I can't seem to find much about this. A few months back, I purchased a 3-volume set of Blackjack books on Kindle. The books were electronic only, no physical copy being sold (much like Abram Alexander's AP book). The series was named "Blue Collar Blackjack - An offering to the Blackjack gods". Volume 1 - Fundamentals of Blackjack. Volume 2 - Conquering Risk of Ruin. Volume 3 - Becoming Bullet Proof. The author listed - "A Face in the Crowd" (it's subtle but I think it's actually a pen name). They are... interesting.
At the time I bought them I don't recall reading any significant reviews. At this time, it seems that the books have vanished off of Amazon. Pretty much every reference I track down ends at Amazon and a product not found page. The format is puzzling in a few respects - it's a digital-only production but I have no idea how it was formatted or why. Lines break strangely, tables are difficult to read because they cut off at the side of my reader, other formatting issues of that nature. The only way I can productively read the books is on the computer, resizing the reader windows until it's wide enough that lines aren't cutting off strangely. A few other little things point to it being a bare-bones production as well, such as the default Amazon digital services book cover and the cover page for volume 3 having "Volume IV" written on it instead.
The first volume is the biggest, coming in at ~400 pages as per Amazon, although who knows what kind of pages these are... It's a long book, at any rate. Volume 2 is quite short (1/10th the size or so), and Volume 3 clocks in at about half the size of the first.
The price of the books was set at about $1 for the first volume and $3 for each of the two others.
So far, pretty much everything about the books screams that some kid took a bunch of wikipedia articles and web pages, put them together quickly and just tried to cash in on idiots buying cheap books because they're cheap idiots. Still, something was strange. The blurb about the book was definitely not your run-of-the-mill "Discard everything everyone else ever said about Blackjack and use my system, make money quick, no risk!". Since it's still available, thought I'd quote it to give you an idea of the tone:
The book that’s getting rave reviews!
Most significant blackjack work in 50 years – My Dog
(wait a minute… I don’t have a dog)
Loved the graphics – The Braille Insitute
You write g-o-o-o book! – Sue Lee
Worst movie of all time! Sat there for three hours watching a blank screen!!! Why couldn’t he make it two hours??? Friskell and Sleezbert (renowned movie critics)
Dear son, we miss you so much… Come home soon (we moved!) – Ma and Pa
But seriously... (?)
Here are the chapters in Volume I. They'll give an idea of how far this segment will take you:
Introduction
Chapter One - The Basics
Chapter Two - Game Selection (Rule/Number of Decks/Penetration)
Chapter Three - Basic Strategy
Chapter Four - The Running Count
Chapter Five - True Count Conversion
Chapter Six - Betting Basics
Chapter Seven - Advanced Strategy
Hype...
The radically new information is in Volume II and III, but there's new stuff mixed into "the fundamentals" that I've never seen in print.
The riddle of five and six...
What they didn't tell us about penetration...
How to calculate blackjack frequency...
How to convert the true count to the quarter deck in two deck...
How to convert when a fourth or half deck is burned off the top...
Another look at those "other players"...
Advantage doubles as distance is halved...
Standard deviation simplified...
How long we can be behind...
Depth charging taken a few steps further...
Just buy the book. It's 99 cents!
So I bought them, but I haven't really taken much of a look at them until now. I'm going through the first slowly (I really prefer my e-reader to my computer screen), but man, this isn't just the basics. There's not much so far that's news to me, but the author's style and tone seem to be that of experience. I've picked up a couple neat camouflage plays from small anecdotes from the author. That's more than I've gotten out of entire (rotten) books.
Has anyone run into these? Any idea who "A Face in the Crowd" may be? Interesting stuff, sad that I can't seem to find them again, it'd be nice to see what others might make of those books...
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