Mark Bowden found out how one man, Don Johnson, won ~$15 million from casinos in a completely legal way through games of blackjack. Highlights include:

• Johnson is a whiz at mathematics with excellent concentration skills. But this is true of every professional gambler.
• What Johnson did differently was that he started playing the game before sitting at a table. Casinos are seeing a decline in revenue and Johnson was able to leverage this to win concessions from the casino about the rules of the game that effectively made the odds 50-50.
• At one point he was betting $100,000 a hand.
• He effectively wiped out a month’s worth of profits of one casino in a night.
• The casinos weren’t prepared for this. They normally incentivize high-rollers to come, offering them private jets, luxury suites, and possibly even the young women seen in the ads, with the expectation that they would lose. Johnson’s requests were different and they led to his victory.

To find out more about how Johnson pulled his tricks, the three-hand sequence that won him $1.2 million, the casinos that banned him, why he wasn’t a card-counter, and what it means to be a ‘big whale’ click here.

Source: The Atlantic

Via: Marginal Revolution