Don Johnson
Don Johnson has been around the gambling industry for all of his life. Over the past 50+ years, Johnson’s career has moved from working on a thoroughbred horse farm, Jockey, managing racetracks to helping regulate this burgeoning industry. He has served as a state regulator in Oregon, Idaho, Texas, and Wyoming. About two decades ago, he founded a business working on computer-assisted wagering for horse racing pools. The software employed may analyze more data than an ordinary handicapper will see in a thousand lifetimes and defines risk to a degree that was impossible just ten years ago. Johnson is not, as he puts it, “naive in math.” He began playing cards seriously about 20 years ago and become a “rumored” very skilled blackjack player. The rest is history. Johnson snuck up on Atlantic City and over a 6-month period became one of the most famous blackjack players in Atlantic City history and around the world. The notoriety earned him nick names, Beast of Blackjack & 6 Million Dollar Man (The Press of Atlantic City), The Man Who Broke Atlantic City (The Atlantic Magazine by Mark Bowden), The Player (Documentary Bloomberg News with Trish Reagan), Champagne King (New York Post) and others. Johnson was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame at the 21st Blackjack Ball in 2017.