Mike: Hi, I'm Mike Shackleford with The Wizard of Odds website and I'm here to teach you how to play Blackjack. I'm here with my student, Angela Wyman and Lamone, our lovely dealer and I'm going to up try to explain what I call my wizard simple strategy for Blackjack. Now, first of all, let me explain the object to the game.

• Michael Shackleford
• Michael Shackleford Wizard Of Odds
• Michael Shackleford Vsu
• Michael Shackleford Charles Town Wv

Shackelford, 68, of Ranson, died on January 28, 2021 as the result of a tragic automobile accident. He was born on August 16, 1952 in Mt. Harmony, Marion County, West Virginia. He was the son of Charles Ray and Violet Jean Shackelford. Harmony School and was a graduate of East Side High School class of 1970. Space Precinct is a British television series that was first broadcast from 1994 to 1995 on Sky One and later on BBC Two from 1995 to 1996 in the UK, and on ITV from 2004 to 2009 in first-run syndication in the United States. Michael D Shackleford, 43. Resides in Santee, SC. Lived In Orangeburg SC, Irmo SC, Taylors SC, Andrews SC. Related To Catherine Shackleford, Patricia Shackleford, Iris Shackleford, Nathaniel Shackleford, Alexander Shackleford. Also known as Michael Shacklefo. The Queen's Corgi is a 2019 English-language Belgian computer-animated comedy film produced by nWave Pictures.The film was directed by Ben Stassen and Vincent Kesteloot and written by John R. Smith and Rob Sprackling. According to the about page on his main site, Michael Shackleford, A.S.A., is a professional actuary. His career path is unusual among gambling information site operators – he’s spent a good bit of it analyzing the math behind casino games for various casino game developers.

It has always bothered me when people say the object of Blackjack is to get as close to 21 as possible without going over. No, the object of Blackjack is to have more points than the dealer without going over. So it's important to understand that you're playing against the dealer and trying to outscore the dealer.

I'm not going to get into all the rules of Blackjack because it's such a common game and most people already understand it already. So let us jump right into the strategy, all right Angela?

Angela: Let's do it.

Michael Shackleford

Mike: Okay. I'm going to break this down into various types of hands the player my get. Now normally, when people present what's called the Blackjack basic strategy that is how to play every single possible player hand by all 10 possible dealer hands. This is a great strategy that any good Blackjack player probably has memorized, but I'm going to teach a slightly simplified version of that.

Rather than looking at all 10 possible dealer up cards, I'm going to break them into just two types; a high card and a low card. A low card is a two through a six and a high card has a seven through an ace. Now, first let's talk about dealer hard totals where only standing and hitting are viable options. If the player has 8 or less, you always hit.

Now, 9 to 11 can involve doubling so let's skip over those for now. Now, this is the most important rule of the whole strategy, if you have a hard 12 to 16, then you're going to stand if the dealer is showing a small card and hit if the dealer showing a large card. This happens all the time and it's the most important rule that you should remember out of all of these.

Next, let's talk about hard hands where doubling is a viable option, meaning a hard 9 to 11. If you have a hard total of 9, you want to double down if the dealer is showing a small card otherwise you hit if the dealer showing a big card. Now with the 10 of 11, the rule there is you want to double if you have more points than the dealer. For example, if you have a total of 10, you double down if the dealer showing a 9 or less, otherwise you just hit. If you have a total of 11, then you double down if the dealer showing a 10 or less. Think of an ace as being worth 11 points so if you have an 11 and the dealer showing an ace, you're just going to hit that. Next let's talk about the soft hands and these are commonly misplayed by recreational players.

Angela: Okay.

[laughter]

Mike: Okay, first of all, if you have a soft 15 or less, you always hit it-

Angela: Always.

Mike: And you know what I mean by a soft 15 for example?

Angela: I'm not sure what you mean with that.

Mike: That means that it’s a hand that could be counted as either 5 or 15 points because there's an ace in there. So an ace and a 4 would be referred to as a soft 15.

Angela: Got it.

Mike: So you always hit soft 13, 14 and 15.

Angela: Okay.

Mike: Now, if you have a soft 16, 17 or 18, then you're going to double if the dealer is showing a small card and very few players do this but trust me, the odds are in your favor because a small dealer up card is good for you and it's a good opportunity to get more money on the table while the odds are in your favor.

