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Blackjack Hall of Fame - Julian Braun |
Julian Braun - The Quiet Blackjack GeniusJulian Braun appears as a strange choice for the Blackjack Hall of Fame. The antithesis of the flamboyant card shark, Braun was a quiet, somewhat reclusive man who spent most of his adult life working as a programmer at IBM.
He rarely set foot in a casino; his blackjack work was done in the computer lab. Nevertheless, his contributions to the world of blackjack are immeasurable. Julian Braun was born in Chicago in 1929. He earned degrees in physics and mathematics, served in the United States Marine Corps, and went to work for IBM in 1961. He remained at IBM for more than 25 years. Collaboration with ThorpBraun's interest in blackjack was piqued by Edward O. Thorp's book Beat the Dealer. Braun wrote to Thorp and requested a copy of his blackjack computer program, which Thorp provided. Combining his own unparalleled genius as a computer programmer with the powerful (for the time) IBM 7044 mainframe computer, Braun was able to refine Thorp's calculations and improve upon his blackjack strategies. He tested his ideas by running 9 billion blackjack simulations on the IBM 7044. During a four-year period, Braun created the Hi-Lo blackjack strategies and the Basic Strategy. Braun's strategies were both simpler and more accurate than Thorp's originals.Braun's results were published in the 1966 revised edition of Thorp's Beat the Dealer. In that book, Thorp gratefully acknowledged Braun's contribution to blackjack as follows: "Braun's detailed blackjack calculations, based on his extensions and refinements of my original computer program, are the most accurate in existence, and he has kindly allowed them to be used throughout this revised edition." "How to Play Winning Blackjack"Braun continued revising and perfecting his blackjack card-counting strategies. His results were published in Lawrence Revere's Playing Blackjack as a Business and in Lance Humble and Carl Cooper's The World's Greatest Blackjack Book. In 1980, he published his own book, called How to Play Winning Blackjack. Befitting the author's personality, the book was low-key, straightforward, and logical. In the forward to the book, Braun stated:"I have reasons for writing this book. First and foremost, is that some of the ideas and observations contained may be of benefit to the hundreds of thousands of blackjack players who have been or will become as devoted or intrigued with the game as I am.
Edward Thorp, the father of blackjack card counting, was lavish in his praise of Braun's book. Thorp wrote: "Julian Braun has transformed my original blackjack computer program into the world's most powerful and accurate tool for the calculation of winning blackjack strategies. Using this program, Braun details a winning point count method. There is no other blackjack counting system which is both simpler and more powerful." Julian Braun died in September 2000.
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