Tommy Hyland – Leader of Highly Profitable Blackjack Teams

Tommy Hyland’s entire life seems to revolve around one form
of gambling or another, but he’s most famous for his skills at
blackjack. Not only was he an amazing blackjack player who
mastered the art of card counting, he was also a respected
manager of not one but two high performance blackjack teams.
Although his teams have made millions of dollars over the course
of the years, enjoying the game is more important to Tommy than
any amount of money he could earn.

In an interview with RWM’s Gambling Wizards, Tommy said this
regarding the benefits of being on a blackjack team, “Yeah,
there are a lot of great things about playing on a team. There’s
the camaraderie. You have somebody to travel with. You learn
things from each other. You share information. It seems like you
can really come up with ideas when you have a team.”

Early Experiences with Gambling

Tommy was born in New Jersey during the 1950s, and that’s
where he spent the majority of his childhood. His father gambled
occasionally when Tommy was younger, going to the racetrack or
the pool halls once or twice a month. Before Tommy really
started gambling, he would play a game with his friends that
involved throwing pennies at a brick wall and seeing which penny
landed closest to the wall after it fell.

The person whose coin landed closest to the wall won both
pennies. This vintage game is often referred to as “pinching
pennies,” and it could be considered a very mild form of
gambling. They eventually started using larger coins: nickels,
dimes, and quarters. From there he started placing bets with his
friends concerning what he could do in a game of basketball or
in a round of golf.

Once he entered high school, he stopped placing bets for
awhile and instead focused on collecting bets. He would make
photocopies of standard parlay cards, hand them out to people at
school, and watch the money roll in every week. Some weeks he
only made thirty dollars, while other weeks he made fifty or
more. This was a substantial amount of money considering his age
and the time period.

Tommy decided to make his own spreadsheets once, so that
people in his school could place bets on high school sports
instead. His numbers were so off that he lost over $400 in one
night; he had to sell his pool table to cover all of the costs.
That was the last time Tommy tried to be the bookkeeper, as it
was clear that he was meant to be the player.

He spent the last couple years of high school focusing on
playing golf, and earning himself a hefty scholarship to
Wittenberg University in Ohio. His major was technically
political science, but he spent many hours playing golf every
day and avoided doing schoolwork. Tommy also spent a great deal
of time playing poker in different friend’s dorm rooms on the
weekends.

Enter Blackjack

Tommy enjoyed reading for leisure, and eventually stumbled
upon a couple books about blackjack, as anything regarding
gambling always interested him. One of those books happened to
be, Playing Blackjack as a Business, by Lawrence Revere.

Tommy and his roommate practiced the different strategies
addressed in the book in their dorm until they were ready to try
out their methods in a real casino. Over Christmas break of
1978, Tommy and his roommate spent almost every day travelling
the fifty miles from Tommy’s house to Atlantic City where they
could play in a real brick and mortar casino for the first time.
Resorts International was the only casino open at that time.

He had very little success with his first few encounters with
the casino, but his friend won several thousand dollars over the
break. This motivated Tommy to practice those card counting
methods more often, as he believed he too could make a fortune.

Tommy teamed up with another roommate of his, who had also
been learning how to count cards. They would sit next to each
other at the $5 tables, one of them would count the low cards
while the other one would count the high cards. They would then
whisper their findings to each other in order to make educated
bets. Over the course of several months, they made approximately
four thousand dollars each.

It was around this time that Tommy started reading,
“Professional Blackjack,” by Stanford Wong. This book helped
them improve their card counting methods substantially, and the
increase in their bankroll was proof of that. As time went on,
Tommy started reading several other books about blackjack,
paying most attention to, “Million Dollar Blackjack,” by Ken
Uston. Ken emphasized the value of using teams to make a fortune
in his book, and that’s just what Tommy did.

The Original Hyland Blackjack Team

Hyland and his partner started looking for future candidates
who they could invite to be on their team, and after looking for
several months they finally found the two men they were looking
for. All four members of Tommy Hyland’s first blackjack team had
to contribute four thousand dollars in order for the team to
have a large enough bankroll to make the kind of profit they
were aiming for.

They each had to play for a set amount of hours, but they
didn’t have to formally keep track of those hours. Generally
they would all start at 8pm and go to 2am or later. At the end
of each week, the team would split their combined profit evenly
between the four of them. They would use a variety of different
techniques including ace sequencing and shuffle tracking.

After about five weeks of bringing in steady money, a man
named Art who had been watching their every move begged and
pleaded for the opportunity to join their team. After a couple
more weeks of contemplation, Tommy decided to let him join the
team as well. He won almost every hand that was dealt to him and
brought the team in a lot of money fast. He ended up being a
wonderful asset to the team, and they were happy to have him
there.

In December, 1979 Resorts International ran a two week test
run that allowed card counters to openly play in their
facilities with no fear of getting barred for their actions. The
casino did this so that they could get an inside scoop on the
methods that card counters use, so that they could prevent
future cheating. Tommy and his original team made hundreds of
thousands of dollars over the course of these two weeks, and
they were inspired to make even more.

Many of his teammates decided to travel to Asia, as they
seldom barred card counters and they thought they would have a
great chance of making millions. They used Stanford Wong’s book,
Blackjack In Asia, as a reference during their time there.

