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Ken Uston
Ken Uston (January 12, 1935 – September 19, 1987) was an American blackjack player, strategist and author, credited with popularizing the concept of team play at blackjack. During the early to mid-1970s he gained widespread notoriety for perfecting techniques to do team card counting in numerous casinos worldwide, earning millions of dollars from the casinos, with bets as high as $12,000 on a single hand. He was banned from casinos around the world and would adopt various costumes in order to conceal his identity and still be able to play. He filed a high-profile lawsuit against these casinos and successfully received a ruling from the New Jersey courts that absent a valid New Jersey Casino Commission regulation excluding card counters, casinos could not ban someone simply for counting cards at blackjack. In response, many casinos changed their systems, increasing the number of decks in games or changing rules to increase the house edge. In the early 1980s, Uston authored seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Professional Gambler
Advantage gambling, or advantage play, refers to legal methods used to gain an advantage while gambling, in contrast to cheating. The term usually refers to house-banked casino games, but can also refer to games played against other players, such as poker. Someone who practices advantage gambling is often referred to as an advantage player, or AP. Unlike cheating, which is by definition illegal, advantage play exploits innate characteristics of a particular game to give the player an advantage relative to the house or other players. While not illegal, advantage play may result in players being banned by certain casinos. A skillful or knowledgeable player can gain an advantage at a number of games. Card games have been won by card sharps for centuries. Some slot machines and lotteries with progressive jackpots can eventually have such a high jackpot that they offer a positive return when played long term, according to gambling mathematics, though this requires often difficult t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Francesco
Al Francesco (born Frank Schipani; December 2, 1933 – February 3, 2024) was an American blackjack player and gambling strategist. Considered to be “The Godfather of Blackjack”, Francesco is recognized as the creator of the team play concept, the “big player” strategy, and the drop card method. Beginning in 1971, Francesco personally recruited and trained disciplined card counters to work together in teams to beat the casinos. Franceso's teams of blackjack players would station themselves at various blackjack tables to count the decks, and when the mathematical odds turned in their favor, the counters would signal a “Big Player” to come to the table and place large wagers until the edge was lost and once again favored the dealer. While most card counters would eventually be discovered by casinos through their betting patterns and banned from further play, Francesco's unique team concept helped his players evade detection and continue winning. At its peak, Francesco's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Breakout (video Game)
''Breakout'' is an arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and released on May 13, 1976. ''Breakout'' was released in Japanese arcades by Namco. The game was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow and prototyped via discrete logic chips by Steve Wozniak with assistance from Steve Jobs. In the game, eight rows of bricks line the top portion of the screen, and the player's goal is to destroy the bricks by repeatedly bouncing a ball off a paddle into them. The concept was predated by Ramtek (company), Ramtek's ''Clean Sweep'' (1974), but the game's designers were influenced by Atari's own ''Pong'' (1972). The arcade version of ''Breakout'' uses a Monochrome monitor, monochrome display underneath a translucent colored overlay. The game was a worldwide commercial success. It was among the top five highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976 in the U.S. and Japan, and among the top three in both countries for 1977. A port of the game was published in 1978 for the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pong
''Pong'' is a 1972 sports video game developed and published by Atari for arcades. It is one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work and decided to manufacture the game. Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. In response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement. ''Pong'' was the first commercially successful video game, and it helped to establish the video game industry along with the Magnavox Odyssey. Soon after its release, several companies began producing games that closely mimicked its gameplay. Eventually, Atari's competitors released new types of video games that deviated from ''Pong'''s original format to varying degrees, and this, in turn, led Atari to encourage its sta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hoover Dam
The Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado, Black Canyon of the Colorado River (U.S.), Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. Constructed between 1931 and 1936, during the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depression, it was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over 100 lives. Bills passed by Congress during its construction referred to it as Hoover Dam (after President Herbert Hoover), but the Roosevelt administration named it Boulder Dam. In 1947, United States Congress, Congress restored the name Hoover Dam. Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon (Colorado River), Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water, and produce hydroelectric power. In 1928, Congress a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Circus Circus Las Vegas
Circus Circus Las Vegas is a hotel and casino located on the northern Las Vegas Strip in Winchester, Nevada, Winchester, Nevada. It is owned and operated by Phil Ruffin. Circus Circus includes the largest permanent circus in the world. It features circus and trapeze acts, as well as carnival games, at its Carnival Midway. The resort also includes the Adventuredome, an indoor amusement park. Circus Circus was originally owned by Jay Sarno and Stanley Mallin. It opened without a hotel on October 18, 1968. It included a casino on its first floor, while a second floor contained carnival games for children. Circus Circus was among the first family-oriented casinos in Las Vegas. It struggled financially during its early years, in part because of its lack of a hotel. A 15-story tower, with 409 rooms, was added in 1972. Sarno and Mallin were subsequently investigated for tax code violations and alleged connections with organized crime. In 1974, the casino was leased to William G. Bennet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arnold Snyder
