The Blackjack Hall of Fame was first mooted in 2002 and was created a year later when a group of 21 experts was whittled down to seven inaugural inductees at the 2003 Blackjack Ball.
The Hall of Fame honors the best players, theorists and blackjack mathematicians and is located in San Diego’s Barona Casino where it is part shrine, part tourist attraction.
The Magnificent Seven
The first seven names into the Hall of Fame in 2002 were as follows:
- Al Francesco – a pioneer of team play
- Peter Griffin – the author of The Theory of Blackjack and blackjack mathematician.
- Tommy Hyland – a blackjack team manager.
- Arnold Snyder – a professional player and Blackjack Forum editor
- Edward O. Thorp – the author of seminal blackjack text, Beat The Dealer
- Ken Uston – an early exponent of team play and professional blackjack legend
- Stanford Wong – real name John Ferguson, Wong published Professional Blackjack in 1975 and popularized mid-shoe entry when the count was positive, known as Wonging!
After the first seven players, two more were added at the next Blackjack Ball, and these were Max Rubin, who had hosted the previous year’s event and Keith Taft, who was a techie who created computerized machines to help advantage players. Statistician Julian Braun was added next for his work in analyzing game data, along with Lawrence Revere, an author and teacher, but from 2006 nomination of candidates was taken over by existing H of F inductees.
From then on it was decided there would be just one player added each year, although in 2008 four true legends, said to be the creators of Basic Strategy, were inducted together.
- 2006 – James Grosjean – author of Beyond Counting and pro player
- 2007 – John Chang – managed the famous MIT team
- 2008 – Roger Baldwin, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel and James McDermott – “creators” of blackjack Basic Strategy, on which all future advantage techniques have been based
- 2009 – Richard W. Munchkin – game expert
- 2010 – Darryl Purpose – advantage player
- 2011 – Zeljko Ranogajec – Aussie pro player
- 2012 – Ian Andersen – blackjack expert, author and theorist
- 2013 – Robert Nersesian – lawyer who specialized in cases against casinos
- 2014 – Don Schlesinger – blackjack researcher and author
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