with other physicists, and there, at one of the tables, sits Albert Einstein.

Without Einstein, if Einstein didn’t exist, your entire career, your entire passion, your entire self as you know it wouldn’t exist. Without Einstein paving the way, you might have ended up selling insurance. Who knows?

And yet here you are. You decide to take the leap. You’ve seen other physicists, older physicists, chatting him up. He seems approachable. So you decide to take the plunge. You decide to wander up to the old master. You take two steps forward, one step back. You linger. You doubt. You finally work up the nerve, you stick out your hand, he takes it, you shake it, and you say …

“Sir, it is a great honor to meet you. Without you, I wouldn’t be a physicist. Without you, I don’t know who I would be.”

Well, replace “physicist” with “blackjack player” and “Albert Einstein” with “Ed Thorp” and you’ll have some idea of what I witnessed last Saturday night at the Blackjack Ball in Las Vegas.

I say “some idea” because I’m generally — and relatively — certain Thorp, 93, garnered even more respect than Einstein would’ve. After all, physicists are probably a bit more socially awkward than advantage card players.

I asked Thorp about this, about what it’s like to be revered in this manner.

“I feel very happy that a lot of smart people found an area in life that they could enjoy and prosper in, and that they did very well with it,” Thorp told me. “And gambling teaches you how to live the rest of your life in a smart way too.”

The Ball

The Blackjack Ball, in short: It’s an ultra-exclusive gathering of the world’s best blackjack and advantage players. People travel to Vegas from all over the world to attend. Good luck getting in, because you don’t just go to the Blackjack Ball. You’re invited. Handpicked. Vouched for. It’s like Skull and Bones, but with counting systems and bankrolls instead of secret handshakes and senators’ sons.

It started back in 1997, hosted by Max Rubin — the revered author, player, and casino whisperer, and boy howdy, wait until you get a load of Max’s tale, to be presented shortly and without this or any other author getting in his way — as a way to get the best of the best together for one night of booze, brainpower, and to put someone in the Blackjack Hall of Fame. (This year it was Colin Jones, founder of BlackjackApprenticeship.com and who has run many blackjack teams, including the famed Church Team, which was composed solely of church-going Christians.)

Since the debut in 1997, the Blackjack Ball has become part reunion, part competition, part oral history of a subculture that still thrives on the floors of the world’s casinos.

There are legends, like Thorp, Tommy Hyland, Richard Munchkin, John Chang, Don Johnson. There’s also the new breed, with names like … well, they don’t tell people like me their names. They are active in the blackjack world, in the advantage play world, and they go to great lengths to stay as anonymous as possible.

There are competitions — like who can count cards the fastest — and there’s dinner and drinks and handshakes and hugs. It’s the gambling world’s version of the Academy Awards, if the show were held in secret, photography banned, and if you don’t know Meryl Streep or George Clooney or Arnold Schwarzenegger, you’re not getting in.

The genius

Just to educate anyone who isn’t entirely sure: The world of card counting, advantage play, all of it simply does not exist without Thorp. The Einstein comp above is legit.

It was 1960. Thorp was a young math professor at MIT, broke like all young academics. Recently married. He was familiar with the 1956 paper by John Kelly — yes, the Kelly criterion fella — and decided to apply the work to blackjack. Using an IBM 704 mainframe to study the game, Thorp came to a conclusion once thought unthinkable: The player could have the edge.

In 1962, he published Beat the Dealer. Over 700,000 copies sold to date. Suddenly, housewives, college kids, math geeks, and old-time gamblers were all storming Vegas, trying to count their way to glory. The casinos — well, many of them — changed the way they operate. They altered rules, shuffled faster and more often, added decks. But it was too late. The secret was out. The game had changed forever.

And Thorp? He moved on. Took the same math that cracked blackjack and applied it to Wall Street, where he became one of the first “quants,” built a hedge fund, and made a fortune.

Without Thorp, there’s no card counting. No MIT team. No Bringing Down the House. No Kelly criterion applications in gambling. No advantage play as we know it.