Angela: Okay.

Mike: If the dealer has a big card showing, then the odds are not looking so good for you, therefore you're just going to just hit it and a lot of people also make the mistake where they have a soft 18 and the dealer showing a 9, 10 or ace and they stand thinking, “Oh, an 18 is good enough for me.”, no, you should be aggressive in that situation and take a hit against any dealer big card with a soft 18. Okay?

Angela: All right.

Mike: Finally, if you have a soft total of 19 or more then you stand.

Angela: Okay.

Mike: Okay, next let's talk about the pairs or hands that you might split. Rule number one regarding pairs, always split eights and aces. You've probably heard it before but it's true. No matter what the dealer has, always split eights and aces. You never split what I call the three F hands; fours, fives and faces.

Faces meaning any ten-point card. Never split those no matter what the dealer has, and when I say never split, then you just revert to normal basic strategy. Finally, if you have any of the other pairs, meaning twos, threes, sixes, sevens or nines, then if the dealer is showing a small card, you split them, if the dealer showing a big card, you don't and you revert to regular basic strategy.

For example, if you had two sevens and the dealer is showing an 8 then because that's a big card, you don't split it then you revert to regular strategy and just think about it as 14 points in which case you would hit it. Angela, do you know about surrendering in Blackjack?

Angela: I have heard of it but I don't really understand it.

Mike: Okay, this is a powerful rule in the player’s favor that few players actually invoke when they should. I'm going to keep it real simple and just tell you the best situation to surrender because it happens a lot. If you have a total of 16 and the dealer is showing a 10, you surrender.

What does surrender mean you might ask, that means that you just forfeit half your bet. For example, if you had bet a $100 and got that hand, you make a gesture like this on the table and the dealers going to take half your bet or 50 bucks and return the other half to you. The reason you want to surrender that hand is because the odds are so bad that on average you can expect to lose 54% of that wager. You would rather lose 50% than 54% right?

Angela: Yes.

Mike: Right.

Angela: Right.

Mike: And other players at the table may criticize you for it thinking that it's a -- like you're chickening out, no, you know that that's a lousy hand, cut your losses and surrender.

Question 1 - [07:41]

Angela: Does every casino allow you to do that?

Mike: No, generally speaking you can surrender in the shoe games but you can't in the single and double deck games.

Angela: Okay.

Mike: So if they say you can’t surrender, then just hit that 16 against the 10 and also, you can only surrender on your initial two cards. If you're 16 is composed of three or more or if it’s after a split, then they're not going to let you.

Angela: All right.

Michael Shackleford Wizard Of Odds

Mike: All right?

Angela: Think I got it.

Mike: Okay. Finally, the most important thing to remember. If you only remember one thing about this lesson is never ever, ever, ever, ever, under any circumstances play Blackjack if a winning Blackjack pays 6 to 5 and you're seeing this more and more all over the country is there short changing the players on Blackjack instead of paying the full 3 to 2, they're only paying 6 to 5, that is going to cost the player 1.4% on average which is like tripling the house advantage. So if you see that 6 to 5, just turn around and walk away and look for a better table.

Question 2 - [08:53]

Angela: Oh, I will. [laughs] Well Mike you know now I'm going to have to go out and play your simplified strategy but what are the odds of your strategy versus basic Blackjack strategy?

Mike: Good question. Of course, the odds are a little better with the basic strategy and as a reminder, this is an example of the full basic strategy. You can buy these cards at almost any casino gift shop, and I it's on my website of course and it shows exactly how to play any situation according to the player card and the dealer up card. While this has about 200 different situations, my simple strategy only has about 20. Playing this strategy is only going to cost you 0.14% in additional house advantage compared to the basic strategy. So it's getting you almost the full way to the basic strategy with the much easier strategy that I think is going to be easier for beginners to learn and if you're a good Blackjack player, you really like the game; I highly encourage you to study the full basic strategy once you've mastered my simple strategy.

Angela: For your strategy first.

Mike: Yes, for most people.

Question 3 - [10:05]

Angela: Fair enough. Does it make a difference the number of decks you're playing with?

