Interview with Arnold Snyder
Arnold Snyder is a professional gambler and author. He was elected by professional blackjack players as one of the seven original inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Fame (along with legends Edward O. Thorp, Tommy Hyland and Ken Uston among others) for his record as a blackjack player and his innovations in professional gambling techniques. Since 1981, Arnold Snyder has been the editor of Blackjack Forum, a quarterly trade journal for professional gamblers, now published online. gambling.com caught up with him for some blackjack words of wisdom.
Can you remember your first ever gamble?
I’m sure it was either pitching pennies as a kid, or pitching baseball cards. I was born and raised in Detroit and we collected baseball cards with a passion. Sometimes we would trade our dupes and cards we didn’t care about much, but more often we’d gamble by pitching them against a wall, just like you pitch coins– closest to the wall wins. But I really never had much interest in casino gambling until I was an adult and I read Ed Thorp’s Beat the Dealer in the mid-1970s. That book explained that casino blackjack could be beaten by applying logical math-based strategies. I got hooked and started making regular weekend trips to Reno from my home in San Francisco.
How did the idea for the Blackjack Hall of Fame first come about?
The idea was Max Rubin’s. Max was a casino exec for many years then he quit the industry and became a professional player. He could exploit the system better than just about anyone because he knew how it worked from the inside. He wrote a great book on the subject called Comp City. Then Max started doing consulting for the Barona Casino in San Diego and somehow he convinced them that a Blackjack Hall of Fame, similar to the Poker Hall of Fame at Binion’s in Las Vegas, would be a great public attraction. They agreed to the idea with the stipulation that all of those who were in the Hall of Fame would agree to never play at their casino.
How do you get admitted to the Hall of Fame?
The only way to get in is to be voted in. Current members of the Hall of Fame nominate a handful of players or authors each year they feel are worthy of inclusion. Many of the current members, in fact, are the legendary authors who first devised and published the first viable blackjack counting systems, but others are legendary players. The main voting takes place at an annual event called the Blackjack Ball in Las Vegas. The Blackjack Ball is an invitation-only event restricted to professional players. If you don’t know a well-known pro that will vouch for you, you can’t get in. The time, date, and location of the event are not publicly announced, and there’s strict security at the door to check credentials.
How has online blackjack changed the face of the game?
I think online blackjack has made new players more receptive to the mechanisation of the game. Automatic shufflers, continuous shufflers and electronic monitoring of the games is not viewed with such disdain by players who were introduced to blackjack online, where everything is electronic and closely monitored. Old-timers, of course, hate this high-tech stuff because some of it removes skill factors from the game and kills various methods of getting an edge. Then again, there are new ways of beating the high-tech games that didn’t exist before. The top pros always adapt.
The MIT blackjack team and the subsequent books about them raised the profile of card counters. Was that good for the game or a detriment?
Some of the other big blackjack teams didn’t care much for the MIT team’s ruthlessness in attacking games. They tended to burn out opportunities for other players and make the casinos more aware of how teams were beating them. But how can you criticise a bunch of college kids in their twenties who are making six figures a year?
Will we see a team of their kind again?
There are still blackjack teams operating all over the world, some using standard card- counting techniques with big players, similar to the MIT team’s methods, and some using different, more esoteric techniques that the casinos are not wise to. When someone writes a book about a specific method, it usually makes that particular method less viable. The MIT team was really just following the methods Ken Uston wrote about back in 1977 in his first book, The Big Player. That technique was initially created by the legendary player, Al Francesco, who was one of the original inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. The casinos got hip to this method back when Uston’s book came out, but teams such as the MIT team have continued to use forms of it ever since. What generally happens when a book gets really popular, however, is that too many amateurs start trying to imitate the method, and the casinos start clamping down harder. The smart players change their approach based on what the casinos are looking for.
We all know the blackjack game has been changed to minimise the loss to counters. How many counters do you estimate exist?
There are an awful lot of recreational card counters in the world. There have probably been a couple of million books on card counting that have been sold since Beat the Dealer was published in 1962.
Can you estimate how many still make a living at blackjack?
A relative handful–maybe a few hundred. But there are quite a few more professional blackjack players who make a living from blackjack using non-card-counting techniques. And there are many pros that count cards and make money at it, but also engage in other forms of gambling, like poker or sports betting. Most pro gamblers diversify.
When the individuals in the Hall of Fame were placed there, did their notoriety essentially end their gambling careers?
First of all, of the thirteen members currently in the Hall of Fame, five of them are no longer living–Peter Griffin, Ken Uston, Julian Braun, Keith Taft and Lawrence Revere. Of those who are still alive and kicking, James Grosjean—the youngest inductee and author of Beyond Counting—is definitely still an active player. Johnny Chang, who was one of the architects of the MIT team back in the early 1980s, still plays, as does Tommy Hyland, whose teams were probably even more successful than the MIT teams. I’ve been involved in some serious playing ventures with both Max Rubin in recent years, but Max has become more well-known since he started hosting the televised Ultimate Blackjack Tour shows, and I’ve been sticking to poker tournaments since mid-2006. Max will always be a player at heart, though, so I suspect he’s still getting out there in various disguises when he sees a ripe opportunity. Ed Thorp has made so much money in the stock market that casino blackjack would hold no financial incentive for him. Realistically, I don’t think any pro player has ever had his career ended as a result of notoriety. You put on a hat and a moustache and hit the tables.
You’ve written about poker as well. How’s your game?
I only play tournaments, not cash games. The explosion of poker tournaments on television has made tournament poker one of the richest opportunities for professional gamblers in decades. Living in Las Vegas as I do, this is an especially rich opportunity since there are so many tournaments here—literally dozens every day of the week. I only play live tournaments now, not online, both because of the difficulties of playing online with the current US laws, and because I prefer tournaments where I can see the players at my table.
Did you compete in the WSOP this year?
Yes, I entered a dozen events this year and cashed in three of them. I was happy with my results because I made money and these events have such huge fields–I think every event I entered had more than a thousand players and some of them two to three thousand—that it’s not unusual for some of the best players to enter every event and never cash once. It happens to a lot of pros every year.
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