Books and talks

Books

Smart Casino Gambling: How to Win More and Lose Less

Olaf Vancura · Index Publishing Group · 1996

A textbook with a mathematical approach to casino games, written after he began teaching at Tufts.

Knock-Out Blackjack: The Easiest Card-Counting System Ever Devised

Olaf Vancura and Ken Fuchs · Huntington Press · 1998; third edition 2016

The book that introduced the K-O card-counting system.

Finding the Edge: Mathematical Analysis of Casino Games

Edited by Olaf Vancura, Judy A. Cornelius and William R. Eadington · Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, Reno · 2000

Academic essays on casino games. It includes his chapter "A Computer Teaches Itself to Play Blackjack" and, with Ken Fuchs, "A Study of Index Rounding in Card-counting".

Advantage Yahtzee

Olaf Vancura · Huntington Press; later edition Puzzlewright · 2001; 2010

The optimal strategy to maximize the expected score in Yahtzee.

Talks

Managing the House Advantage · University of Nevada, Las Vegas · 1997
Betting on Las Vegas: Designing Popular Slot Games · National Institute of Standards and Technology colloquium, Gaithersburg · February 3, 2012
Guest on Gambling With an Edge · Las Vegas Advisor · March 9, 2016

Written about him

Designing Games in Sin City Pays Off · APS News (American Physical Society), Alaina G. Levine · April 2011
AGS Hires Lofgren, Vancura · Global Gaming Business · November 5, 2010
Pace-O-Matic Names Olaf Vancura Chief of Product and Technology Strategy · GlobeNewswire via Yahoo Finance · March 17, 2025