Mike: Yes. Generally speaking the fewer the number of decks the better it is for the player. However the casinos know this too. Generally the rules are not as good on a single or double deck game as it is on a six or eight deck game, so you have to consider all the rules that the casino is offering.

If the rules are exactly the same between a double deck game and a six deck game you should absolutely play the double deck game. However a lot of casinos are going to take away the option to surrender or re-splitting aces or maybe even double after a split in the double deck game. In that case you can use the Blackjack House Edge Calculator on my website to calculate the exact house advantage under any set of rules.

Question 4 - [11:00]

Angela: Well we've all see those movies where, teams of people go into casinos and they count cards and what are they actually doing? Does it work?

Mike: It absolutely does work. The theory behind card counting is when the remaining cards left to be played are rich in big cards especially ten's and aces, then the odds swing to the player's favor. If they're rich in lots of small cards, then the odds swing to the dealer's favor.

So while these cards are coming out the player is remembering what cards he's seen which tells him information about the cards left to be played. So let's say for example the player knows that there's a lot of big cards left in that shoe, a disproportionate number, then he's going to bet more and he's going to change his strategy in certain borderline situations mainly doubling and splitting more and hitting less.

Now, card counting is not as powerful as the movies and TV shows make it out to be. It's not like in Rain Man or any card counter can clean out the casino. No it's a pretty thin advantage of about 1% depending upon how good the card counter is, so to be a successful card counter you need a lot of money to make a little money, grinding out that 1% advantage.

Angela: Mike, sometimes when I’m playing Blackjack this happens to me.

Player: Stand.

Angela: What are you going to do about that?

Player: I don't know about that. You took the dealers bust card. I would’ve won.

Angela: I was playing correct strategy.

[00:12:46] Player: Still, hey you took it from me.

Question 5 - [12:50]

Angela: What difference does it make? Was that other player right to criticize me?

Mike: Absolutely not. That's one of the biggest myths in Blackjack is that the third baseman or any player in Blackjack can somehow jinx the whole shoe. A bad Blackjack player does not cause the other players to win or lose anything.

Of course you can look at one certain hand and say you just made the whole table lose, but it's just as likely as anything that he does to help the whole table win. On average it makes no difference what the other players do. So that guy who criticized you was being rude and he was mathematically incorrect. So always follow that basic strategy.

Angela: Well, there's been times where I’ve had a Blackjack and the dealer asked if I wanted insurance.

Mike: Yes.

Angela: And this happens.

Dealer: Insurance.

Angela: No, I don’t want insurance.

Dealer: Are you sure that [unintelligible 00:13:50] money?

Angela: No, I am sure. The wizard says you never take insurance.

Dealer: The wizard. That sounds like some kind of-

Angela: No, no, he knows what he is talking about it. I don't need insurance.

Dealer: All right, I don’t want to say I told you so. See I have a Blackjack, and it’s a push you would won even money.

Question 6 - [14:12]

Angela: Was the dealer right?

Mike: No, the dealer was absolutely wrong and this happens to me all the time. You absolutely should never take insurance. It's a sucker bet. On average the house advantage is 8.4%, it doesn't make any difference what the dealer has. Now, it happens all the time where the dealer says it's a sure win, even money don't you want it? No. Your odds are a lot better going for that 4, 3 to 2 to win. So repeat after me never.

Angela: Never.

Mike: Take.

Angela: Take.

Mike: Insurance.

Angela: Insurance.

Mike: Way to go.

Angela: All right.

Mike: Looks like you have another question, Angela.

Question 7 - [14:57]

Angela: Well Mike, what are the best Blackjack rules I can realistically expect to find in Las Vegas.

Mike: Good question. What I like to tell people is to try to find what I call the liberal strip rules that consists of a six deck shoe game. The dealer stands on a soft 17 which is very good for the player. You can double after a split, you can surrender and you can re-split aces. If you can get all those rules the house advantage is going to be about 0.25% which is about as low as it ever gets.

Angela: We'll have to find a casino that offers all that.

Mike: Casinos that offer that are generally on the Las Vegas strip. Lots of times they have higher minimums to those games, starting anywhere from 25 to 100 bucks. So if they're for the higher rollers.

In the high limit rooms you usually find these set of rules. So let's say that you are a little uncomfortable betting as much, into the green or black chip area, then you're going to have to suffer some worse rules there as long as you're not playing 6 to 5. You're going to be okay.

