GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 25 - June 2013

Introducing five heavy hitters with advice you can take to the bank A living blackjack legend; a webmaster who once had a player drop £50,000 betting on a soccer game; a guy with over 100 gambling-related websites; an individual who wholeheartedly welcomes both sharks and fish to his site; and a gentleman who presides over one of the world’s go-to sites for sports arbitrage traders. The five savvy webmasters we interviewed this time around operate out of Australia, Romania, the U.K. and the U.S.A. Their backgrounds, food and entertainment preferences and future goals are diverse, but there’s at least one thing they have in common: Their knowledge of our industry is extensive, and they’ve taken the time to share some of their insights with us. *Due to space constraints, we could not print the interviews in their entirety. The complete text will be posted at gpwa.org. GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES For a real rush, nothing beats tournament blackjack You are a living blackjack legend. When did you first learn how to play the game? And what prompted you to get interested in the game? I was a self-taught program- mer as a teenager, just as personal comput- ers were becoming widely available. That fascination with software and math made blackjack an obvious fit. The idea of “beat- ing the system” by learning to play a casi- no game with a true player advantage was a huge draw for me. Since I had the back- ground in programming, it was easy for me to do my own analysis of the game. On my first trip to Las Vegas in the late 1980s, I knew enough about the game to play a solid basic strategy. Although I already un- derstood how card counting worked, there was no point in becoming proficient at it be- cause I didn’t expect to travel to Vegas very often. My opinion changed in 1992, when Mississippi legalized casinos close to home. By 1993, I was playing regularly and making a steady profit at the game. When did you realize you were good at the game, and might be able to play it professionally? Because I understood the mathematics of the game well, I knew early on that it would be easy to play with an ad- vantage. Even so, the game remained just a profitable pastime for many years. I still had a “day job,” a partnership in a software de- velopment company that kept me very busy. If legalized gambling had not come to Mississippi when it did, what do you think you’d be doing with your life right now? With or without the gambling connection, I feel certain I would be involved in Internet marketing in one form or another. Software development was my principal interest early on, and the transition to Web development was an easy one. What is it about blackjack that still fasci- nates you, even to this day? For a skilled player, the actual play of blackjack becomes pretty boring. There are no decisions to make when you play perfectly. Instead, the decisions are made for you by the cards you are dealt, and your knowledge of the re- maining cards through card counting. In my own play, I play a lot less blackjack these days, for many reasons. It’s hard to stay welcome at the table if you are a con- sistent winner at blackjack. Other games are less scrutinized by casino personnel, and therefore can be more lucrative for the long term. KEN SMITH BlackjackInfo Age: 48 Hometown: I grew up in a small town in South Mississippi, and still live near there in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Favorite Food: I love Asian food of all kinds, but for the last year or so I’ve been obsessed with finding the ultimate bowl of Vietnamese Pho, a noodle soup. Must Read Book: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid , by Douglas Hofstadter Sites: BlackjackInfo.com BlackjackTournaments.com SlotCharts.com GPWA Affiliate Interview Series