The Four Horsemen of Blackjack

With the help of his three Army buddies, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel and James McDermott, Baldwin developed a near perfect blackjack strategy. The blackjack strategy was based on knowing what the odds were all the time and betting larger amounts on the times the cards showed the odds to be in the player’s favor. Because of the stand at seventeen rule, there is nothing the dealer can do to overcome this blackjack strategy.

Blackjack Strategy with Hand Calculators

What is truly amazing is that the four Army buddies (nicknamed the “Four Horsemen of Blackjack”) were able to develop their blackjack strategy and calculate their odds long before the age of supercomputers. They used hand calculators to do what would take advanced computers at MIT decades later to accomplish. They also showed that gambling need not be entirely based on luck.

Blackjack Strategy for Fun not Money

Yet they always maintained that the blackjack strategy they developed was not about winning money. In fact, they never gambled for high stakes or won much money in casinos. Their pursuit of a perfect blackjack strategy was something driven by a love of the game and fascination with probability, not a desire to win fortunes.



They didn’t even play blackjack very long. All of them stopped playing several years after their blackjack strategy was developed and pursued what would become distinguished careers in government, business, and academia. Only in the world of blackjack strategy were they remembered for their work.

The Blackjack Hall of Fame

Recently, the four were inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame at Max Rubin's 12th annual Blackjack Ball, held at the clubhouse of an upscale gated community in Las Vegas. They are not rich and are elderly so they took buses and trains to get to Vegas for the event. The fact is, no one in the casino world even knew that they were still alive until McDermott saw that his name was all over the Internet. He was astonished to see that he and his old Army buddies were the celebrities of the gambling world and blackjack strategy. McDermott got in touch with famed Blackjack historian Snyder, who recognized McDermott's name immediately, but was surprised to hear from him.

The Blackjack Ball

“I was just astonished he was still alive, that all four were alive, that they occasionally got together to talk about the old days,” Snyder said. Snyder proposed inducting the Four Horsemen of Blackjack into the Blackjack Hall of Fame, which is at the Barona Valley Ranch casino in San Diego, during this year's Blackjack Ball, and his fellow hall of famers endorsed the idea. The evening was a huge success as the world top Blackjack players gave a standing ovation to four retired men who had thought they were forgotten by the world they helped to create.