Michael Shackleford
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Michael "The Wizard of Odds" Shackleford (born in 1965 in Pasadena, California) is one of the world's foremost experts on the math behind casino games, and is best known for his website of gambling analyses, The Wizard of Odds.
Before becoming known as the Wizard of Odds, Shackleford worked as a claims adjuster and later as an actuary for the Social Security Administration from 1992 until 2000. His main responsibility at the Social Security Administration was estimating short-term costs and benefits of Social Security law changes, but what brought him the most notoriety was his idea to tabulate the most popular baby names each year for the last several decades. The results of this research have been published in many books, newspapers, and magazines, and the Social Security Administration now officially publishes a new list every year of the previous year's most popular names, along with all the previous years' names.
Today Shackleford is most known for his website Wizard of Odds, an extensive collection of mathematical analyses of hundreds of casino games. As a professional actuary he is on a short list of people who make their living by providing mathematical analyses of new games for game developers and casinos. Many of the new games seen in both land and online casinos first underwent his scrutiny before being released. His most notable clients include Hilton, Realtime Gaming, Playtech, and Shuffle Master.
Shackleford previously provided a certification for online casinos. However, in May 2006, it emerged following a player complaint that one of the casinos he had certified, English Harbour Casino, had been offering a video poker doubling game with a significant bias against the player. The explanation given by Shackleford was that the game had only been operating unfairly for a period of a few weeks, and so Shackleford had not yet conducted a monthly audit [1]. Following the incident Shackleford discontinued the casino certification service, and sold the company to Eliot Jacobson [2].
Shackleford also authored the book Gambling 102: The Best Strategies for All Casino Games (Huntingdon Press, 2005), and is an Adjunct Professor of Casino Math at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Shackleford's personal interests include juggling, unicycling, chess, and license plate collecting.