Arnold Snyder ( 1960 – 6 June 2023) was a professional gambler and gambling author. He was elected by professional blackjack players as one of the seven original inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Famebr>�� hosted at Barona Casino – for his contributions as a blackjack player and his innovations in professional gambling techniques. He was the first blackjack authority to publish the importance of deck penetration (depth of the deal) in card counting, in his 1980 book ''The Blackjack Formula''. He was also the first blackjack researcher to argue (in ''Blackjack Forum'', 1981–1983) that radical simplification of blackjack card counting systems did not substantially decrease earnings. Since 1981, Arnold Snyder has been the editor of ''Blackjack Forum'', a quarterly trade journal for professional gamblers. In 2004, Snyder moved the publication of ''Blackjack Forum'' from print to online due to time constraints imposed by playing more frequently and the frustration with dealin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Jersey Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of New Jersey is the supreme court, highest court in the U.S. state of New Jersey. In its current form, the Supreme Court of New Jersey is the final judicial authority on all cases in the state court system, including cases challenging the validity of state laws under the New Jersey State Constitution, state constitution. It has the sole authority to prescribe and amend court rules and regulate the practice of law, and it is the arbiter and overseer of the United States congressional apportionment, decennial legislative redistricting. One of its former members, William J. Brennan Jr., became an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. It has existed in three different forms under the three different state constitutions since the independence of the state in 1776. As currently constituted, the court replaced the prior New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, which had been the highest court created under the Constitution of 1844.Jeffrey S. Mand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resorts International
Resorts International was a hotel and casino company. From its origins as a paint company, it moved into the resort business in the 1960s with the development of Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and then expanded to Atlantic City, New Jersey with the opening of Resorts Casino Hotel in 1978. After the death of its longtime chairman, James Crosby, in 1986, the company was briefly controlled by Donald Trump, before being acquired by Merv Griffin in 1988. It was acquired by Sun International in 1996. History Development in Bahamas and Atlantic City (1958–1986) In 1958, the Mary Carter Paint Company, a New Jersey paint manufacturer, was acquired by a group of investors. The Mary Carter Paint Company, was widely considered to be a CIA front organization that laundered payments to the Cuban exile army. James Crosby, son of one of the investors, was appointed to lead the company. With its paint business on the decline, Mary Carter sought to diversify into the land development business. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philadelphia Inquirer
''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', often referred to simply as ''The Inquirer'', is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded on June 1, 1829, ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is the third-longest continuously operating daily newspaper in the United States. The newspaper has the largest circulation of any newspaper in both Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region, which includes Philadelphia and its surrounding communities in southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, northern Delaware, and the northern Eastern Shore of Maryland. As of 2020, the newspaper has the 17th-largest circulation of any newspaper in the United States As of 2020, ''The Inquirer'' has won 20 Pulitzer Prizes. Several decades after its 1829 founding, ''The Inquirer'' began emerging as one of the nation's major newspapers during the American Civil War. Its circulation dropped after the Civil War's conclusion, but it rose again by the end of the 19th century. Originally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darryl Purpose
Darryl Purpose is an American singer-songwriter, known for his narrative (often very personal) lyrics and fingerstyle guitar. Before becoming a professional musician, Purpose was a professional blackjack player and was known as one of the best in the world. In 2010 Purpose was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. "Purpose has the voice of James Taylor, the brains of Bob Dylan, and the soul of Willie Nelson". In 1986, Purpose walked across the United States with The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament and then a year later in the former Soviet Union. In 1996, he became a "full-time national touring singer-songwriter" who "hit the folk scene...with an unusually eclectic resume that provided him with a wealth of compelling stories to tell." As of December 2011, Purpose has returned to touring full-time, returning from an unexplained seven-year hiatus. When Darryl Purpose was 16 years old, his mother put a book called "Beat the Dealer" in his Christmas stocking. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Atlantic City, sometimes referred to by its initials A.C., is a Jersey Shore seaside resort city (New Jersey), city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, Atlantic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Atlantic City comprises the second half of the Atlantic City-Hammonton, New Jersey, Hammonton metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses those cities and all of Atlantic County for statistical purposes. Both Atlantic City and Hammonton, as well as the surrounding Atlantic County, are culturally tied to Philadelphia and constitute part of the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area or Delaware Valley, the nation's Metropolitan statistical area, seventh-largest metropolitan area as of 2020. Located in South Jersey on Absecon Island and known for its taxis, casinos, nightlife, Boardwalk (entertainment district), boardwalk, and Atlantic Ocean beaches and coastline, the city is prominently known as the "Las Vegas of the East Coast" and inspired the U.S. version of the board game ''M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
