The renowned “Mathematical Scientist” scholarly journal has accepted for publication what is being referred to as a “groundbreaking” technical article by Professor Les Golden of Oak Park.

Dr. Les Golden, the celebrated columnist for Bluff Europe magazine, discovered a technique for providing blackjack players a betting and strategy scheme to offset casino counter measures against card counters. 

            To counter the advantage that players obtain by using card counting systems in the popular casino game of blackjack, casinos utilize multiple decks of cards instead of a single 52-card deck.  Intuitively, players discover that their advantage decreases markedly.  Dr. Golden performed an analysis based on the central limit theorem and a Monte Carlo simulation to quantify the disadvantage both with the use of multiple decks and as the dealer progresses through the deck pack.  This is the first time that this has successfully been done.

Dr. Golden then went further, and discovered strategies to minimize the effect of the multiple decks.  A step-wise betting strategy based on these findings is found to increase the player’s expected winnings by a factor of up to 2.6.

DISCOVERY LAUDED

“This is a truly remarkable finding,” said Dr. David W. Tucker, one of the world’s leading blackjack professionals and an early mentor to Dr. Golden.  “Not since Edward Thorp’s writing of Beat the Dealer in 1962 has such an advance been made in the game of 21,” he continued.

Two officials of the prestigious Association Internationale des Jeus de Hasard Ecrivains (International Association of Gambling Writers) issued a joint statement about the scholarly work.  Clifton M. Havencliff, the London-based executive director of the AIJHE, and Lazar Masche de Santillana of Barcelona, Spain, the current chairman of the Nominating and Awards Committee, who awarded Dr. Golden the Fortuna Award as the Gambling Writer of the Year for 2009, described Dr. Golden’s work as “groundbreaking.”

  Based in the international casino center of Macao in the Far East, the AIJHE is composed of 750 editors, writers, and publishers of gambling books, gambling magazines, and internet gambling sites. 

The award Dr. Golden received is named after Fortuna, the Roman goddess of good luck, and has been given every two years since 1989.   The award included a $150,000 stipend and a platinum-plated key to the city of Macao.  Dr. Golden traveled to Macao to accept the award at the annual AIJHE convention in August. 

Blackjack, also known as Twenty-one, Vingt-et-un, and by other names, is a two-person card game in which the player tries to obtain a hand the total numerical value of whose cards exceed that of the dealer without exceeding 21.  More than two people can play, but each is playing against the dealer. 

VARIED BACKGROUND

To Oak Park taxpayers, he's known as "Cut the Taxes," the erstwhile candidate and tax reform advocate, appealing taxes and sponsoring forums.  To Oak Park Republicans, he's the de facto though unelected GOP Oak Park committeeman, organizing meetings, fundraisers, and functions.  To Oak Park environmentalists, he's the long-term resident behind the movement to save the Marion Street Pedestrian Mall and trees in Field Playground and elsewhere in Oak Park.  To the Chicago-area acting community, he's a professional actor, a member of the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Actors with over 100 stage, film, and commercial credits, and the author of "The Scientific Approach to Creativity:  The Improvisation Techniques of the Chicago School of Comedy."  To comedy club-goers and college students, he’s Subramanyan Berkowitz, the stand-up comedian from Bhutan.  To west coast fans of the California Dr. Golden Bears, he’s Flash Dr. Golden, the basketball play-by-play announcer and host of  “Flash’s Jazz Patio” radio program.

To his students at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Cornell University and University of California at Berkeley-educated Dr. Leslie M. Dr. Golden is the popular professor, whose radio astronomy study of the planet Mercury remains heavily cited by researchers, whose “Laboratory Experiments in Physics for Modern Astronomy” published by Springer is one of the most heavily used texts in the field, who was slated to be on the second crew of Biosphere II in Oracle, Arizona, before the project was terminated, and who begins his first lecture by introducing his teaching assistants as "and nowwww... here's your starting lineup."  To students at the University of California, Berkeley, he’s one of the founders of the renowned University of California Jazz Ensembles.  To cruise ship students and passengers he’s the popular cruise ship lecturer on Royal Cruise Lines and as an astronomy professor on Semester at Sea, specializing in the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, SETI, the possibility of life on other planets. 

