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Blackjack Hall of Fame - Al Francesco |
Al Francesco - The Creator of Blackjack Team PlayAl Francesco invented the concept of blackjack team play and created the persona of the Big Player. With his ingenious ideas, Al and his teams were able to use card-counting strategies to win millions of dollars at blackjack without being detected by the casinos.
The Education of a Blackjack Card CounterAl Francesco's professional gambling career back began back in his hometown of Gary, Indiana, where he played Greek Rummy and other games. He won practically every time he played, and made about $5,000 a year--not a spectacular fortune, but at least equivalent to what he could have made at a "real" job at that time.Al moved to California and, in 1963, he read Ed Thorp's book Beat the Dealer. The first time he went to a casino and played blackjack with Thorp's Ten Count system, he got a headache and had to leave after 20 minutes. The system was that difficult. Undeterred, Al went home and studied some more. When he returned to the casino, he had mastered the system and could, as Thorp's book title promised, beat any dealer. After a year and a half, he started getting barred by the casinos and he stopped playing blackjack for a period of eight years. Subsequently, Francesco learned Lawrence Revere's Advanced Point Count system and started playing blackjack again. After about a month, however, he started getting harassed by the casinos again and stopped playing. Years later, looking back at that period in his life, he remarked: "I knew that I had to come up with a better way to play." The Big PlayerThrough the genius of men like Edward Thorpe, Julian Braun, and Lawrence Revere, the theoretical underpinnings of blackjack card counting had been worked out to near-perfection by 1970. Practical application of the card-counting strategies, however, was hampered by an obstacle that no amount of mathematical genius could overcome: unfriendly pit bosses.Card counters follow a characteristic betting pattern. When the odds are with them, they bet high; when the odds are against them, they bet low. When the pit bosses notice a wide divergence between a blackjack player's high bets and low bets, they will spot him as a card counter and, assisted by casino security, either gently or not-so-gently request that he leave the premises and never return. The problem, then, was how to bet like a card counter without looking like a card counter.
The significance of the event was immediately apparent to Al Francesco. From the pit boss's point of view, Al had appeared as an unsophisticated tourist, barely paying attention to the game, with plenty of money to throw around, who had simply gotten lucky on a few hands. Thus was born the persona of The Big Player. In 1971, Al started playing with teams of seven: six counters and one Big Player. Al recruited the team members and taught them basic strategy and Lawrence Revere's Advanced Point Count system. When they were ready to play, the counters would sit at different blackjack tables, each one counting the cards and making small bets. When the count was favorable, the counter would signal the Big Player, who would come over to the table and bet big until the count turned against him, and then walk away. Like Al Francesco in Lake Tahoe, the Big Player never appeared to be anything other than a wealthy, unsophisticated tourist who happened to get lucky. In this way, Al Francesco's teams won millions of dollars over the course of a few years. One of the blackjack players recruited and trained by Al Francesco was Ken Uston. To the dismay of Al and the other team members, Uston revealed their secrets to the world in his 1977 book The Big Player. The publication of Uston's book effectively spelled the end for Francesco's teams. Many of the team members hated Uston after that, but Francesco refused to carry a grudge. Al Francesco is now retired from blackjack and is involved in horse racing, sports betting, and other interests.
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