His very name should tell you a little bit about this professional blackjack player. Lance Humble believes that he could be the best at all things related to blackjack. He even wrote a blackjack book on the game and titled it The World’s Greatest Blackjack Book. Some might take objection, but the truth is that Lance Humble really does know a lot about how to be successful at the game of 21.
Like many other professional blackjack players, Lance Humble is an entertaining character. Here is a closer look at the life of this blackjack master. You may even be inspired to follow in Humble’s footsteps as you play blackjack online.
About Lance Humble
It seems that the very best sources of information about Lance Humble’s life are the interviews that have been published now and again. He likes to talk, especially about himself, and the man has been generous with information about his background and evolution as a blackjack player.
Humble began playing blackjack in 1970 while teaching a college course in Toronto. The name of the class was Aspects of Gambling, and it was offered for credit at York University. This entrance into the world of blackjack puts Humble in some decent company. Famous players such as Edwin O. Thorp and Lawrence Revere also came from college environments. Most of them were skilled in some type of mathematics.
Thorp’s book Beat the Dealer seems to have had the most influence on Humble. He even found a way to incorporate the book into his own class. From there, Humble sought to master simple counts like the Dubner Point Count. He became a popular instructor, and one of his earliest students was Perry Burns. Burns was one of the first blackjack players who acknowledged his ability to make a living at the game. He ruled the Las Vegas junkets when they were popular in the 1970s.
In fact, it was Burns that convinced Humble to make his own trip to the Las Vegas casinos. Using the counting methods and skills that he had developed, Lance Humble was able to earn $650 in profit on his very first session. From then on he was hooked. When he was not playing the game he was writing books on the subject.
One of the books that had a large influence on Lance Humble was Playing Blackjack as a Business written by another famous blackjack player, Lawrence Revere. Throughout his own career, Humble approached blackjack in the manner advised by Revere.
Lance Humble Writes Blackjack Books
Ask any blackjack player and they will tell you it is beneficial to write books on the game. Books provide an additional source of passive income. The most popular books can sell thousands of copies. Some of them have even been given new life thanks to platforms such as Amazon. Lance Humble’s The World’s Greatest Blackjack Book is one of these.
The book was written in a partnership with Kenneth C. Cooper. It is a comprehensive book, but Cooper is rarely discussed. Clearly, the mathematics and other working parts of the book are credited to Humble. He has stated that he gave Cooper his notes from his college classes that he taught on the subject of gaming along with other material. Cooper provided the writing skills while Humble was the one who offered up the blackjack knowledge.
The book was ultimately published by Doubleday and sold very well at a time when many other blackjack books were flooding the market. It has become one of the true classics, and it still inspires players today who are just getting started on the road to becoming a professional blackjack player.
Lance Humble Invents the Hi-Opt I and Hi-Opt 2 Card Counting Methods
One of Lance Humble’s most enduring contributions to professional blackjack is the creation of the Hi-Opt I and II card counting methods. We have detailed both of these card counting methods on Counting Edge. They are fairly sophisticated methods of card counting that are designed for the player who has some experience with counting.
Humble has stated that his goal with these card counting methods was to fine tune the counting systems that were already in place, making them more accurate. That’s why you will find that the Hi-Opt methods deal with things like the true count. They also use more computations in some scenarios to arrive at a count that is more accurate.
You can learn more about card counting with the Hi-Opt I and II on Counting Edge. You can also seek to become a master of basic blackjack strategy like Lance Humble. He stands as one of the legendary blackjack players who has proven a scientific approach to the game has merit.
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