Without Thorp, everyone at the Blackjack Ball is probably …

Different direction

“I would be an Uber driver now,” said Blair Hull, a Blackjack Hall of Fame member. Worth noting: After his blackjack career, Hull turned to Wall Street, started the Hull Trading Company, and sold it to Goldman Sachs in 1999 for $531 million.

He also lost the 2004 Illinois Democratic race for the U.S. Senate after leading for most of the primary season. Guy he lost to was some up-and-comer named Barack Obama.

But yes, without Thorp, Hull says he’d be offering you a bottle of water and hoping for five stars.

“Blackjack not only gave me the ability to put money on the table and make risky wagers, but also develop a sense of organization,” Hull told me. “Before the MIT team existed, we had a team with 25 people that would go out, and I was one of the big players in that organization. And that gave me the capital to get into the financial markets.”

Hull’s entry into the world of blackjack started with his brother-in-law at the time, who told him he always won when he played the game.

“I said, ‘Oh, that’s bullshit,’” Hull recalled.

But then Hull discovered Thorp’s work, put it to use, and goodbye future Uber driver.

“We owe everything to Ed Thorp.”

The impresario

And the ball itself owes everything to Max Rubin.

I promised some unvarnished Rubin. Here you go. Buckle up. Pour yourself a bourbon. Make it a double.

On his early life …

“My daddy was a crossroader, and his daddy was a crossroader too. A crossroader is a guy that knocks off casinos for a living. When I first came to Nevada, he was the eye in the sky at the Golden Nugget, but in the meantime he was knocking off joints …

“I came hitchhiking here out of Texas. My first job in Las Vegas was getting in a fist fight outside the Las Vegas Club with another kid, so the security and all the bosses would turn and look while my daddy and his team stole decks off of the pit podium and switched in new decks. I got 10 percent for doing what I did. I said, well, that’s pretty fun, so I didn’t think anything about it …

“Every time they made money they would go to the Silver Slipper or the Castaways and lose it all shooting craps and drinking whiskey. Then they’d go back and do whatever they do, and then they’d go steal something again in a few days. Their whole life was like that. They lived in shitty motels with Cadillacs with bald tires. He’d win $60,000 and it lasted him almost two weeks. That was my dad …

“That was my introduction to the business, and I just got away from that as fast as I could. I went to UNLV and got a degree in hotel and casino administration. I was a dealer and then a pit boss, and I had every single job. I actually wound up with pieces of places and did real well. I helped some people and got involved with the Barona Casino and came up with the idea for the Blackjack Hall of Fame.

On the creation of the ball …

“The genesis of it is pretty interesting. It all started at the MGM in 1997. The boss there didn’t believe in card counting, so he didn’t have people watch for card counting or any other kind of stuff going on in the games. He dealt shoe games, so he thought he was safe and he didn’t subscribe to the Griffin Detective Agency. That meant every guy with a big bankroll who took $10,000 off the shoulder could go in there and play …

“We were ringing the games. We got everybody’s signals — every other team’s signals. We would set up at the bar and we saw all these teams setting up. A guy would put his hand in his pocket and stick out four fingers and we’d go, ‘Here we go,’ because we knew that was a true count of four and we’d go zoom in. And they’d go, ‘What the fuck?’ There were teams everywhere. You watched everybody circling. There’s a bunch of stories I could tell you, but what happened at the end of the day, we had to start settling up with each other at the end of the night at the Denny’s that was next to the Sands …

“There were other guys, and Zeljko [Ranogajec], who was the biggest player in the world, was on a $10,000 game. I was trying to go in because I was standing way back but I was tracking it and I knew some aces were coming. I walked up and I said, ‘You mind if I sat down?’ He said, ‘Could you wait a second, a hand or two mate?’ I said, ‘OK.’ And he spreads out a couple of hands and all of a sudden — snap, snap — ace, ace. Then he said, ‘Have a seat,’ and I whispered into him and said, ‘Not with my money.’ That was my introduction to Zeljko. Never seen him before. Yeah, so we had a lot of fun stuff like that. That was in ’97, that lasted a couple of years and then they finally wised up. But it was just like a candy store at all times. Nobody knew anything …

