Darryl Purpose
The Cards He's Dealt
by Annette C. Eshleman

Playing blackjack for a living may seem an odd career choice to most people. Performing folk music, as well, is a vocation rife with uncertainty. Making the leap from one to the other would appear insurmountable. For Darryl Purpose, it's all he's ever known.

Purpose recently discussed his former profession, patiently making himself understood to a non-gambler. He spoke openly and with remarkable candor. Dressed in a black Henley shirt, khaki pants, and trademark dark hat, Purpose hardly looked the part. Soft-spoken and unassuming, he was not at all the flamboyant individual one might expect to have once been labeled the "best blackjack player in the world." He looked like... a folksinger.

Darryl Purpose's journey into gambling as a profession began harmlessly enough. When he was 16, his mother put the book Beat the Dealer by Edward O. Thorp in his Christmas stocking. First published in 1962, the book is still regarded by many as an authority on blackjack strategy and theory. Purpose now jokes of his mother's long-ago gift, "I've since forgiven her for that."

At age 19, Purpose left home and headed for the bright lights of Las Vegas. Once there, he fell in with a group of professional gamblers (a "team") and began playing blackjack as a means of earning a living. He excelled at the game and developed a reputation as a winner. "It was a small fraternity at the time. Maybe a matter of a few dozen people, or a hundred people at the most," Purpose said, recalling his former colleagues. "When I first got involved, I pretty much knew everybody... When I was 21 or -two I started running my own teams, and when I was 24 and 25 I was being called the best blackjack player in the world.

"I mean, it sounds absurd... but it was true," Purpose said of the infamous title, as he described with quiet confidence his previous line of work. Neither bragging nor presumptuous, he explained, "If it were easy to do, everybody would do it, and it wasneasy.

"The people that counted cards, went into casinos and could play with a small advantage, were treated a lot like cheaters. Even though we weren't cheating. We were just using our brain to play the game," Purpose explained. "But the casinos didn't like that because they didn't want to lose... And so they began the whole 'cops and robbers' of trying to figure out who's counting, and asking those people not to play.

"In blackjack," Purpose continued, "it's one thing to learn how to play well, like on the kitchen table. It was another thing to go into a casino and play well in front of a bunch of guys in suits and a bunch of video cameras, who are trying to figure out if you're doing exactly what you're doing. And so it requires some creativity. That was one of my strong points."

For years, Purpose traveled the globe playing blackjack. He used a variety of aliases and false identification to gain access to casinos which would otherwise have asked him to leave.

Winning big was often rewarded with an escort out of the establishment. Undeterred, Purpose simply assumed another identity.

"It was quite a rush, and very stressful," Purpose confessed. And, he was quick to add, "It was boring at the same time, after a while." Although his pockets were full, his life lacked substance, and Purpose sought it in music. "I've been in this synthetic environment my entire life, and music is my connection to what's real. Casino gambling is, at best, about nothing... you know, this exchange of money. Whereas music feels like it's about something real," he said.

This is an excerpt from issue #93.