Florida’s Supreme Court has overturned Gov. Crist’s decision to award the casino the right to offer banked card games to its players. The deal signed between the Tribe and the Governor was to bring millions of dollars to the State. The casino has already paid $50 million, and a further $100 million a year are supoused to be generated for the State. Now it looks, this opportunity will be lost, leaving nobody happy.

It was trully a historic event. All 71 tables, 55 initially designated for blackjack, six for Three Card poker, three for Pai Gow poker, three for Let It Ride, two for baccarat and two for mini-baccarat, were full with celebrity players. Carmen Electra and her fiancé, Rob Patterson of Korn, played one of the first blackjack hands at the table with tribal council members Mitchell Cypress and Richard Bowers. Among many other famous guests were actors Heather Graham, Lorraine Bracco and Frank Vincent.

“With the introduction of Blackjack and the other card games, Las Vegas-style casinos will now be at the doorstep of the residents of Florida. Floridians won’t have to go to Las Vegas or Atlantic City to play their favorite casino games.” said Seminole Gaming CEO Jim Allen, adding “This has been a long time coming, This takes us to the next level.”

Indeed, the once-destitute tribe which now generates an estimated $1.2 billion a year in revenues, can open the games at all seven of its casinos. The Hard Rock Hollywood is the first, likely followed by The Hard Rock near Tampa and the tribe’s Coconut Creek casino.

It is a great night for the tribe, which bought the Hard Rock chain last year for $965 million and was able to broaden its gambling empire with the addition of house-banked table games as part of a gambling agreement signed by Gov. Charlie Crist in last November.

But it’s also good news for players. “I’ve played in Atlantic City, Vegas, every place,” said Isabel Muse, a 59-year-old Naples resident who plays in blackjack tournaments, “But this is closest. I wanted to be here when it opened.”

New games, such as baccarat, also attract high-rollers and pai-gow poker brings Asian players and this mean more growth for the Seminole casinos.

Blackjack is a banked card game, which means players compete against the house. Such games were illegal in the state of Florida until now. They are now allowed exclusively at the Seminole tribe’s seven Florida casinos under a deal signed in November by Gov. Charlie Crist and Seminole Tribe chairman Mitchell Cypress in November, 2007.

“With the introduction of Blackjack and the other card games, Las Vegas-style casinos will now be at the doorstep of the residents of Florida,” said James Allen, Seminole Gaming CEO. “Floridians won’t have to go to Las Vegas or Atlantic City to play their favorite casino games.”

Celebrity packed gala will include Miami Heat players Dwyane Wade and Alonzo Mourning; former Heat player Eddie Jones; former National Football League players Nat Moore, Bernie Kosar and O.J. McDuffie; actresses Carmen Electra, Heather Graham and Lorraine Bracco; and fighter Kimbo Slice.

The launch of Blackjack, Baccarat and several variations of poker, including Pai Gow Poker, Let It Ride and Three Card Poker grabbed attention of professional gamblers. In anticipation of the thousands of gamblers expected to try their hand at new card games, a pair of former students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are teaching a few blackjack players a way they might beat the house.

Mike Aponte, 37, of Los Angeles, and David Irvine, 37, of Naples, are famous for their card counting techniques that earned them millions,  inspired book “Bringing down Vegas”, and film “21″, and made them most unwelcome in all Las Vegas casinos. Now, the pair banned to play in casinos turned to teaching others how to count cards.

In 2004 they opened The Blackjack Institute, offering Blackjack tutorials that sell for about $135 apiece to private tutoring sessions that cost $7,000. To date, the pair said they have taught about 250 students nationwide. Students identieties are highly protected as casinos can ban anyone it suspects is counting cards.

Wall Street Journal: How did you get interested in blackjack?

Edward Thorp: I went to Las Vegas in 1958. I’d learned a strategy that would let you play just about even, so I decided to play with $10. My $10 lasted a lot longer than anyone else’s at the table. I thought there had to be a mathematical way to beat the game, and that would be interesting mathematics. I figured it out and a few years later I wrote “Beat the Dealer.”

WSJ: What about you, Bill?

Bill Gross: I picked up Ed’s book in early 1966. I got in an automobile accident and had to go into the hospital and had time to practice the card-counting technique he discovered. And it worked! I had $200, so I headed out to Las Vegas. I turned my $200 into $10,000. I didn’t care about the money. I wanted to prove that you could beat the system. Then I thought about what I could do that takes the same skills. I realized it was investing.

Mr. Thorp: He started out with $200 and now he manages nearly $1 trillion.

Read the whole interview in the Wall Street Journal.

BBC provides a transcript of that episode, and thanks to YouTube we can watch it, too.

In America the game didn’t find popularity and gambling houses tried offering various bonus payouts to get the players to the tables. One of them was a 10-to-1 payout if the player’s hand consisted of the ace of spades and a black Jack (either the Jack of clubs or the Jack of spades). This hand was called “blackjack” and it stuck to the game since.

Both films are unique in a sense, as the story evolves around one game, and especially “21″ will do a lot to educate and promote blackjack among wider audience. Regardless of the rather bad reviews “21″ received.

And it’s about time blackjack, a classic casino game, receives similar status as poker.