Interviews with Blackjack Experts

We'll be interviewing many of the notable names in casino blackjack, from card counters to the guys who created some of the most powerful systems for beating the game.

• LV Bear (added July 2007): "LV Bear" is the pseudonym of an experienced advantage player who plys his trade all around the country. In addition, he regularly takes casinos and their management to task via his blog The Bear Growls.

  Bear talks about how he got into advantage play, the current state of the AP landscape, and other topics from his life at the tables.

  Read the interview with LV Bear.

• Mike Aponte (added June 2006): "MIT Mike" Aponte was one of the members of the MIT Blackjack Team, a group of MIT students that took Las Vegas by storm in the late 1990s, extracting millions of dollars in profits from the casinos using very successful team-play strategies.

  Mike was the World Series of Blackjack champion in 2004, the first year that cable network GSN produced the series. He and business partner Dave Irvine have produced study materials for advantage blackjack, available at their site BlackjackInstitute.com.

  Read the interview with MIT Mike Aponte.

• Stanford Wong (added April 2006): When the Blackjack Hall of Fame was created, Stanford Wong was one of the initial inductees, and for good reason. His books have probably introduced more gamblers to the world of advantage blackjack than any other gambling author. His bestselling book Professional Blackjack is a complete introduction to card counting. It includes two separate counting systems: the most popular system, Hi-Lo, and an advanced system called Wong's Halves count.

  Read the interview with Stanford Wong.

• Zengrifter: Our first interview is with one of the most prolific posters on our message boards. This interview of ZG was written by "Barfarkel", the author of You've Got Heat, a book detailing the author's playing trips to Vegas as a low stakes counter.

  One of blackjack's most controversial and irreverent practitioners, known as 'The Grifter' or 'Zengrifter', has granted a no-holds-barred interview in the hopes of providing us with a glimpse into the education of a card counter, and to set the record straight on some of the controversy that has arisen about him in blackjack and business circles.

  Read the interview with Zengrifter. (PDF file, 227K)

If you'd like to read interviews with blackjack tournament experts, check the Interviews at BlackjackTournaments.com.