“Anyway, it dawned on me as I was bumping into these guys and we were sitting at Denny’s and I got to know a lot of them, a lot of really good guys. I was out playing and some other guys knew, and we were putting some stuff together. We did a trip and went over to Australia with six guys and I said, ‘Shit, we ought to have a party’ …

“So I told my wife, ‘We’re going to have a party. You can cook and I’ll see how many come and we’ll do this, and everyone needs to bring a top bottle of champagne from a casino.’ I think we had 32 people. Then it got up to 50, and we got into the 60s, and my wife’s cooking. Then my children revolted and said, ‘You got to have it catered.’ We did that for a few years and then we moved to this place that has a really nice clubhouse that seats about 120, then we moved here a few years ago.”

Thank you, Max. Not bad for the son of a crossroader, eh? (And by the way, the “here” is not somewhere dark, dangerous, or secret, but nonetheless, Max would prefer we keep it quiet. Prying eyes and all.)

Costume party

Oh, I’m sorry: Have I not mentioned this one-time black-tie-only affair was, for the first time ever, a costume ball this year? Yeah. It was.

There was a Walter White. A hockey player. The Unknown Comic. A handful of Bob Rosses. Capt. Jack Andrews went as … Capt. Jack Andrews, full regalia. I went as Hunter S. Thompson. There were witches. There were gods. There were devils. There were Jokers, both the playing card and the Batman foil.

Roxy Roxborough, who founded Las Vegas Sports Consultants, basically being the first guy to utilize computers and math in the sports betting world, basically being the man who took sports betting from backrooms to America’s kitchen tables, went as an old Western blackjack dealer kind of fellow.

He was also how I got into this thing, as he invited me to sit at his table. Honors don’t come much higher, so I flew out to Vegas with a backpack, a bucket hat, and a cigarette holder. 

“I am the only guy in this room who couldn’t make a living playing blackjack,” Roxborough told me. “After reading Ed Thorp’s Beat the Dealer in the late 1960s, I attempted to apply my newfound knowledge in Reno. While blackjack didn’t work out for me, it introduced me to a new way to think about sports betting. I should be looking for a mathematical/data approach to sports betting instead of watching games and reading stories. That change worked out pretty well for me.”

Of course, when Roxborough — whom the Las Vegas Review-Journal once listed as the second-most influential person in sports in the 20th century — says, “I’m inviting a writer,” and Rubin allows that to happen, there’s a certain level of trust involved.

As in, Rubin had to trust Roxborough when Roxborough vouched for me.

Thankfully for me, a vouch from Roxborough is as good as gold.

Couple of blackjack players

Which brings me to the “Lonesome Gambler,” real name withheld, who was pretty well representative of a good portion of the room — younger, still active in the advantage play world, eager to keep a low profile, and pretty much in awe of being a member of this select community. (He was dressed in a mullet, fake muscles, and a definite deep south vibe. He was “Mississippi Stud.”)

“I’ve been coming to the ball for 10 years,” he said. “It’s fantastic to be somewhere where everyone knows exactly what you do. It’s hard to explain to normal people in your life. I don’t think any of my friends or family really understand what I do. It’s such a weird field. It’s hard to really explain, and you don’t really want to.”

And even when he tries to explain, he gets would-be knowing nods in return.

“I’m pretty sure most of my friends just think I’m a gambling addict who somehow is still doing it,” he said. “So coming here, with all the people you know, you can commiserate — it’s a shared experience, I suppose. Yeah, it’s great. I love it. I look forward to it every year.”

One player at the ball isn’t now, and never was, afraid to share his name.

Don Johnson, who famously went on a $15 million run in Atlantic City in 2011, has long been a loud and proud member of the blackjack community. And while the bulk of his playing days are behind him, he always looks forward to the ball.