Michael Shackleford Vsu

Again, the calculator on my Blackjack page on my website wizardofoz.com we’ll tell you the house advantage under any set of rules. Let me also say my other website wizardofvegas.com will tell you the current Blackjack rules for any casino in Las Vegas.

Question 8 - [16:28]

Angela: All right. I think I know your answer to this one but I’ve got to ask. What about the side bets and Blackjack?

Mike: Repeat after me. All.

Angela: All.

Mike: Side.

Angela: Side.

Mike: Bets.

Angela: Bets.

Mike: Are.

Angela: Are.

Mike: Sucker.

Angela: Sucker.

Mike: Bets.

Angela: Bets.

Mike: The casinos are trying to eke more money out of their Blackjack tables by adding side bets to them. There are tons of them available. Time doesn't allow me to explain all of them, but they're all sucker bets, some are more sucker bets than others, but as a rule of thumb, just avoid all of them and just stick to the base game.

Let's summarize Blackjack. Blackjack is a great game, almost everyone knows it. It's very easy to find in any casino and that has a very low house advantage if you play properly. What I’ve been explaining in this video is what I call my wizard simple strategy.

It can be found in my business card if you're lucky enough to have one or it can be found on my web site wizardofoz.com. The house advantage. Following my simple strategy is just about a tenth of a percent higher than the full basic strategy. I have tons of information about Blackjack on my website wizardofodds.com including a demo game that you can play and it'll correct you if you make any mistakes and finally if there's just one thing to remember about this whole video. It's never play 6 to 5 Blackjack.

A late night gambler plays the slot machines 03 May 2005 in Las Vegas,Nevada. (Photo: PAUL J.RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

LAS VEGAS—For at least four centuries, game players and gamblers have relied on scientists and mathematicians for advice. Galileo wrote Thoughts on Dice Games because his patron, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, “ordered me to produce” an answer to a question about a dice game. Fermat and Pascal developed the concept of probability theory from correspondence started when the Chevalier de Mere asked them to settle a gambling problem.

Today, the authority on casino games is Michael Shackleford, the Wizard of Odds. His website, WizardOfOdds.com, provides data, advice, calculators, and simulators for players in hundreds of variations of casino games. When the media needs an answer, they ask Mr. Shackleford. He also follows his own advice; he is a successful professional gambler. The casinos respect his knowledge to hire him to consult on game design, payouts, and discerning patterns in their operating results.

Hash Tag in Vegas

Mike was nice enough to have breakfast with me recently in Las Vegas. I wanted to know how he transitioned from “government actuary” to “Wizard of Odds.” I was also curious to learn about the responsibilities, hazards, and joys of being an heir to the long tradition of math geniuses in service of game players and gamblers.

Although Mr. Shackleford is generally accessible to the media, I am lucky to get this block of his time. He told an interviewer for LiveScience.com, “it takes a lot to get me into the car and drive somewhere. It has to be something that is absolutely essential, or I’m combining like three different minor reasons for making the trip.” I learned that first hand when he changed the location of our meeting so he could combine the trip with taking his car for service.

To be safe, I arrived fifteen minutes early. The restaurant was located in a stretch of real estate typical to Las Vegas, with luxury car dealers across from storefronts with banners like “All Shoes $9.99.” Fourteen minutes later, Michael Shackleford walked in the restaurant.

He has salt-and-pepper hair, a sun-creased face, and is tall and fit. He looks like a grown-up California kid (he turns 50 in May) who spends a lot of time outdoors on hobbies like hiking and bicycling. What he does not look like is a man who earned his living in casinos or hunched over a computer. He also loves travelling and has been a devotee of unicycling and juggling. He also collects license plates and math problems. He has a website displaying the math problems. He was kind enough to send me a picture of some of the license plates:

Our forty-five minutes together were a dizzying mix of breakfast foods, stories of software engineering and casino adventures, and barely legible notes that I’m still trying to digest:
giant chunks of corn beef hash
softball-sized biscuits
“MGM, 9-6, 99.8% return, .25% comps, favorable points”
“Blackjack too slow”
“Lucky 13 Blackjack, 64 card deck”
“Flush fever”

Once I pieced it together, with Mike’s patience for my follow-up questions, I learned plenty about life as the Wizard of Odds.