But to the rest of the world he's the authoritative and entertaining card counting and gaming columnist for gambling magazines.

WELL-KNOWN WRITER

Les Golden, card counter and columnist, is known to readers of Gambling.com magazine, Gambling Online magazine, Bluff Europe magazine, and iGaming Business magazine in Australia and New Zealand, Canada, the UK, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macao, Monaco, and other gambling meccas around the world.  His columns are published in in-flight magazines placed in first class flights leaving Heathrow Airport in London.  Overall, these various magazines have readerships, by mailed subscriptions, at casinos, and in bookstores and magazine stands, of throngs of international gamblers and tourists.

The prestigious Association Internationale des Jeus de Hasard Ecrivains (International Association of Gambling Writers) named Dr. Golden as the winner of the Fortuna Award as the Gambling Writer of the Year for 2009.  It cited his “widespread international following in the games of casino gambling [gained] by his ability to spice his erudite presentations with humor.  He has redefined what it means to be a gambling writer.” 

He is well-known among card counters for developing the theory behind the Dr. Golden Diagram.  This describes the phenomena of changing advantages to players with depth of penetration into multiple decks of cards and presents strategy and betting guidelines to  maximize expected winnings.  The technical aspect of this development was the basis for the scholarly article in “The Mathematical Scientist” journal.

He also developed the Magic Circle strategy for team play at roulette.  This has led casinos, particularly those using the European roulette wheel, to change some rules of the game, particularly those known as the “call bets,” including “Voisins du Zero” and “Tiers du Cylindre.”

He is equally renowned among gamblers for his short pamphlet, “The Arrest of the Card Counters:  Watch Out for    Judges on the Take,” a humorous but informative guide to defending oneself against charges of trespassing by casinos eager to bar card counters.  It has been translated into the Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Japanese languages.  A number of Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe hotels now regularly place “The Arrest of the Card Counters” in the rooms of high-rollers.

Counting cards at blackjack has been known for several decades, made famous by the Dustin Hoffman role in “Rainman” and the 2008 movie “21.”  Dr. Golden learned how to count cards in the 1970’s while a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. 

LEARNING HOW TO COUNT

He and his twin brother Bruce had entertained their friends in penny-ante poker games in the basement of the Dr. Golden family home as teenagers and became aware of the books by card maven Oswald Jacoby.  As adults, when Bruce was preparing to take a trip to Bermuda, he read Jacoby’s book on blackjack.  Les, while at Berkeley, founded the jazz program there and when the big band for which he played trumpet, sang, and emceed went to the Reno Jazz Festival, he went to famous Moe’s bookstore in Berkeley to get the Jacoby book that Bruce recommended to prepare to hit the Reno tables.  There he found “Beat the Dealer,” the seminal book by MIT mathematics professor Edward Thorp, a Chicago native.

“Thorp’s system was obviously much more powerful than what Oswald Jacoby presented,” recalls Dr. Golden.  “He developed it with the aid of another Chicagoan, Julian Braun, an IIT grad who was working at IBM and had access to their computers.  I read ‘BTD,’ mastered the system, partially during breaks in our concerts in the Bear’s Lair, and made out well in Reno.” 

Dr. Golden notes that although Thorp resides in California, “Braun passed a few years ago and is buried in the Jewish Waldheim cemetery in Forest Park.  When I pay respects to my grandparents and aunts and uncles there, I stop by Braun’s grave and treat it like a  card counter’s shrine.”

During that first trip to Reno, Dr. Golden gained somewhat of a mystique with the members of the band.  “Several of the guys were walking through Harold’s Club and we stopped to observe one table,” Dr. Golden remembers.  “The deck got very hot and I told Glenn Markoe, a French horn player in the band, the brother of comic Merrill Markoe, and now a curator at the Cincinnati Fine Arts Museum, to lay down $10.  The deck got even hotter, and I nearly yelled in his ear.  He looked at me quizzically, but laid down the $10 and got a blackjack!”

