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'''Les Golden''' is an internationally-known gambling writer. He has written for <i>gambling.com</i>, <i>iGamingBusiness</i>, <i>gamblingonline</i>, and <i>Bluff Europe</i> print magazines.   He learned how to be a card-counter at the popular casino game of blackjack as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, by reading "Beat the Dealer," the seminal work of mathematician Edward O. Thorp.  He currently resides in Oak Park, Illinois, and Reno, Nevada.

'''Les Golden''' is an internationally-known gambling writer based in Oak Park, Illinois. He has written for <i>gambling.com</i>, <i>iGamingBusiness</i>, <i>gamblingonline</i>, and <i>Bluff Europe</i> print magazines. He became aware of card counting systems and became a card counter at the popular casino game of blackjack while a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, by reading the 1966 revised edition of Beat the Dealer,<ref>Thorp, E. O.  (1966) ''Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One'', Random House, New York</ref> the seminal work of mathematician Edward O. Thorp, who was aided in his computer simulations by programmers Julian Braun and Harvey Dubner.<ref>Thorp, E. O. (1966),''Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One'', Random House, New York, pp. 93-94</ref>  As a graduate student in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, Golden made monthly trips to Reno, Nevada and played blackjack using Thorp’s systems.  He is the developer of the Golden Diagram technique for countering casino countermeasures at blackjack and the Magic Circle system for winning at biased roulette wheels.  He currently resides in Oak Park, Illinois, and Reno, Nevada.

==Background==

==Background==

===Education and Research===

===Education and Research===

Leslie M. Golden holds the B.A. (with Distinction) and Masters of Engineering Physics from Cornell University, where he was both a Cornell McMullen Scholar and a Fellow of the Interfoundation Committee of the American Institute for Economic Research (Great Barrington, Mass.), and received the M.A. and Ph.D in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley,<ref> http://badgrads.berkeley.edu/doku.php?id=alumni:old</ref><ref>http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2006ASPC..356...87F, page 90</ref> under Professor William J. “Jack” Welch,<ref>http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/welch.html</ref> the Watson and Marilyn Alberts Chair emeritus in Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  At Cornell, he was the award-winning feature editor and then editor-in-chief of the <i>Cornell Engineer</i> magazine and a member of the Engineering Student Council.  Some of his early research in astronomy appeared in a book by Stephen Hawking.<ref> (1979) Hawking, S. W. & Israel, W. General relativity: an Einstein centenary survey. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22285-0. “A much cited centennial survey”;   

Leslie Morris Golden (''Eliezer Moshe ben Reuven Motl y Chanah Kaileh'', ''Lazar Masche'') was born in Chicago, an identical twin,<ref>His parents are Irving R. (b. 1907) and Anne K. Golden (b. 1909; maiden name, Eisenberg).  Anne had twin brothers, Irving and Sam (b. 1905), and twin uncles on her mother’s side, Michel and Kivah Gerstein (b.1876), making the Golden twins the third successive generation of male twins on the maternal side. The birth of the Golden twins was one of a record number of twin births at Wesley Memorial Hospital, a part of Northwestern Hospital in Chicago, in early December.</ref><ref>(1943), “Twins Tend Record Twin Crop,” ''Chicago Herald-American'', December 4, p. II-3</ref><ref>Petlicki, Myrna (1997), “Golden memories,” ''Oak Leaves'' (Oak Park, Illinois), July 2, p. B3-6</ref> the son of Anne K. (née Eisenberg; March 7, 1909 – November 19, 1999), a legal stenographer and homemaker, and Irving R. Golden (March 15, 1907 – June 22, 2005), an attorney and co-owner with his father Max Goldstein, an immigrant finish carpenter from Belarus, Russia, of a store fixture and bar manufacturing firm,<ref>Kogan,  Rick (2005), “Lawyer also designed, built bars,” ''Chicago Tribune'', July 24, p. IV-7</ref> and raised in Oak Park, Illinois, where he attended Horace Mann grammar school and Oak Park-River Forest High School. 

 

He holds the B.A. (with Distinction) and Masters of Engineering Physics from Cornell University, where he was both a Cornell McMullen Scholar and a Fellow of the Interfoundation Committee of the American Institute for Economic Research (Great Barrington, Mass.), and received the M.A. and Ph.D in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley,<ref> http://badgrads.berkeley.edu/doku.php?id=alumni:old</ref><ref>http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2006ASPC..356...87F, page 90</ref> under Professor William J. “Jack” Welch,<ref>http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/welch.html</ref> the Watson and Marilyn Alberts Chair emeritus in Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  At Cornell, he was the award-winning feature editor and then editor-in-chief of the <i>Cornell Engineer</i> magazine and a member of the Engineering Student Council.  Some of his early research in astronomy appeared in a book by Stephen Hawking.<ref> (1979) Hawking, S. W. & Israel, W. General relativity: an Einstein centenary survey. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22285-0. “A much cited centennial survey”;   

books.google.com/books?isbn=0521222850 </ref>  He performed research at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, as a National Research Council Resident Research Associate<ref>http://nrc58.nas.edu/aodir/gen_page.asp?mode=detail&sql=idnumber='760817'</ref> and the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California.  He is the director of the [[Directory:Near Earth Asteroid Reconnaissance Project|Near Earth Asteroid Reconnaissance Project]] (N.E.A.R.),<ref>http://www.astronomy.com/sitecore/content/Magazine%20Issues/1994/April%201994.aspx , page 22</ref> which he founded as a University of Illinois at Chicago professor in 1994.  He has been elected to both Phi Beta Kappa (arts and sciences) and Tau Beta Pi (engineering) as well as Pi Delta Epsilon (journalism).

books.google.com/books?isbn=0521222850 </ref>  He performed research at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, as a National Research Council Resident Research Associate<ref>http://nrc58.nas.edu/aodir/gen_page.asp?mode=detail&sql=idnumber='760817'</ref> and the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California.  He is the director of the [[Directory:Near Earth Asteroid Reconnaissance Project|Near Earth Asteroid Reconnaissance Project]] (N.E.A.R.),<ref>http://www.astronomy.com/sitecore/content/Magazine%20Issues/1994/April%201994.aspx , page 22</ref> which he founded as a University of Illinois at Chicago professor in 1994.  He has been elected to both Phi Beta Kappa (arts and sciences) and Tau Beta Pi (engineering) as well as Pi Delta Epsilon (journalism).