Blackjack and Baby Names

Michael Shackleford was born in Pasadena, California, on May 23, 1965. He grew up in Orange County, where he lived until 1992. He received his B.A. in math and economics form the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1988. From childhood Mike was interested in games, math, and odds. Not surprisingly, when he turned twenty-one, he started playing 21. While he completed his education and worked on the West Coast, he mastered blackjack Basic Strategy and Card Counting, becoming a profitable “red chip” ($5-denomination) player.

Over the next several years, he took a series of actuarial examinations. In 1992, he moved to Baltimore to work as an actuary at the headquarters of the Social Security Administration. His primary responsibility, according to his website, “was estimating short-range costs and benefits of changes in Social Security law.”

Wizard as Apprentice: Picture of Mike (on left), playing poker with his younger brother. Note who has more chips. This is how Michael killed time on camping trips. (Photo: Michael Shackleford)

The move East put his blackjack hobby on hold. The six- and eight-deck games in Atlantic City were not as favorable as the single- and double-deck games of Las Vegas. In 1997, while still at SSA, Mike demonstrated how his dexterity with complex data and sense of fun were never far apart. With his wife expecting their first child, he wrote a program to sort Social Security card applicants by year of birth, gender, and first name. Years later he wrote on Nameberry.com, “I believe my eyes at that moment were the first to ever see an accurate nationwide sampling of given names. It was too good to keep to myself; I thought the whole country would want to see this.”

He created a simple web page, Mike’s Baby Name Page. The baby name information became a media sensation. The growing popularity of Jose in 1998 (#1 in Texas and California when Shackleford uncovered this data) turned the complexity of America’s changing demography into something everybody could grasp in an instant. Mike’s webpage became SSA Actuarial Note No. 139, “Name Distribution in the Social Security Area.” The Agency’s annual update of the most popular baby names remains a newsworthy event.

Around the same time, he created Mike’s Gambling Page as a hobby. In early 2000, the site began accepting advertising, and soon after, he left SSA to work full time on the website and casino consulting.

WizardOfOdds.com and the Reel Stripping of Las Vegas

When Mike quit his job as an actuary in 2000 – for which he had had to take eleven tests over six years – he had an audacious goal for his website: “to become the most known and trusted name in gambling advice for the whole gamut of casino games.” Fifteen years later, he undoubtedly succeeded.

His 2002 scoop on Las Vegas slot machine returns demonstrated his ability and instincts. Shackleford could obtain and explain complex material. He also had the imagination to anticipate and feed public appetites. Before his work, the size of the “house edge” on slot machines was a black hole. Unlike combinations of dice or cards, casinos can program returns on individual slot machines by changing the reel stripping. Shackleford got access to casino par sheets, went to the casinos, and played the machines long enough to determine the reel-stripping settings.

He published the returns in Anthony Curtis’ Las Vegas Advisor, and in detail on WizardOfOdds.com. (To no one’s surprise, the MacCarran Airport slots studied had the stingiest returns, just eighty-five cents for each dollar played, though thousands of bored travelers would have guessed even lower.) No one had seen this information before. Once available, everyone wanted to know it and quickly understood it. It was like the baby-name list, for slot players.

Over a decade later, those rotten airport slots still get plenty of action. The casino at the top of his nickel-slot survey, the Palms, splashed his conclusion on billboards for years.

Michael Shackleford Charles Town Wv

The publicity from the slot machine study cemented WizardOfOdds.com’s growing reputation as the best place to learn to play casino games. In the years since, Mr. Shackleford has earned the right to be considered a gambling authority. His accessibility and adroitness with the media has multiplied exposure for his site, especially when a casino issue – or simply a question of long odds – enters the news cycle.

Here are just a few examples of the hundreds of media requests Mike has fielded:

• A blackjack player at the Tropicana in Atlantic City won 40 consecutive hands – 1 in 47 quadrillion.

• A craps shooter at the Borgata held the dice without “sevening out” for 154 rolls – 1 in 3.5 billion.

• The distribution of Powerball winners among big cities and small towns – random.

The website now has detailed rules and optimal strategy pages for approximately 200 games. For blackjack players, the site covers 40 variations. An additional series of game calculators allows players to calculate odds, returns, and strategy for any casino variations later introduced.

