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James Grosjean – Blackjack Player
James Grosjean is everything a casino would not want a player to be – he is extremely good at the game of blackjack, a respected man who is also an author, and also someone who will not show the other cheek when he feels he has been wronged. The result is almost inevitable – the casinos ban him or prevent him from playing at their tables and Grosjean drags them to court.
James Grosjean is also a man who never gives up. Despite the countless standoffs he has had against casinos and their security personnel, he has not given up on playing blackjack. He continues to play at casinos across the globe, mostly incognito, for obvious reasons.
James Grosjean – Early Days
James Grosjean entered the world of gambling, specifically blackjack, quite early in life. Having learned the nuances of the game early on, he became a blackjack professional, even before he could complete his graduation in mathematics from the University of Chicago.
Grosjean’s entry into the world of using mathematics to pin down the odds happened quite by chance. He was at a game one fine day when he caught a peek of the dealer’s hole card thanks to some sloppy dealing. He made use of that golden opportunity and honed his skills at hole carding.
James Grosjean – Blackjack Author
James Grosjean is, apart from being an excellent blackjack player, also a fine author. He published his first book in the year 2000. Titled Beyond Counting: Exploiting Casino Games from Blackjack to Video Poker, the book deals primarily with advantage play.
The book covers all the different methods that a player can employ to gain an advantage over the casino, including card counting, hole carding, shuffle tracking, and more.
In his book, Grosjean also provides analyses and also explains strategies to the readers, giving psychological insights to the game. The book gives insights not just into blackjack, but also other casino games like Let It Ride, Caribbean Stud, and also 3 Card Poker.
James Grosjean – Court Battles
From the year 2000, James Grosjean has been involved in many a running battles with casinos, winning a number of significant decisions. Some of his major victories have come against casinos like Caesar’s Palace and Imperial Palace. One of his most famous wins has been against Griffin Investigations Inc., a security agency that provided casinos with details about card counters and also cheats.
His first significant tangle with a casino came about in 2000, when the security personnel at Caesar’s Palace detained him and his friend illegally, suspecting him of indulging in card counting. The detention resulted in his being arrested and held for four days in the county jail. Grosjean was subsequently released, and he filed a suit against the casino.
Then, just a few weeks after the incident, security personnel at the Imperial Palace casino assaulted Grosjean physically when he went there to play. They did not even allow him to exit the casino when he realized he was under surveillance. On his release, Grosjean filed a suit against the casino. The jury of Clark County court ruled in his favor and he won damages and compensation to the tune of $599,000 ($99,000 in actual damages and $500,000 in punitive damages). That number was later revised to $399,000 in keeping with the laws of Nevada.
However, Grosjean won much acclaim from the outcome of another lawsuit, this one against Griffin Investigations Inc. Griffin Investigations basically collected information about known card counters and blackjack cheats, passing the data to the casinos. The casinos usually acted on the information provided by Griffin, barring the players whose names figured on the list supplied by Griffin Investigations from playing at their tables, sometimes detaining them.
In the suit against Griffin Investigations, James Grosjean and Michael Russo (the two players who filed the suit) claimed the company had defamed their character by providing casinos with wrong information, an action that had subsequently resulted in detention and arrest for players, not to mention being tagged as ‘cheats’. They won the suit, the court awarded them damages and, on 13 September 2005, Griffin Investigations declared bankruptcy. Grosjean instantly became a hero among the members of the gambling community.
In 2006, for his work in protecting the rights of blackjack players and also for his skill at blackjack and his book on the game, Grosjean became the youngest inductee into the Blackjack Hall of Fame.
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