“These are my people,” Johnson said. “I love it. I know most of the people who are here, so it’s fun for me. And I love supporting Max; Max is a great guy. Everybody looks forward to it. It’s a lot of fun coming here and seeing people who have done some pretty clever stuff.”

And while Johnson has done it all and seen about as much in the blackjack world, he still wants to hear more.

“I like to hear the stories too,” he said. “But people don’t want to tell me the stories. A lot of these guys are still in action.”

When Don Johnson can’t coax a tale or two out of this crew, what hope does a pale imitation of Hunter S. Thompson have? (Although it should be noted, everyone had a name tag, and mine said “Jeff Edelstein,” and the aforementioned Joker of Batman fame approached me to compliment me on my costume, seeing the bucket hat, Hawaiian shirt, my gray facial hair, and gently misreading my last name, thinking I came to the ball dressed as “Jeffrey Epstein,” which, to be honest, is a helluva idea.)

Thorp’s tale

Anyway, here’s a tale, courtesy of Thorp, concerning the last time he played some blackjack:

“It was 2012. I sat down with John Chang, and we wanted to get our picture taken at the table and they wouldn’t let us, so we said, well, we’ll play for a few minutes.”

Chang was a member and then manager of the famed MIT blackjack team.

“I didn’t bring money because I wasn’t expecting to play, but John took out a few hundreds and we played for 20 minutes and won $4,000. Not bad, not a bad night’s work,” Thorp said.

If you sense a “but” coming …

“The funny thing is, the dealer, who was an elderly woman from some place in Europe, was very, very nice, and was trying to instruct John. Again, this was one of the principals of the MIT blackjack team. He was making a lot of irregular plays and she said, ‘You know, you need to study the game and you’ll be able to do better.’”

Meeting Ed

This wasn’t Thorp’s party, but there is no party without Thorp. There would be nothing to have a party about. To say he invented advantage play is … well, it’s pretty much spot on.

I witnessed person after person approach him, shake his hand, tell him how important he was — and is — to their lives. 

There was, honestly, a bit of a disconnect witnessing this. After all, these are gamblers. These are (mostly) men who don’t play by the rules the rest of us live by. These are people that don’t strike you as the stereotypical softies or hero-worshippers.

But there they were, one after another, paying their respects to Thorp, who was equally gracious each time someone approached him, which happened basically every time someone who previously approached him left his side. (Yes, I was eavesdropping. That’s my job. Leave me alone.)

I also had something I wanted to ask Thorp. It’s a simple, yet not so simple, question. Basically, how does gambling influence one’s life in a positive way?

After all, Thorp not only created the math behind advantage play, he lived it, playing blackjack and accumulating a small fortune before he turned his sights on Wall Street and accumulated a large fortune. 

In short: Gambling has been very good to Thorp. I was, like everyone else, looking for wisdom.

“Well, if you play life the way you play advantage blackjack, you can add up all the little edges that are good for you, and when they accumulate, it makes quite a difference.  Exercise, no addictions, eat well, watch your weight,” Thorp said. “But yes, gambling sharpens the way you think about decisions in life. It teaches you to make better decisions.”

You have information, and make your decision based on the information. That’s all. That’s Thorp’s secret. Now you know.

“Well, that’s if you learn the theory of gambling and how to do it right,” he noted.

Thorp/Einstein

I looked around the room one more time before I left. At the legends in costume. At the younger players still grinding it out in casinos from here to Macau. At Max Rubin, the “son of a crossroader” who turned a house party into an institution. At the 93-year-old math professor who changed everything.

You have information, and make your decision based on the information. It’s worth repeating.

Thorp made blackjack beatable in 1962. Sixty-three years later, here was a room full of people — some worth hundreds of millions, some still building their bankrolls — who owed their entire lives to those calculations on an IBM 704.

Einstein unlocked the universe. Thorp unlocked the casino.

And judging by the line of folks still waiting to shake his hand, in this room, on this night, that was more than enough.