Watching a blackjack tournament, while perhaps not as action-packed and engrossing as watching a World Series of Poker tournament can be, is still quick to the eye and fast-paced enough to hold your interest. Funny enough, I didn’t even know there were television online blackjack tournaments until recently. I can’t remember if I saw this online or on a cable channel late at night, but apparently a couple years ago CBS aired a couple television seasons of a show called Ultimate Blackjack Tour.

Of course, you seemingly can’t have televised gambling without somehow infusing some element of poker into it (outside of sports), so along with the professional blackjack gamers, the show introduced some big-time poker studs into the mix, as well. Johnny Chan was the only face and name I really recognized that was part of this.

I suppose, given the format of the show and how the system awarded money, there were poker correlations to be drawn, so having poker experts who certainly weren’t famous for their blackjack skills thrown into the mix wasn’t coming completely out of left field…most just out of short left center.

Anyway, they reviewed the entire show’s rules periodically throughout the gaming action, and I did a bit of research to fill in the gaps. Basically, there were 10 different tournaments per season, all televised. The first seven were known as preliminary, and the winners of each of these (different players in each), would come back for the finals, and this group would compete for a portion of more than a cool million bucks. I know that only equals 8…I guess two of the tournaments didn’t qualify for the finals, which they called the Tournament of Champions. The one episode I caught was “in-play” however.

In the process, it opens your eyes to some big-time blackjack online legends who don’t get the exposure of poker greats. Here’s a quick look at a few names of blackjack you should know.

James Grosjean, who wrote a book about exploiting casino games, became a Blackjack Hall of Famer (yes, it exists) in 2006.

Anthony Curtis, who’s been playing blackjack forever, and is widely known and broadcast on television as a casino expert, including such shows as 20/20. He lies low these days, though.

There are, of course, dozens more names to throw out there, including the famous MIT man himself Mike Aponte. I’d encourage anyone interested to seek out the info and brush up of the pioneers and top brass of this excellent game.

In another article, I’ll go into the process of how you actually play elimination blackjack. The basic blackjack strategy is different but quite interesting, and definitely worth trying in a home game, casino or wherever you might have the opportunity.