Peter Griffin - Blackjack Card Counting Genius

Although the fat, loveable character from the cartoon Family Guy overshadows Peter Griffins everywhere today, the most famous Peter Griffin before this was a mathematician and casino blackjack theorist who lived from 1937-1998. In fact, Peter A. Griffin holds the honor of being one of the original seven inductees into the Blackjack Hall of Fame, and his ideas and statistics are still used by casino card counters today. Since Griffin is such a crucial figure in blackjack history, let’s look back on this legend’s life.

Perhaps one could have predicted Griffin’s future success as a mathematician just by looking at his past. The New Jersey native’s father was a successful actuary who would later head a big company in Chicago. His grandfather, Frank Loxley Griffin, was a famous mathematician who wrote math textbooks and acted as president of Reed College.

Looking at his family tree, it was certainly no surprise when Griffin chose to attend Portland State University, and study math and teaching there. Once his education at Portland State was finished, Griffin went on to get a Master’s degree from the University of California at Davis so that he could pursue his first love - teaching.

After getting his Master’s from UC Davis, Griffin was eventually able to land a teaching job at California State University-Sacramento, where he taught mathematics and calculus until his death in 1998. But as alluded to before, Griffin wasn’t just some stiff academic type since he also carved out a name for himself out in the casino gambling world too.

Peter Griffin had always been the type to think outside the box, which is what led him to propose a gambling course at Cal State. The only problem was that he wasn’t an expert in gambling, so he did what any good professor would do, and headed off to Nevada to do some research. Even with all of his knowledge, Griffin’s utter lack of blackjack skills caused him to lose quite a bit of money.

After returning from his costly research trip, Griffin decided to put some more work into figuring blackjack out. His initial research led to one of the most ground-breaking blackjack statistics ever when he concluded that the average player is at 2% disadvantage to the house. Griffin came up with this finding after pouring over countless statistics that came from studying player results in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and Reno casinos, then using all of this information to determine the 2% house edge. And what’s really impressive is that this isn’t even considered Griffin’s greatest contribution to blackjack.

Even with all of the work that he put into discovering the average player’s disadvantage to the casino, Griffin’s most notable accomplishment remains writing Theory of Blackjack: The Complete Card Counter’s Guide to the Casino Game of 21 in 1978. Now books on card counting were nothing new because Edward Thorpe had already written the revolutionary Beat the Dealer in 1961. However, not since Thorpe’s book had anyone advanced the practice as much as Griffin did with Theory of Blackjack.

The two biggest things that Griffin taught players in this book included “playing efficiency” and “betting correlation”; by using these concepts, players can estimate how successful any card counting system will be in the long run.

In addition to these ideas, Theory of Blackjack also covered how expensive card counting errors are, basic strategy, both single and multi-deck card counting systems, and an explanation of grouping cards. What’s truly amazing about Theory of Blackjack is that every modern counting system draws its fundamentals from playing efficiency and betting correlation in some way or another.

Griffin was inspired to write another book called Extra Stuff: Gambling Ramblings in 1991. And although this book didn’t become as famous as Theory of Blackjack, it’s a great read for advanced gamblers in general because of the complex subject matter involved. A couple of the topics include the following: how to factor comps into covering losses, strategy for games with variable payouts, in-depth analysis of different gambling systems and the casino’s treatment of hold percentages.

What’s interesting about Peter Griffin is that, despite the fact that he could have made a nice living through card counting with his advanced knowledge of the subject, he chose to release these findings in a book instead. The main reason why is because Griffin’s main passion was always teaching, while his theories on blackjack were merely a subject to teach. He had no aspirations of following in Ken Uston’s shoes or joining Al Francesco’s blackjack team.

Interestingly enough though, his command of gambling math led to another teaching job at the Harrah’s Institute of Casino Entertainment. Initially, he started with a course called “Mathematics of Gambling,” and the gig spawned into a number of other courses that he taught at the institute.

Aside from his teaching exploits, Griffin was a well-rounded individual who loved traveling with his wife, learning multiple languages, hiking and bicycling.