Born in 1956, Thomas Hyland, aka Tommy Hyland, was raised in New Jersey, USA.

Blackjack card counting has made him famous, as has managing the longest-running Blackjack team since it started in 1979.

The Early Years

He spent most of his teenage years in New Jersey, where he developed an interest in gambling.

During his childhood, he used to throw pennies at a wall with his friends, and they would make bets based on which penny landed closest to the wall. At first, the bets were just pennies, but then they became quarters. Tommy then began betting on other things like whether he’d win a cricket match or a golf match.

As he got older, he stopped placing bets himself and started collecting them instead. When he got his calculations wrong and lost $400, he stopped taking bets and focused on getting a scholarship to Wittenberg University in Ohio.

The Beginning of Blackjack Gambling

He played poker with numerous friends in dormitories during his college years until he read “Playing Blackjack as a Business” by Lawrence Revere.

Tommy and his friend practised the methods from the book and then went to casinos to test out their skills. They weren’t very successful until Tommy read another Stanford Wong book about card-counting. The book stated that to be successful, you must work as a team, and that’s exactly what Tommy did. He formed a Blackjack card-counting team.

Occasionally, the teams made millions in one night, while they lost a small fortune at other times.

They then created Blackjack computers, a form of cheating, which led to Tommy and his team being arrested many times when casinos caught them.

Where is he today?

Tommy no longer manages a Blackjack team but can still be found playing Blackjack in casinos today, although at a lower level than before.