WizardOfOdds.com—now owned by LatestCasinoBonuses.com—is so thorough on casino game strategy that it has a page devoted to Faro. The page notes Faro was played in Reno as recently as 1985, but its height of popularity was in the Old West, when you could run into Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday dealing the game.

All this advice is not static. When Mike returned home after our breakfast, he continued work for a page on “Lucky 13s Blackjack.” Lucky 13s is a variation of the game offered at Grosvenor Casinos in England and on Royal Caribbean cruise ships. The game uses a 64-card deck (a standard deck plus four 11s, 12s, and 13s). Following optimal strategy (on a multicolored chart), the house edge is 1.32%. If you are at a Grosvenor property or on Royal Caribbean, should you make the Protection side bet, paying 5-to-1 (with a multiplier increasing the payout to as much as 200-to-1) for busting on your first two cards? If you do, you are ceding the house an edge of 8.45%.

The Player

How does the Wizard of Odds find time to play games on his own account? What does he play? The first question opens the traditional paradox of the expert advisor: If the advice is so good, shouldn’t he be using it instead of teaching it? As a further complication, Mike is ridiculously efficient about spending his time. In the LiveScience.com interview, he admitted, “I may or may not go someplace if it entails having to make a left turn. But I would go there if it was just making a right turn. And I will plan my whole day so that I make a right turn instead of a left turn.”

Blackjack was his introduction to profitable casino play. On WizardOfOdds.com, the blackjack pages, along with “video poker … and craps get the best traffic because they are the most popular games.” He earned fame and respect within the blackjack community by winning the 2011 Blackjack Cup. Still, he has played relatively little blackjack since moving to Las Vegas in 2001. He told me blackjack was “too slow of a way to make money. By then I was making good money from my web site and consulting, especially in comparison to what I could make at the tables.”

With opportunities to play casino games plentiful, the situation has to be pretty enticing to attract and hold Michael Shackleford’s attention. He found some good opportunities grinding out small edges in video poker but “most casinos put me on their DNI [Do Not Invite] list, making me ineligible to get mailers and comps.” Consulting work also paid better and he could work at home instead of smoky casinos.

One of his favorite games to analyze and play in a casino has been Pai Gow Tiles. It is a complicated game with rules like Pai Gow (with a touch of Baccarat) and game equipment like Mah Jong or Dominoes. The game plays slow, 30 hands per hour, and 40% of hands end in a “push.” Nevertheless, it is attractive to Mr. Shackleford for several reasons. First, it has rarely been analyzed, so it provided him a new and challenging puzzle for developing optimal strategy. (Based on his analysis, a player plays nearly even with the house and occasionally has a small edge.) Second, he gets a kick out of being one of the relatively few non-Asians at the table. Third, the game is fun when played at a casino with friends, giving him a break from his mostly solitary pursuits in gambling.

As a bettor, Shackleford has focused over the last several years on sports betting, specifically NFL games. “I love the exotic Super Bowl bets.” Regarding its seasonality, he does not feel let down when the season ends. “It’s mostly a relief when the Super Bowl is over. And when the next season starts again, I’m fresh and ready.” WizardOfOdds.com is loaded with data to educate sports bettors.

$20,000 royal flush at Treasure Island. (Photo: Michael Shackleford)

He will bet other sports if he finds the right opportunity. The profusion of online sports books must be a giant amusement park to Michael Shackleford. Sports books for years have offered wagers in which, for a little extra (typically 10 basis points to move the spread 1/2 point), players could bet a different point spread. He told me about one situation where he was so successful that the site – and every other Internet casino – stopped offering the bet.

“That’s fine,” he said, “for a small number of points, for the sports books. However, if you sell too many, then it becomes a good value for the player. They should be increasing the price on an exponential basis, but most places incorrectly do it on a geometric basis.”

Mike had an account at one online sports book offering NBA games in which he could “buy up to 5 extra points and lay 210, instead of the standard 110. I calculated at the time that a fair price to buy 5 extra points was 233. So, I was getting a 3.3% on every bet. It may not sound like much, but I was betting every game, and both sides on most of them.”

