level math and physics before becoming a student again himself and going on to higher education with the GI Bill, as his father had done before him. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, his MBA from Santa Clara University and graduated from the Harvard Owner/President Management Program. While working full-time at a manufacturing company, Hull tested his mathematical and analytical skills at the blackjack tables in Las Vegas, where he proved to be a skilled and disciplined player. Hull took his accumulated winnings to the Pacific Stock Exchange, then to the Chicago financial exchanges. Once there, he established himself as a pioneer in the trading industry, revolutionizing the financial markets through the use of innovative models and state-of-the-art technology. As Founder of Hull Trading Company, Blair Hull built a business from scratch in Illinois, created hundreds of jobs, and grew his company into one of the most successful trading firms in the country. Blackjack Trained in mathematics and computer science, Blair Hull first applied his skills and training to advantage play in blackjack, and then went on to develop an empirical model independent of Black–Scholes to use on the financial markets. Throughout the 1970s, Hull honed his system on the casino floors. As one of the “Big Players” on Al Francesco’s storied blackjack team, Blair beat the odds, or rather, beat the house by shifting the edge in his favor. By utilizing mathematical systems - first Edward O. Thorp's 10 Count Card system, and later Lawrence Revere's Advanced Point Count system - Hull and a team of skilled card players were able to determine when they gained an advantage over the dealer, and how best to bet to exploit that advantage. They consistently turned a profit, and their story is outlined in the book "The Big Player" by Ken Uston. "When Hull played blackjack, he saw it not as a risk-taking endeavor but rather “a clear financial opportunity that other people did not see.” With the right system, blackjack became a positive-expectation game: Statistically speaking, Hull had to win (over the long haul at least). Similarly, he would have been loath to enter the options market without what he perceived as an advantage. At the Pacific Exchange, Hull’s equivalent to card counting was the exploitation of his computer-generated theoretical-value sheets. Based on an option-pricing model of Hull’s own invention (similar