If Edward O. Thorp is the father of blackjack systems, and most people believe that he is, it is fair to say the Julian Braun was the mother. The person who fixed everything up and made the house Spic and Span. Julian passed away earlier this year, at a relative young age. I am saddened by his death and Gambling Times wishes to memorialize his great work here. I was pleased to know him personally. We had many conversations by phone to his Chicago residence. In the mid eighties, Julian and I met at a Blackjack Tournament I was helping to run at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. When he first came over to me, I didn’t recognize him, as we had never met in person. I was involved at the moment, however, when he told me who he was, I immediately dropped what I was doing to share a drink with him. Julian was far more than a great mind — in a way, you might think of him as the Albert Einstein of Blackjack; he was a warm and generous human being, as you will see in the testimonials below from those who knew him well.
— Stanley Roberts
This first testament is from Seymour Weiner, his cousin and executor of his estate:
Julian was quiet and unassuming. He was very intellectual and happy to lend a helping hand. For the most part, he was a loner, but he enjoyed getting together with family and discussing his gambling strategies. He was also an avid chess player.
He was very health conscious, always watching his diet, even though he never had a weight problem. He enjoyed long walks and biking.
For the past five or six years, Julian had become a day trader, trading both stocks and options, as well as commodities. He would often exchange ideas with me on his trading techniques.
Julian had one sibling, his younger sister Eleanor, who along with her husband, died tragically in an automobile accident in 1964. Both his parents died shortly after. Julian never married.
Julian suffered from both prostrate cancer and Parkinson’s disease for the past ten years. The Parkinson’s was getting progressively worse, and in late 1999 Julian hired a caregiver, who moved in with him. Eventually, he decided he needed nursing home care and made arrangements for that move in March 2000.
Though his body failed him, his mind remained very sharp until the end.
And now a word from the father of blackjack systems: Edward O. Thorp, PhD.
Julian Braun played a unique and important part in the development of blackjack strategies. He contacted me a few months after the first edition of Beat the Dealer appeared (November, 1962). I supplied him an annotated copy of my original computer program, written in FORTRAN for the IBM 704, and we discussed further research via correspondence.
Julian then wrote an expanded and more elaborate FORTRAN program, which eliminated most of the approximations forced upon me by the limitations of computing power at the time I did my original calculations in 1959 and 1960. Using the expanded computing power available in 1965, his programming skills, and the computer resources of IBM, the numbers and strategies he produced became the benchmark from 1965 into the ’70s. I laud Julian Braun’s work and am saddened by his passing.
Pioneer blackjack expert Lance Humble, PhD also worked with Julian.
I began teaching gambling courses at York University in Toronto as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 1970. In order to teach the students how to play winning blackjack I learned the ten count in Thorp’s Beat the Dealer. Unfortunately the ten count proved much too difficult for my students. The following year I discovered Lawrence Revere’s Playing Blackjack as a Business and learned his Advanced Point Count. Although I won a lot of money with that count, it too proved too difficult for my students. As luck would have it, I went to a gambling conference in Las Vegas and met, and talked to, Ed Thorp about my need for a simple system for the average Joe. Thorp suggested I contact Julian Braun in Chicago. I contacted Julian by phone and asked if he could develop a simple count system. Julian was very sympathetic to my position, I think because he was also an instructor and knew that simplicity was the key to good instruction.
Three months after we spoke on the phone I received the complete High Optimum System (now called HI-OPT I) in the mail. Although the system was mathematically complete it had no wagering strategy advice and no general advice as to how to camouflage one’s wagers, how long to play in one casino, etcetera. I added all such information in order to help the player achieve maximum results. Julian and I decided to price the system at $200 and split the profits. My company, International Gaming Inc., did all the advertising and marketing. Julian trusted me completely as his business partner as I had complete trust in his figures. His figures stand to this day. And now some 150,000 readers of the World’s Greatest Blackjack Bookhave our HI-OPT at their fingertips. The late Ken Uston and his blackjack teams also used the HI-OPT very successfully in the 1970s before he developed his own advanced systems.
Many gamblers did not believe that such a simple count could be so powerful. I received many letters asking for a more powerful blackjack system. To meet these requests, Julian and I produced the HI-OPT II in 1976. Again, every entry in every table of the HI-OPT II stands to this day. Julian created two perfect systems: one for the average player and one for the more serious advanced player. Many scientific simulation studies over the years, which compared blackjack systems, have consistently shown that these two systems live up to their criteria. Julian Braun was a world-class scientist, and, probably the greatest computer programmer of his time.
He was a perfectionist and the consummate professional. He was also a very quiet, very attentive human being. He rarely talked about himself, only about the problem at hand. Julian invested in the stock market but never played Blackjack or any other gambling game. I feel very fortunate to have worked with him to advance the level of blackjack systems for the masses.
Lastly, a few words from Jerry Patterson, a Master in this field:
I first met Julian Braun in the 1960s at the Fall Joint Computer Conference when I appeared on a Panel Discussion with him entitled The Use of Computers to Study Games of Chance and Skill. He was there to back up Ed Thorp, the Panel Chairman, who was basking in the limelight of his best selling Beat The Dealer.
This was the beginning of the great popularity of card counting, but I realized then and afterwards that, without Braun and his sharp mind and his computer calculations, Thorp’s work would not have been as accurate.
This Panel spawned dozens of card counting studies leading to the development of the many point-count systems that were published in the ’60s and ’70s. None would have been possible without the work of Julian Braun who was always there to help with his ongoing calculations and refinement on Blackjack’s Basic Strategy and the evaluation, comparison and validation of the myriad Point- Count Systems.
I had a personal contact with Julian in the late 1970s after the Atlantic City casinos opened with their Early Surrender Rule. I wrote to him in Chicago describing the unbelievable rules that led to Early Surrender: the dealer no-peek under an ace, playing out the hand before checking the hole card, giving the players the option of surrendering against a potential blackjack.
I was the gaming columnist at the time for the Philadelphia Inquirer and wanted his permission to publish his Early Surrender Strategy which yielded a player advantage of about 1/4% right off the top.
Braun was kind enough to send me a prompt reply with the Early Surrender Strategy and gave me the permission that I sought.
This was typical of the generosity of Julian Braun. He placed much of his work right up through these breakthrough Early Surrender calculations in the public domain with no monetary benefit coming back to him.
Braun was a giant of a man and will long be remembered for his pioneering work in the card counting field.