For most of the basketball season, he bet $2,000 per side per game. He rarely had a losing day. This was not a feat of inside information or experience scouting and handicapping the NBA. It came from recognizing and exploiting the opportunity the site provided. He made no attempt to disguise his strategy or identity.

“I was a friend with the son of one of the site’s owners. He said to me, ‘you’re winning a lot in basketball.’ I told him how I was doing it, that they weren’t charging enough to buy points.” Near the end of that season, the sports book discontinued the practice of letting players buy points to move the line. Almost immediately, all the sites stopped taking that kind of bet.

The Advisor

Mike started his gaming consulting business even before he moved to Las Vegas. The number of game designers has multiplied over the last few decades. The number of casinos, especially online, has also exploded. (Only a small amount of his consulting has been for land-based casinos.)

A main area of his consulting has concerned game design and testing. According to a Daily Mail article about the expansion of “fruit machines” in Great Britain, “Shackleford has designed more slot machines than anyone else on the planet.” Casinos want more (and novel) games to attract player interest, but they are also careful bordering on paranoid about making a mistake and giving players an advantage.

“It’s hard to get a new game on the floor,” he explained. “The clients can be picky. They always want to see more math.”

Nevertheless, like the rules he looks for as an advantage player, the casinos occasionally slip up. When that happens, they hire Mr. Shackleford to figure it out and explain it to them. He discovered that one client, an Internet casino, offered a pay table that inadvertently gave a player a 20% advantage. And this was in Keno, a game on which casinos usually can’t lose money.

Usually, the result is less obvious and requires analyzing mountains of data. He described one casino that had a bad month in table games and asked him if, based on the results, they were doing something wrong. He reviewed results from every shift, then every pit, then every table, and then from every player. His conclusion: “Bad luck. One player got lucky in blackjack.” The casino was deciding whether to bar the player. Mike said it should be doing the opposite, because encouraging him to play more was its best chance to win back that money.

That’s Why They Call It Gambling

Mike’s demeanor makes his success, as a player, player resource, go-to expert by the media, and gaming consultant seem – if not easy – logical. Perhaps I should have expected this from a famously methodical analyst of games.

Beating casinos (or joining them) is riskier business than even Michael Shackleford can make it appear. In May 2014, despite nearly fifteen years as a successful operator of WizardOfOdds.com, his financial foundation was in jeopardy, simply because of the caprice of a business labeled “gambling.” He was denied the safeguards of U.S. banks because of their reluctance to handle transactions connected to the activity. Never mind that WizardOfOdds.com contained no gambling, casinos paying the site for ads legally offered those games in their markets, and he disclosed his foreign bank accounts to the U.S. government.

Instead of having advertisers pay an account at, say, Bank of America, he had to accept the money initially at a Cyprus bank. A run on Cyprus banks in early 2014 cost him €82,000. He had to eat the loss and continue transacting with another Cypriot bank, which apparently decided it could simply ignore his requests to withdraw money. On May 14, 2014, he disclosed on his site, “If the Bank of Cyprus doesn’t make good on my withdrawal soon I will have to seriously consider selling my house and/or my sites.”

Mike hitting an $8,000 royal flush at the Riviera (Photo: WizardOfOdds.com)

Three weeks later, the bank honored his withdrawal, but the exposure put his websites on the market. In September 2014, he sold WizardOfOdds.com and three related sites for $2.35 million. The buyer, LatestCasinoBonuses.com, wisely locked Shackleford up to work on the sites for three years. Based on his initial experience with the new owners, he has declared that he hopes to stay on even longer.

He also finds himself in the crossfire of the continuing war between casinos and players. As a player, casinos have discouraged or limited his play because they don’t like winning players. Because he advises casinos, some players consider him a defector..

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game between casinos and players. I look at it like the wolf and the sheepdog in the Looney Tunes cartoons. We can be friends but once we punch our time cards and the whistle blows, we work against each other. When it blows again and we punch out, we go back to being friends.”

That kind of equanimity isn’t taught as part of any statistical analysis. As an extra tool at Mr. Shackleford’s disposal, however, it helps explain his long and continued success.

Michael Craig is an author, journalist, and lawyer. He has written four books, including The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time. Follow him on Twitter (@MikeCraigIsAmok) and Facebook. This article is part of his collaboration with PokerStars and PokerStars Casino on the lives and games of smart, interesting risk takers.