He was born in 1956 in New Jersey, USA, as Thomas Hyland, aka Tommy Hyland.
Blackjack card counting is among his specialities, and he managed the oldest blackjack team in history, which began in 1979.
Growing up
Most of his childhood was spent in New Jersey, and it was here where his interest in gambling began.
He used to throw pennies at a wall with friends as a child and bet on which penny landed closest to the wall. Initially, the bets were just pennies, but they quickly increased to quarters. Tommy then began betting on other things like whether he would win a cricket match or a game of golf.
When he reached High School, he stopped placing his own wagers and instead began collecting them. One time he made a mistake in his calculations and lost $400, so he started focusing on getting a college scholarship to Wittenberg University in Ohio.
Blackjack Gambling Begins
After reading ‘Playing Blackjack as a Business by Lawrence Revere, he started playing Poker at the dorms of his friends as a college student.
After practising the methods in the book, Tommy and his friend went to the casino to test out their skills. They weren’t very successful until Tommy read Stanford Wong’s book on card counting. According to the book, working as a team is key to success, which is exactly what Tommy did. He assembled a Blackjack card-counting team.
It was a regular occurrence for these teams to make millions in a single night and lose small fortunes the next.
Afterwards, they created Blackjack computers, a method of cheating that led to Tommy and the team’s arrests many times during casinos raids.
Where is he now?
While Tommy no longer manages a Blackjack team, he can still be found in casinos today playing Blackjack, although not at the same level as before.
