Blackjack Legends: Edward O. Thorp
“My goal wasn’t to make money. It was just to do things I enjoy and have fun. It just so happened to make a lot of money too.” You’d think that the man who figured out how to Beat the Dealer by developing a systematic blackjack strategy, including inventing the concept of counting cards, would be in search of fortune or at least fame, but that’s not the case with Edward O. Thorp. Photo: MarketWatch The House Doesn’t Always Win Before Thorp’s seminal work, common knowledge was
Poker Stories: Daniel Negreanu’s World Series of Poker, Part 4
“Everyone has their story of how they lost the main event… It still hurts, but I like the pain. I like feeling emotion.” After busting out of the main event on Day 1 and being over $1 million down for the World Series so far, Daniel Negreanu begins day 37 by reflecting on the pain of his loss, yet he realizes that, without that pain, there would be no joy in winning. Better to be a suffering human than a robot. With that in mind, he starts getting dressed up for a fancy poker
Blackjack Legends: The MIT Blackjack Team
“It’s pure mathematics: the house is going down!” A bunch of super-intelligent nerds from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may not be the standard clientele at the casino, but, when a group of students and alumni came together in the ’90s to form a pro Blackjack team under the moniker “Strategic Investments,” they quickly became the greatest fear of casinos around the world. A Meteoric Rise “Mr. M,” a graduate from MIT, knew that he could beat the game. Unlike
Poker Legends: Phil Laak
"‘Sick’ is an expression to define abnormal statistical deviations from the norm.” Phil Laak, aka The Unabomber, is one of poker’s most colorful characters, and not just because of his eccentric look of a hoodie with sunglasses or even ski goggles. He combines the showmanship of an actor, the intellect of a math professor, and the degeneracy of a gambler who will bet on just about anything, and we love him for it. With a World Poker Tour (WPT) title, a World Series of Poker (