For the rest of his years in Berkeley, Dr. Golden made monthly trips to Reno or Lake Tahoe.  He also played weekends with his dance band.  “I think I’m the only graduate student in the history of the world who came out of grad school with greater net worth than when I went in,” Dr. Golden says.  One year, Bruce, who had now read the Thorp book, came out to Berkeley and the twins spent an entire month gambling throughout Nevada.

When he moved to North Hollywood to work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for his post-doctoral appointment in astrophysics, Dr. Golden made those monthly trips to Las Vegas.  As an astronomer, Dr. Golden has traveled around the world twice lecturing on cruise ships.  He has played blackjack extensively in shore excursions, from Monaco to Macau.

Fast forward to the 2000’s.  His teaching and research duties at UIC and the graduate school of business at Roosevelt University winding down, Dr. Golden queried various gaming magazine publishers and was approached by Lyceum Publishing in London.

EDITORS EXTOL HIS STYLE

As the writer of the monthly “Count on Les” column, his popularity was almost immediate.  He writes in a lucid manner, but his trademark is his humor.  His editor at Bluff Europe, Philip Conneller, wrote:  "Les Golden makes numbers hilarious.  He's simply the funniest gaming strategy writer there is."   He now writes for four gambling magazines.

Dave Bland, the editor of Flush Magazine and a frequent television gaming pundit, added, "Les Golden is a comedy genius.  I could write more but it really is as simple as that.  An expert in his field, he makes getting educated not only painless but actually funny."

James McKeown, editor of iGaming Business, states, "Les Golden has an ever-increasing influence and burgeoning popularity.  His is a significant name in the industry, and is the 'go to' man for counting, strategy and anecdotal literary dexterity.  I cannot acclaim his star highly enough."

Chris Lines, editor of GamblingOnline magazine, introduced Dr. Golden to his readers with the following:  “Where to start in introducing the complete one-off individual that is Les Golden?  Actor, stand-up comedian, humorist UFO lecturer, singer, astronomer, cartoonist, playwright, trumpet player, voice-over artist, political activist . . . we could go on.  You can probably tell that Les is a bit of a character.  Luckily for readers he’s also a great blackjack player.”

Jon Young, Editor of WPT (World Poker Tour)  Magazine and former editor of gambling.com Magazine wrote,  “I learned more about blackjack strategy during my tenure through Les' articles than I did through many failed trips to Vegas.  Always concise, easy-to-read, and intelligent, Les' pieces were the highlight of the month.  His talents also stretched to travel writing.  He provided gambling guides for the magazine to cities as far-flung as Hong Kong and Chicago which were informed, amusing, and relevant, and good enough to put a hundred Bill Brysons to shame." 

Concerning his humor, Les is unabashed about his iconoclastic and outrageous approach.  “My editors let me write things that would get me tarred, feathered, branded, ostracized, and pasteurized in America.  I insult rubes from Des Moines, mafia bosses, Congressmen, pit bosses with the I.Q.’s slightly above that of frozen bananas, I.R.S. agents, and hookers in Vegas lobbies.  I’m allowed to meander off into subjects that serendipitously appear, such as loading of dice, alien visitations, the Three Stooges, and my Oak Park High English teacher, who taught me how to write, Nina Grace Smith.”

His editors love his writing.  Mr. Conneller describes him as “rakish” and “bond-esque.”  Mr. McKeown’s favorite quote is Les’ description of a game he developed to illustrate how casinos set the rules of games to determine the payoffs.  The game “Dumbo Craps” is described by Les as “for those of you with unclean minds, a compound noun, not a complete sentence.”

Dr. Golden receives several dozen email letters from his readers every month.  “Some of the funniest stuff I include in my columns are these bizarre letters.  My favorite is the guy from Lodz who thought ‘card pointing’ was like ‘tuck pointing’ and wanted me to sponsor him and bring him to America.

Dr. Golden has compiled many of his columns into a book, “Confessions of a Card Counter:  How You Can Make a Living Playing Blackjack.”  “The casinos would have you believe that using your brain is an illegal activity,” says Dr. Golden.

Dr. Golden admits that his card counting has led him to being barred from numerous casinos around the world.  The “confessions” book is “my death row admissions of my guilt as someone who uses their brains,” he says.