As we all know Blackjack Hall of Fame is the institution honoring the most famous blackjack players, writers and thinkers. All people who added some value to blackjack game development as well as to its strategy are on the Blackjack Hall of Fame list.
Famous team player
Al Francesco is famous for creating the concept of team play in blackjack game. Francesco also created the idea of the "Big Player". Blackjack team play was highly popular at the time when card counting strategy was developed and described in lots of blackjack books.
Al created his own blackjack team and played in casinos using counting strategy to win big without even being noticed by casino security staff, systems and dealers themselves.
Blackjack card counter
Al Francesco started his gambling career in his hometown in Indiana. He became a professional player in Greek Rummy and made around $5000 a year, the sum he could have made by having real job.
Later, in 1963, he read the book Beat the Dealer written by Edward O. Thorp and started using the described there card counting system. It was extremely hard to practice it and Al had to leave with nothing for the first time. But Francesco was really determined to learn this system and he managed to become successful and was able to "beat any dealer" as it was promised in the book.
However, his gambling life was about to finish when he was harassed by casinos for counting cards. That happened all over again. Al was in panic and started thinking of the new way to play blackjack, as he was constantly spotted when using Thorp's system.
Francesco's blackjack team
After the row of failures, Al Francesco created his own team for playing blackjack. He got all his brothers and sisters involved and taught them how to count cards. They had their own tactics: one of the team players sat at blackjack table, count cards and made small bets from 1 to 5 $, the other participant came over and paid no attention to the game just made high bets when his partner bet 5$. Pit bosses and dealers thought that this guy was actually lucky as he didn't pay attention to the game. This is how they managed to count cards and play successfully with the help of creation of The Big Player.
Al's team consisted of seven players, 6 card counters and The Big Player. All of card counters were sitting at different players and placing small bets and The Big Player went from table to table making high bets if the card counter signaled that the odds were favorable for them.
With the help of this method of blackjack playing, Al and his team won millions of dollars for a few years. Soon afterwards, Al Francesco trained Ken Uston to play like this.