Casinos are places that promise and provide continuous fun for their customers, but are also committed to making money and being a profitable business. Games of chance such as blackjack, roulette, craps or the slots themselves are designed precisely to give players a hard time and keep their money in the bank. But it’s one thing to know you have the power and quite another to reach for it Underestimate the user in front of you. This can mean doing what no leeway wants: bankruptcy.
Every casino needs to know how to handle such a situation in order to be attractive to the customers as well, otherwise it won’t make people leave their money at the table. But perhaps in the big casinos of Las Vegas and Atlantic City in 2010, the second option was more important. The financial crisis had let them down so much that they had to think about their future. They had to get dressed and began to offer tremendous benefits to players for playing their slot machines regularly.
Now, it would be unthinkable to find an offer where a casino refunds 20% of your winnings once they exceed a few thousand dollars, or that your maximum bet can be as high as $100,000, or that you get an initial bonus of around $100,000 grant $50,000 to start betting. In reality, today’s online casino bonuses are just that, however, their amounts are much smaller and the release conditions invite to leave a lot of money in the account.
The fact is that many players took advantage of the situation to take advantage of these. Advantages that sometimes even reach very luxurious hotel suites and other special services. And there was one player in particular who was the lord and champion of Atlantic City at the time thanks to that. donald johnson At the time, he was a renowned businessman thanks to running a company dedicated to developing software that predicted the most likely outcomes in horse racing. A betting business. Born in Salem, Oregon, the man had previously been a jockey but was unable to turn pro due to his oversize.
Johnson made huge profits from his business and got interested in casino games in the 1990s. Blackjack was his weakness and a game he could wager for hours at the table. He had never wagered more than $100 since it was just a hobby for him, but the privileges afforded him by the casinos he used to frequent invited him to take it a step further. But nobody could imagine that This character will end up earning more than $15 million in this game and becomes one of his most recognizable icons. And all without being a professional player.
And it’s the latter that has helped him the most in terms of his performance, looks and reputation. Johnson has worked on both his attitude and his presence to come across as a light-hearted guy, someone who only cares about partying and having fun in the moment. A player who does not value money and, as a successful person, is very easily prone to excess. A theoretically easy target for a casino as long as it’s just a front.
Actually, Don was quite a tactician. He learned the art of card counting and practiced it in the rooms in which he sat. He also lost a hand or two to hide it, but his wins soon attracted a lot of attention. In reality, however, he and everything around him attracted attention because he was not alone in the casino. Johnson was with two bodyguards.or something that looked like bodyguards, and two girls who devoted themselves entirely to cheering him on in his plays. As we can already imagine, this was an entire entourage ready for action.
The bodyguards were in charge of strategically positioning themselves to see the dealer’s cards, while the girls were responsible for providing diversionary tactics to other customers and possible associates who were checking Don. Meanwhile, the American was busy counting as such. And it was very good. He was later inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame, which is only logical after the huge blow he was able to inflict on the casino world.
By the time the casino moguls informed security that the person needed to be stopped from winning and winning money, it was always too late. Sometimes because the rest of the curious players who came to watch him had been infected by his kind and went around madly celebrating every hand he won. Any attempt to evict them would be a scandal. And on other occasions, Don and his staff left in time to spend much of the money raised at the casino’s restaurant. They acted like they didn’t mind spending it all. By doing so, they calmed the mood and gave their characters even more believability.
There are people who might think this was cheating, but some yes and some no. Cheating is when you artificially lower the odds of winning against the banker. Johnson didn’t usually do this, or only on rare occasions. When their bodyguards spied on the rest of the cards, they did so, which earned them bans from some casinos. But when he used his intelligence, it was perfectly legal. And the casinos knew it. Because of this, it was banned in most venues in Las Vegas and Atlantic City in the years that followed.
