When we talk about the most popular casino games, blackjack should be on the top list. The popularity of blackjack is growing just because blackjack is a type of game that requires a certain skill in order to increase your winning chances.
Giving people a chance of controlling the outcome of the game makes the process even more exciting. That way people that have been researching the game of “21” and developing strategies of play will be rewarded with higher profits.
Over the years, we’ve seen many people trying to sharpen their blackjack skills and develop unique strategies giving they a chance to beat the house. Blackjack is now a popular casino game with official tournaments all around the world.
Blackjack is a competitive game played against the house, and one of the best ways to measure someone’s abilities and skills is to look through their winning history.
Since Blackjack is a game that involves many things, including luck, we cannot choose one player as begin the best Blackjack player ever. However, we can highlight some of the players that managed to beat the house, make some incredible moves, and develop unique strategies that helped them win a lot of money.
Therefore, this is the list of one of the most successful people to play blackjack of all time.
Don Johnson
Don Johnson is without a doubt one of the most successful blackjack players of the time, and if you are a fan of the game, chances are that you’ve run across this name at some point. Johnson is a professional blackjack player with a legendary hand.
One of his most impressive plays was the win of $15 million at 3 Atlantic City casinos over a span of 6 months. In a game with a bet of $10,000, Johnson managed to win a lot of money after receiving two 8, which he obviously split, and received a further set of 8, which he split again. The dealer dealt 3 twice and 2 twice, on each of which Johnson doubled down. Finally, the dealer showed 2 cards and a total of 15 and drew a 10, enabling Johnson to get on a winning streak.
Even though most professional players try their hand at card counting, Don Johnson said that he never used a card counting system in his strategy.
James Grosjean
Another popular name in the professional world of Blackjack is James Grosjean. He is another professional blackjack player that got introduced to the game at an early age and spent most of his youth studying blackjack.
One of the reasons that make him one of the best blackjack players in the world is his incredible ability at overcoming the house edge. He is also known in the gambling circles for his victory in court over the Imperial Palace and winning jury verdicts against Caesars Palace.
Throughout his professional career, he has written two best-selling blackjack books that provide you with a mathematical explanation of advantage play in gambling.
His numerous strategies for gaining an advantage over the house made him the youngest player ever to be featured in the Blackjack Hall of Fame. He was also featured in the documentary ‘Inside The Edge: A Professional Blackjack Adventure’.
Bill Benter
If we take a look at Benter blackjack career, we can see that he has had quite a successful blackjack history creating a rock-solid career. Bill Benter is without a doubt one of the most successful blackjack players of all time, which is why he is also featured in the Blackjack Hall of Fame.
When it comes to his professional blackjack career, he had made quite a name for himself in the early stages. However, he was recently caught counting cards on a regular game at the Maxim, which resulted in his name being Blacklisted in almost every casino in Vegas.
MIT Blackjack Team
Here we have one of the first and probably most successful teams of blackjack participants that managed to beat the house. When it comes to card counting, the MIT Blackjack team is written with bold letters in the history of Blackjack for their successful gambling sessions.
The MIT blackjack team was led by Bill Kaplan, who was on a winning spree in the late 80s and early 90s. The blackjack team was constructed by mostly MIT graduates, and since they were keeping it very quiet, it was very hard to find any information about the participants.
The team of individuals entered the game and switched places counting cards or sometimes they were positioned strategically to check out how the dealer is shuffling the cards. This provided them with an advantage for card counting and it is said that the team won more than $500,000 in one night on multiple occasions.
Kerry Packer
Kerry Packer is another professional blackjack player that is best known for his incredible blackjack plays. Back in 1995, he showed his incredible talent by playing with 8 hands at numerous blackjack tables in Las Vegas casinos. He even took risky steps placing $250,000 bet per hand and winning 20 times successively.
He is known as one of the braves blackjack players of all time, with an exceptional career winning millions of dollars. However, his bravery was sometimes costly, as once he managed to win $7 million at blackjack, but lost $10 million on another night.