Another Hyland Blackjack Team

Tommy, on the other hand, wanted to head to the casinos of
Las Vegas, as the potential to make millions was very high there
too. He recruited several of his golfing buddies and taught them
all of the strategies that his first team used. He started by
giving them a basic strategy card to memorize and then built on
their knowledge from there.

He would later test them to see if they knew how to count
cards when he was finished with their lesson; most people ended
up mastering card counting by the time Tommy was done with them.
More important than skill, Tommy needed to find members he could
trust, as trust was essential for having a functional blackjack
team. There was a high turn around rate for his team, some
players would leave after just a few months, and he was always
looking for more recruits. On average, the team consisted of
thirty to forty people.

This time around, everyone worked off of Tommy’s bankroll
which consisted of his money and money given by investors. This
obviously meant that Tommy made significantly more than other
members of the team, but it also meant that new players didn’t
have to have a large bankroll in order to join his team.
Investors would get a large portion of the winnings as well. It
wouldn’t be uncommon for the team to make several million
dollars in one night, so investors usually stayed pretty happy.

However, the team did have their losing streaks, and they
could be pretty dramatic. In an interview with American Casino
Guide, Tommy explained it like this, “We’ve had some devastating
bankrolls where you lose for quite a while. Basically, we’ve
been pretty successful, but we’ve had some rough times where you
have a nice chunk of money and you thought you’d never have to
worry again and then, suddenly, you’re almost broke.”

One new element to this team that helped them stay profitable
was their use of blackjack computers. Once his team discovered
that these devices might be able to help him, they rented an
apartment and ordered the necessary hardware they needed to
assemble the computers. The team then tested out the computers
and sure enough, they were just as described. They immediately
started using these devices in every casino that they went to,
significantly increasing their bankroll.

Unfortunately, their ability to use these devices without
being severely punished was soon to come to an end. In 1985, all
computer devices were outlawed in casinos in Nevada. His team
spent the next couple year travelling to other parts of the
world that would allow them to freely use these devices:
Atlantic City, Bahamas, and other Caribbean islands were just
some of their stops along the way.

It would often be months before the team would return to a
casino they’ve already visited, and to avoid getting barred the
team would be encouraged to change their physical appearance
slightly. Some team members would simply grow out their hair in
that short amount of time, some would grow or shave their
beards, and some would even dye their hair a completely
different color. One time around Christmas, Tommy went as far to
disguise himself as Santa Clause. Sometimes these disguises
didn’t work out too well for the team, causing them to be stuck
in difficult situations.

Getting Punished for Their Actions

It wasn’t too long before those countries started to crack
down on players using blackjack computers too. One time while
Tommy was on vacation with his wife in the Bahamas, he decided
to go to the casinos for a little while by himself. Well, casino
authorizes noticed his oversized boots and paid attention to how
often he was tapping his shoe.

They took him to a private room with several police officers
on staff and commanded that he take his boots off and roll up
his pant leg. The police, seemingly more upset than casino
officials, saw the computer that he had been using and warned
him that they were going to be in great trouble. While he was
being held at the casino, they found his wife and detained her
also. They finally placed Tommy in an actual jail cell, claiming
that he would be sentenced for up to ten years. Luckily, he was
able to alert his lawyers back in Las Vegas, who managed to get
him out of prison on a $100,000 bail.

Several months later, Tommy and his team found themselves at
the Windsor in Canada. The way Canadian casinos were set up,
they decided it was easiest to communicate with each other
through signals and it was these signals that caused them to be
arrested.

Canadian authorities tried to claim that it was illegal for
Tommy and his team to set foot on Canadian soil again by
claiming that they were cheating. Tommy and his crew took the
casino to court, won the case, and continued to play at the
casinos in Canada. Another famous player, Arnold Snyder, gave
his testimony in favor of the team and he can be credited for
swaying the jury’s vote.

Another time Tommy and his team got caught was on their trip
to the island of St. Kitts, which is in the Caribbean. Things
started off great for Tommy and his team, as Tommy alone made
$30,000 over the course of five days. The casino and resort
owner of the place they were staying was seemingly very fond of
him, inviting him to play golf with him almost every day they
were there. The day before Tommy and his team was ready to go
home, the casino owner invited him to his hotel room and said he
had something for him. When Tommy arrived, he pulled out a gun
and pointed it right in Tommy’s face.

The casino owner had apparently been keeping a close eye on
Tommy and his group, and now he was threatening Tommy’s life in
order to get his money back. Boldly, Tommy risked his life by
saying that he won that money fair and square and claiming that
he would never give it back. Despite his efforts, the casino
owner dragged Tommy at gunpoint to the casino bank, forcing him
to withdraw all of his winnings and give it to him.

Tommy Hyland Today

In 2002, Tommy Hyland was one of the inaugural members
inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame alongside Peter
Griffin, Arnold Snyder, Edward O. Thorp, Ken Uston, and Stanford
Wong. This was an esteemed honor, as there were many highly
qualified potential candidates that just didn’t make the cut.

Although Tommy no longer manages a blackjack team, it’s still
possible to find him playing blackjack at the casinos of
Atlantic City from time to time. Tommy’s wife has been very
supportive throughout all of his gambling endeavors, and now
that he isn’t playing blackjack regularly anymore he has a lot
more time to spend with her.