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Blackjack Hall of Fame - Tommy Hyland |
Tommy Hyland -Unstoppable in Team BlackjackSince 1979, Tommy Hyland's blackjack team has consistently won millions of dollars a year from the casinos. Based on consistency, longevity, and profitability, Hyland is widely considered the most successful blackjack team manager in the history of the game.
Getting Started in BlackjackTommy Hyland was born in 1956 and grew up in New Jersey, about 50 miles from Atlantic City. He started gambling at about the age of ten, tossing coins against a wall; closest to the wall would win the other kid's coin. In high school, he played basketball, golf, and baseball, and got involved in sports betting. He went to college in Wittenberg, Ohio, where, he admits, he was an indifferent student who spent most of his time playing golf and poker and shooting pool.In 1978, while still in college, Hyland and his roommate read Lawrence Revere's Playing Blackjack as a Business. They studied the book and practiced. The roommate, who was actually more interested in blackjack than was Hyland, won a few thousand dollars in Atlantic City. His roommate's success inspired Hyland to read and practice blackjack more seriously, and by spring of 1979 he was ready to play professionally. The Hyland Blackjack TeamHyland also read Ken Uston's books about team play in blackjack. Hyland's first team was a two-man team with his golfing friend Leo. Tommy started with $1,000 and within six months he had quadrupled his money. Tommy and Leo then joined forces with a couple of card counters named Doug and Dave whom they had met in Atlantic City. By the end of 1979, the four-man team had turned a bank of $16,000 into more than $100,000.After Doug and Dave left, Hyland taught some of his other friends to play blackjack and put together a team of 10-15 players. Hyland has been running a blackjack team ever since. Individual members of the team have come and gone, but the Hyland team has remained a constant, with Tommy Hyland as the recruiter, trainer, administrator, and manager. The size of the team has fluctuated from 10 to as many as 40 members. It has successfully used card-counting techniques, the big player format, and computer play. Hyland is regarded as a master at key-carding. (Key-carding, also known as ace-locating, involves determining where in the deck the aces are likely to be located, based on close observation of the shuffling, playing, and discarding of the cards. As employed by the Hyland team, key-carding was executed by a three-person team, composed of two key-girls sitting on either side of a big player.) Over the course of a more-than-25-year career, the Hyland team has won millions of dollars every year from casinos throughout the United States and abroad. Battles with the Casinos
On another occasion, a casino owner, after learning that Hyland was a card counter, actually forced him at gunpoint to return the money he had won at blackjack. In 1994, three members of the Hyland team who had been key-carding in a Canadian casino were arrested for cheating. The prosecutor, apparently under pressure from casino owners, contended that blackjack team play, in and of itself, is a form of cheating. After extensive expert testimony from both sides on blackjack card counting, key-carding, and team-play strategies, the judge ruled that the defendants were not cheating but were "highly trained professionals using highly developed skills." Hyland was outraged at the treatment of card counters by the casinos. He has taken legal actions against them in the courts and petitioned the state legislatures for laws protecting professional gamblers. In Hyland's view, once a casino opens its doors and offers a game to the public, it should be open to all, the skilled as well as the unskilled, on an equitable basis.
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