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Peter Griffin – Mathematician and Blackjack Player
Another outstanding personality in the world of gambling, especially blackjack, was Peter A. Griffin (1937-1998). Griffin was a math genius who applied his science to study blackjack and made quite a name for himself through his studies and the books that he subsequently wrote on the subject. He went on to write one of the classic books in blackjack, something that elevated him to the status of legend and ensured he was one of the first seven inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2003.
Peter Griffin – The Early Days
Peter Griffin was born in New Jersey in 1937. You could say mathematics was in his blood, considering that his grandfather was the noted mathematician Frank Loxley Griffin. Griffin’s father was an actuary who later became manager at an insurance company. One of three children (he had a brother, Alan, and a sister, Barbara Dann), Griffin spent his childhood in different parts of America – Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Chicago, and Portland, Oregon. Peter Griffin completed his graduation from Portland State University and later completed his post-graduation from the University of California at Davis. Griffin was a teacher at heart, and this was the profession he took up after completing his master’s degree. Griffin came into contact with blackjack in 1970. That was the year when he went to Nevada to conduct research for a course he had proposed at the University on the mathematics of gambling. He suffered many losses that year, but the effect was not what one would normally think of. He did not become disappointed with the losses; instead, his resolve to analyze the game and beat the odds only increased.
Peter Griffin – Achievements
Despite the initial losses at blackjack, Griffin continued in his efforts to break down blackjack games and arrive at a way of beating the casino advantage. To this end, he started collecting data about the success rates of Americans playing blackjack. He extensively visited casinos in Reno, Atlantic City, and also Las Vegas to study the games that players played there. He also collected data and made comparative analyses of the performance of players from Reno and Las Vegas versus that of Atlantic City players.
Griffin’s project was massive in its scope, but he went at it with an enthusiasm not many would have been able to generate. As a result of this detailed analysis, Griffin was able to determine the average handicap of 2% that players suffered against the house. This was the first time that this handicap had been arrived at, one of the many firsts that Griffin achieved. Griffin was also the first person to determine that the possible advantage that a card counting system gave players was associated closely with two critical factors – the Betting Correlation (BC) and the Playing Efficiency (PE).
Griffin’s superior intelligence came through in a number of instances, one the most astonishing being that as a card counter, he could keep track of six counts at a time, when other players struggled to keep track of a single count.
Perhaps one of the most significant contributions that Griffin made to blackjack was as an author. In 1978, he came out with The Theory of Blackjack: The Complete Card Counter’s Guide to the Casino Game of 21.This book is considered one of the most important publications related to blackjack and experts even go so far as to rate it just behind Edward Thorp’s Beat the Dealer from the point of view of card counting analysis. In 1991, he published his second book, titled Extra Stuff: Gambling Ramblings. Other publications included numerous papers related to gambling and mathematics, published in mathematical journals.
Griffin’s may have been a huge name in the world of blackjack, but playing blackjack was not what he was fundamentally interested in; he was more interested in teaching. Teaching was close to his heart and he remained a teacher till the very end. He taught statistics, calculus, and differential equations during his career as a teacher at California State University, a job he took up in 1965. He continued in this position till 1998, when he lost his battle with cancer. He was just 61.
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