The history of blackjack has had a series of pointless challenges thrown down for fantasy money. This goes right back to Revere. In the early days it mostly involved debates about the merits of various systems.
The tradition was carried on by Canfield for, as I remember, an even more ridiculous amount of money than Revere, thrown down to prove the supremacy of his prototype AOII count system.
The fantasy money challenges survive into the modern era. The other side has gotten in on the act. Shufflemaster issued a $100,000 challenge to advantage players to come up with a method to beat their "King" shuffler.
This forum has been a fertile breeding ground for such challenges. So many have been issued I don't actually recall all of them.
I will never accept or issue any such challenge. I did not submit any method to Shufflemaster even though I knew of several methods to get an advantage against the King. For the same reason I turned down Mathprof's challenge, along the same lines as Shufflemaster's, for a smaller amount of money to be donated to a charity.
Similarly I did not take up Steve Heston's $10,000 challenge that Stanford Wong could beat 55% with his sports picks, even though I believed he would do this at the time (just as well as it turned out).
I have never taken up progressionist Donald Dahl and his (somewhat arrogant) challenge to card counters, even though I know he is a casino shill.
Now the Pro is offering a $10,000 challenge that I won't be able to find a flaw in the documentation of the program used to test his method.
The reason I will never issue or accept any such challenge is simple. I am an advantage player: I win money from the casinos. Thats what I do.
I have no experience or expertise when it comes to cleverly-worded contracts or agreements. I have no experience in playing to the gallery or academic brown-nosing. I have no experience of duplicity or sleight-of-hand or bribery. Without wishing to sound cynical; these are the things which decide populist challenges, which is exactly why they are rarely taken up.
The next time anyone feels like some kind of challenge involving a large sum of money, associated with advantage play, I suggest they take a cold shower and return to research and practice.
