Gramazeka, thanks for attaching these links for the rest of this group to see. I have read all these blogs from Eliot Jacobson and for the most part I respectfully disagree with Eliot’s assessment of Don Johnson. (btw, I don't know why this post is in bold...that was not my intenet).
My interest in this story is nothing more than curiosity. It’s a very interesting story. The way it was presented in Atlantic magazine (which is what made DJ famous) didn’t make much sense. And what most AP’s believe about DJ also didn’t make much sense. That’s why I did my own research and found most of what I was reading was wrong or at the very least misleading. Since these casinos are public companies, I checked their financial records and saw that Don’s winnings and the casino’s loss rebate programs during this time had little impact on these company’s financials. In fact, these companies did much worse in 2012 and 2013, than in 2011 when they were giving out these attractive loss rebates.
The main reason I doubted what I was reading is because I do not believe casinos are as dumb as some APs seem to believe. Yes, the rank and file dealers, pit bosses, etc might not be the sharpest tools in the tool shed, but the upper casino management understand their business. They use mathematicians and surveillance experts to protect their games. They are a little smarter than some people in the AP community think. Yes, they make mistakes like all people, but when they see their mistakes, they quickly correct them.
First let’s clear up one thing that is incorrect in Eliot’s blogs; even Don Johnson has admitted it’s incorrect. Eliot says Don Johnson “beat several Atlantic City casino out of over 15 million dollars in late 2011 and early 2012”. This isn’t true. What’s true? DJ had three winning sessions during this time that totally over 15 million dollars. By DJ’s own admission, he also had several large losing sessions during this time. Since he won’t say how much he lost (and the casinos won’t show reporters receipts from his losses), we will never know how much he won during this time, once we consider all his losses. Remember casinos don’t like the public to know about people’s losses. They only publicize people’s wins. This is why you only see pictures of slot winners in casinos, and you won’t see any pictures of losers. Casinos want people to believe any old Joe can win in a casino.
Also, as a side note Eliot gets his dates wrong. DJ had these big wins in late 2010 and early 2011 (not "late 2011 and early 2012”). DJ’s biggest and most famous win was in April 2011 at the Flamingo playing alone for 12 hours, drinking “liberally” and surrounded by casino security guards. There was no advantage play going on during this time. That’s why he was allowed to play for 12 straight hours. It was during this time, he got on an incredible winning streak. We can debate if it was more than 40 hands in a row, but I think that’s missing the point. The insiders that saw it and reviewed the tape have all said the same thing….Don Johnson got very lucky that night. At one point in this session, Don won $1.2 million on three hands due to splits and doubles. Casinos are okay with people winning this way. That’s why Don Johnson was invited back to the Tropicana. They knew it was just a matter of time before they won their money back from him.
Eliot did say something I agree with. It’s about DJ winning due to the attractive loss-rebate program he negotiated. I expect the casinos agree now this was over the top too, which is why you won’t see these any more. Btw, many whales were doing this during this time. It doesn’t take a math wizard to see that these loss rebates could be exploited. Henry Tamburin, a noted blackjack expert, agrees that these loss rebates alone would be enough to lead to these wins. “A 20 percent discount?”Tamburin asked, “but if that’s true, and you’re only losing $8 out of every $10 bet, you’ve just keep banging away. All you’d have to do is bet at high levels and use basic strategy.” The entire article is attached:
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/blac...ry?id=15971410
A member of the MIT blackjack team, Bill Kaplan supports my contention that Don Johnson was lucky during this time. Quoting from the following article:https://www.gambling911.com/gambling...on-071811.html
“A member of the notorious MIT blackjack team, Bill Kaplan, believes that Johnson was not playing enough Blackjack for his so-called “winning system” to truly work. Kaplan claims that much of Johnson’s winnings did come from a string of good luck.“Even if he’s playing a winning game,” Kaplan said, “it was still a run of good luck.”
So What Made Don Johnson Famous?
Here’s the answer. It’s because of one 12-hour lucky streak at the Tropicana that occurred in April 2011. What did Don’s big win lead too? It was partially responsible for the Tropicana showing a loss for blackjack for the month of April, which has happened before but is very unusual. They only lost about a million in bj for that month but the fact that they showed a loss made news. If Don had quit when the math said he should have quit, then we probably wouldn’t know about Don Johnson. Both James Grosjean and Eliot Jacobson have done the math for the loss rebate program Don was playing under and shown Don should have quit long before he won $5.8 million. As we all know, Don didn’t obey the math. He actually said as much in one of his GMAE podcasts. This win led to the Tropicana telling a reporter about Don Johnson and the Atlantic magazine putting him on their cover saying he “Broke Atlantic City”, which rocketed him to fame.
Why was this such a big deal? Because this is the myth everyone wants to believe. That one person can wreak havoc on a casino and “Bring Down the House.” As we all know, Don did not break Atlantic City or the Tropicana; he did not even come close.
It’s interesting that a couple months later another whale won over $5 million dollars at the Tropicana. See attached article:
http://www.blackjackchamp.com/casino...aps-blackjack/
Why isn't this guy famous? Probably because nobody wrote an article about him or elected him into a Hall of Fame.
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