Not even Don could find the right words to express his astonishment. Beating the house is one thing, but doing it in such an astonishing style is just mind-blowing.
Actor Don Johnson and Donald Trumps Friend Marla Maples at Trump Castle Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey November 1 1990. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images. Contact info for Don Johnson in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Atlantic City, New Jersey: Phone number, address lookup, email address, and social networking profiles on Spokeo, your people search engine for contact info & public records. Johnson claims to have won $5.8 million at the Tropicana Casino And Resort in one night, $5 million at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, and $4 million at Caesars Atlantic City, under these favorable conditions and before the casinos got wise and pulled the deal off the table. No stranger to the game. Don Johnson won nearly $6 million playing blackjack in one night, single-handedly decimating the monthly revenue of Atlantic City’s Tropicana casino. Not long before that, he’d taken the Borgata.
Spectators trooped in their numbers to the high-roller pit of Atlantic City. And inside was a burly middle-aged man, dressed in a red cap and black Oregon State hoodie, whose name was Don Johnson.
At first, word began to spread about the crazy man in the pit who was wagering $100,000 a hand. Word spreads when the betting is that big. Johnson was on an amazing streak. The towers of chips stacked in front of him formed a colorful miniature skyline. His winning run had been picked up by the casino’s watchful overhead cameras and drawn the close scrutiny of the pit bosses. In just one hand, he remembers, he won $800,000. In a three-hand sequence, he took $1.2 million.
The basics of blackjack are simple. Almost everyone knows them. You play against the house. Two cards are placed face-up before the player, and two more cards, one down, one up, before the dealer. A card’s suit doesn’t matter, only its numerical value—each face card is worth 10, and an ace can be either a one or an 11. The goal is to get to 21, or as close to it as possible without going over. Scanning the cards on the table before him, the player can either stand or keep taking cards in an effort to approach 21. Since the house’s hand has one card face-down, the player can’t know exactly what the hand is, which is what makes this a game.
As Johnson remembers it, the $800,000 hand started with him betting $100,000 and being dealt two eights. If a player is dealt two of a kind, he can choose to “split” the hand, which means he can play each of the cards as a separate hand and ask for two more cards, in effect doubling his bet. That’s what Johnson did. His next two cards, surprisingly, were also both eights, so he split each again. Getting four cards of the same number in a row doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Johnson says he was once dealt six consecutive aces at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. He was now playing four hands, each consisting of a single eight-card, with $400,000 in the balance.
He was neither nervous nor excited. Johnson plays a long game, so the ups and downs of individual hands, even big swings like this one, don’t matter that much to him. He is a veteran player. Little interferes with his concentration. He doesn’t get rattled. With him, it’s all about the math, and he knows it cold. Whenever the racily clad cocktail waitress wandered in with a fresh whiskey and Diet Coke, he took it from the tray.
The house’s hand showed an upturned five. Arrayed on the table before him were the four eights. He was allowed to double down—to double his bet—on any hand, so when he was dealt a three on the first of his hands, he doubled his bet on that one, to $200,000. When his second hand was dealt a two, he doubled down on that, too. When he was dealt a three and a two on the next two hands, he says, he doubled down on those, for a total wager of $800,000.
It was the dealer’s turn. He drew a 10, so the two cards he was showing totaled 15. Johnson called the game—in essence, betting that the dealer’s down card was a seven or higher, which would push his hand over 21. This was a good bet: since all face cards are worth 10, the deck holds more high cards than low. When the dealer turned over the house’s down card, it was a 10, busting him. Johnson won all four hands.
Johnson didn’t celebrate. He didn’t even pause. As another skyscraper of chips was pushed into his skyline, he signaled for the next hand. He was just getting started.
The headline in The Press of Atlantic City was enough to gladden the heart of anyone who has ever made a wager or rooted for the underdog:
“BLACKJACK PLAYER TAKES TROPICANA
FOR NEARLY $6 MILLION,
SINGLE-HANDEDLY RUINS CASINO’S MONTH”
FOR NEARLY $6 MILLION,
SINGLE-HANDEDLY RUINS CASINO’S MONTH”
But the story was even bigger than that. Johnson’s assault on the Tropicana was merely the latest in a series of blitzes he’d made on Atlantic City’s gambling establishments. In the four previous months, he’d taken $5 million from the Borgata casino and another $4 million from Caesars. Caesars had cut him off, he says, and then effectively banned him from its casinos worldwide.
Fifteen million dollars in winnings from three different casinos? Nobody gets that lucky. How did he do it? Most people quipped.
And just like them, I know by now you’re most likely thinking about how you can also wager and win big like Don. It’s a nice dream to have!
But you know what? You don’t even need to travel to Atlantic City or some of the biggest land-based casinos in the world to realize this dream. Thanks to the evolution of digital technology, you can now do it right from the comfort of your home on the omiqq website. And if you’re lucky enough to have the right set of strategies like Don Johnson, you just might be the next biggest success story of the poker world.
Photo Credit
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Guest Author Bio
Uday Tank
Uday Tank
Uday Tank has been working with writing-challenged clients for several years. His educational background in family science and journalism has given him a broad base from which to approach many topics. He especially enjoys writing content after researching and analyzing different resources whether they are books, articles or online stuff.
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Don Johnson, the CEO of Heritage Development who in a four-month spree a few years ago won $6 million at the Tropicana, $5 million at the Borgata and $4 million at Caesars and has been written about as “The Man Who Broke Atlantic City”, is now being profiled by Bloomberg TV in a special called “The Player: Secrets of a Vegas Whale”.
Johnson reportedly was not card counting during his streak. The coveted high roller just had a run of cards, but as the interview pointed out, he doesn’t play poorly either.
But, in the piece, Bloomberg for some reason asked, “Did he cheat?”, which seems to make hardly any sense since the casinos would have kept his money and most surely banned him if he was in fact cheating them out of millions. Johnson was offered rebates on his losses, which gave him better chances in the long run over the house, but he wasn’t cheating.
City Of Atlantic City Website
Johnson is also the gambler who allegedly stiffed a casino DJ on $200,000.
Don Johnson Atlantic City 15 Million
The Bloomberg piece features interviews with casino industry titans, including Steve Wynn (CEO, Wynn Resorts), Jim Murren (CEO, MGM Resorts Ltd.), Gary Loveman (CEO, Caesars Entertainment) and Bill Boyd (Chairman, Boyd Ltd.)