The Biggest Blackjack Wins in History, and How They Really Happened

1. Don Johnson: about $15 million from three Atlantic City casinos (2010 to 2011)

The biggest well-documented blackjack run of the modern era belongs to Don Johnson, a former racetrack executive from the Philadelphia area. Over about six months, he won roughly $15 million from three Atlantic City casinos:

To put the scale in perspective: at BlackJack Streak you can bet up to 1,000,000 play chips on a hand just for fun, while Johnson was putting about $100,000 of real money on each one. The Tropicana win was described at the time as a record loss for that casino. According to accounts of the session, Johnson won $1.2 million over three straight hands, including one hand of about $800,000 that began as a $100,000 bet on a pair of eights and grew through splits and doubles.

How he actually did it

Johnson didn't count cards and he didn't get lucky at a normal table. He negotiated. Atlantic City was struggling, and casinos were competing hard for high rollers. Mark Bowden's account in The Atlantic, and the coverage that followed, describe the terms Johnson won before he played:

• A 20% discount on losses once they passed $500,000. Lose $1 million, pay $800,000.
• Player-friendly rules: a hand-shuffled six-deck shoe, the dealer standing on soft 17, and the right to split and double on several hands at once.
• Big bets: about $100,000 a hand.

By his own figuring, the rules shaved the house edge to about a quarter of one percent, close to an even game. The loss discount was what tipped it. When he lost, he lost less, so a near-even game became one in his favor over a short, high-stakes run. Once the results came in, the casinos stopped offering him those terms. Johnson publicly credited his run to luck, but the terms he negotiated are what made the game worth playing. In 2017 he was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame.

2. Kerry Packer at the MGM Grand (1995)

The Australian billionaire Kerry Packer was the most famous high roller of his era. His best-known blackjack win came at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 1995. According to the Las Vegas Advisor, he negotiated terms that let him play eight hands of $250,000 at once, about $2 million on the table every round.

Reported totals for that session vary widely, from about $20 million to $40 million. The Las Vegas Advisor itself has given both $26.2 million and "$40 million" in less than an hour in different pieces, and other outlets report around $20 million. What everyone agrees on is the scale: millions per hour, at stakes almost no casino would offer today.

Packer's story cuts both ways. He also posted some of the largest losses on record, including a reported £11 million at Crockfords in London in 1999. You can read about those in the biggest blackjack losses ever recorded.

3. Edward Thorp: $11,000 in one weekend (early 1960s)

By modern standards it's small. By historical standards it's the most important blackjack win ever. Edward Thorp, a young mathematics professor, used an IBM 704 computer to show that a player who tracked the cards could sometimes have the edge over the house.

To prove it, he took $10,000 of backing from Manny Kimmel, a wealthy professional gambler, to casinos in Reno and Lake Tahoe and reportedly won $11,000 in a single weekend. His 1962 book Beat the Dealer taught card counting to the world, sold more than 700,000 copies, and made the New York Times bestseller list. Thorp's full story is in our guide to famous blackjack players.

4. The MIT Blackjack Team (1980s and 1990s)

The MIT team turned card counting into a business. Its first bank, in August 1980, started with $89,000 and more than doubled in ten weeks, according to histories of the team. By the 1990s its players were making regular weekend trips to Las Vegas.

The most quoted figure comes from a casino security investigator who told ABC News in 2003: "They took over $400,000 in one weekend out of the casinos in Las Vegas." Totals over the team's whole history are much harder to pin down, and the bestselling book about them, Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House, used composite characters and invented scenes, as the author later acknowledged.

5. Ken Uston and the first "big player" teams (1970s)

Ken Uston, a former senior vice president of the Pacific Stock Exchange, joined the professional gambler Al Francesco's card-counting team in the 1970s. On the team's first five-day run, it won $44,100, of which Uston's share was $2,100. Uston later ran his own team in Atlantic City, which reportedly made about $350,000, and he wrote about it all in The Big Player and Million Dollar Blackjack.

What every big win had in common

Put the stories side by side and luck is the least interesting part.

• An edge, found before the cards came out. Thorp, Uston and the MIT team counted cards. Johnson negotiated the rules and a loss discount. None of them were playing an ordinary game with an ordinary house edge.
• Huge bankrolls and bets. A small edge only turns into millions when the bets are enormous. Johnson bet around $100,000 a hand. Packer had $2 million in play every round.
• Short windows. Every one of these runs ended when the casinos adjusted: ending deals, shuffling earlier, adding decks, or barring players.

For everyone else, blackjack without an edge is a game you lose slowly. At an ordinary six-deck table like the one at BlackJack Streak, perfect basic strategy still leaves the house about 0.4% of every bet; play by gut and it's far more. That's why a winning streak feels so good and why it doesn't last.

Those figures come from 10 million rounds of perfect basic strategy that we played through BlackJack Streak's own rules engine. For the full math, read the longest winning streak in blackjack.

Set your own record, for free

You won't negotiate a loss discount at BlackJack Streak, and you don't need one: there's no money to lose. You start with 500,000 free chips at a six-deck table that pays blackjack 3 to 2, with Frank dealing and cheering your streaks. With a free account you can chase badges like Hot Streak (five wins in a row), Unstoppable (ten in a row), High Roller (a million on one hand) and the Ten Million Club.

And if you want to try a big-player style bet without a bankroll behind you, BlackJack Streak is the place where it costs nothing. Learn the right plays first with our basic strategy chart.

Sources

• Don Johnson (gambler), Wikipedia, citing The Press of Atlantic City and The Atlantic
• Bensalem man wins nearly $15 million playing blackjack, WHYY (May 2011)
• How did a blackjack player manage to win $15 million?, Longreads, excerpting Mark Bowden, "The Man Who Broke Atlantic City," The Atlantic (April 2012)
• Everything's Negotiable, Even Beating Casinos at Blackjack, Donald Marron, summarizing The Atlantic's reporting
• Biggest ever blackjack bet, Las Vegas Advisor
• A Whale of a Story, Las Vegas Advisor
• Edward O. Thorp, Wikipedia
• How MIT Students Broke the Bank in Vegas, ABC News (September 2003)
• MIT Blackjack Team, Wikipedia
• Ken Uston, Wikipedia