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“What makes someone a professional is being able to say, with certainty, what your expectation and what your standard deviation were over the previous years. A professional player, with no exception, keeps accurate records.”
Semyon Dukach, Counting and Betting Techniques
The lights of the Strip illuminated like suburban neighborhoods at Christmastime. The few other trips I’d made to Sin City revealed it to be rife with scantily clad women, free drinks, and long shots. The only visit I’d made outside of a few bachelor parties was for a work conference from my days in sports. It was my first trip ever and I was instantly attracted to the energy of America’s Playground. My boss at the time, Tim, was with me. The first thing we did was play a few hands of blackjack, enjoy the complimentary cocktails, and press the buttons of the one-armed bandits that stood in rows like a protective fortress preventing patrons from leaving.
I vaguely remember my first visit. Tim, who’d become more of a friend than a supervisor, had finagled a spot for me on the trip. We attended a few of the conference sessions, but spent most of each day by the pool, where the amazing views weren’t limited to the Strip’s skyline that engulfed the Flamingo Hotel. Each night, we met other conventioneers for scheduled activities, but eventually we’d slip out the back and search for fun. I rolled some dice at the crap tables, randomly wagered a few bucks at roulette, and sat down for a several hands of blackjack.
Subsequent visits included much of the same, but each time it seemed to be dialed up a notch. We wagered more and ultimately lost more, we went to high-end nightclubs and overpaid for drinks, we danced with women who were model material, and we hoped to catch a glimpse of A-list celebrities. The concept of sleep became lost on us. And there was a price to pay for it all that was far heftier than an excessive cover charge or an overpriced lap dance. The flight home was always painful. Exhausted and broke, friends scrambled to get their stories straight for the upcoming get-together when the wives and girlfriends would all be together in one location. Physically and emotionally, it seemed like several weeks were required to recharge my batteries before the itch of Vegas would come back again.
After a while, the devastating toll that visiting Vegas took on my body was trumped only by the tax it seemed to take on my soul. I found myself feeling more depressed and emptier after each trip until I reached a point where the itch to go back to Vegas never seemed to materialize.
So as the cab driver drove down Tropicana Avenue away from the airport and toward the Strip, an overwhelming sense of familiarity with the city was coupled with a sense of nausea associated with times past. D.A. was on the left-hand side of the cab looking back at the airport where we’d landed, perhaps pondering the next step of our journey ahead. I assumed that his energy for our first team trip to Vegas was as high as mine.
“What happened to the lion?” I asked the driver. The last time I’d been in Vegas, MGM’s entrance was through the mouth of its gigantic gold lion, one of the more impressive icons to grace the city’s gaudy façade.
“Got rid of it a few years back. Asians thought it was bad luck to enter through the mouth of a lion so they were all using side and back doors instead. Finally, the MGM decided that it wasn’t worth it. No one was using it.”
I’d known that Asians were a huge part of the gambling world and that when it came to luck, no culture was more superstitious. D.A. and I chuckled a bit at the idea that luck was a concept so important to so many. We understood perfectly well why MGM decided to make the change. There was no sense forcing a prominent group of customers to enter through the back door of your establishment. That would’ve been bad business. Vegas was built from the ideas and needs of the people. It was special in so many ways and we were ready to take it by storm, to accomplish our goals, and get what we needed and wanted out of it. But it wasn’t luck we were looking for. It was an advantage.
“Here you go, fellas. Need help with your bags?” the cabbie asked.
“All set, thanks,” I said, handing him $15 for the $13.50 fare, sticking to our manual’s rule: 10% tip for travel and dining. “Keep the change.”
In my regular life, I tipped to excess, but I had to get used to the idea that this was different. This wasn’t just my money—it was our team’s money. As a co-CEO of our two-man company, I was as diligent with our bookkeeping as I was with my financial-planning business. Every dollar counted.
“Good luck, guys.”
As D.A. and I walked away from the cab and toward the hotel registration desk, I jokingly quoted the movie Rounders, “People insist on calling it luck.”
D.A. laughed at the reference to Matt Damon’s character, Mike McDermott. In the final scene of the movie on the way to the airport in New York City, the cab driver asks McDermott where he is headed. He tells him Vegas, to which the cab driver replies, “good luck, man.” McDermott responds in his thoughts, “People insist on calling it luck.”
I laid my bags on the first of two queen-sized beds. D.A. and I had been on several trips to Connecticut together and a couple to Atlantic City. We knew the drill. I pulled out the team manual, a stack of session tracking sheets, a small pile of rubber bands, and two thick wads of $100 bills that were stuffed deep within a pair of sneakers I brought to go running in each morning. D.A. dug through his bag and withdrew his cash as well, along with the weekend’s schedule. We had subscribed to Stanford Wong’s Current Blackjack News, a monthly newsletter that identified each casino throughout the country, the number of blackjack tables available, the house rules, and the starting disadvantage versus basic strategy.
The publication was vital to our plan. Casinos would frequently change the rules they offered and it was critical that we knew ahead of time which locations to attack. In Vegas, unlike Connecticut or even Atlantic City, we were like kids in a candy store. There were so many great casinos at our disposal with some of the most favorable rules anywhere. We could easily play nonstop by limiting our playing sessions to 60 to 90 minutes at each location before moving on, never having to worry that we were hitting one casino for too long. But it took some planning and that’s where the schedule came in. Each month I would receive the publication and scour it using a yellow highlighter to identify the best prospects. I would give it to D.A. who would construct a stop-by-stop itinerary, complete with meal breaks and time allotted for working out and getting sleep.
Sleep was a requirement. Unlike my Vegas partying days, sleeping was no longer optional. A minimum of six hours of sleep per night was a self-imposed rule in our manual. Keeping an accurate count while blocking out all of the noise around was difficult enough without being sleep-deprived. The craft of counting cards required a Zen-like focus and we needed to be rested.
Our flight had landed at close to 10 p.m. at McCarran. By the time we were checked into the Bellagio, it was 11 p.m. in Vegas, but 2 a.m. on the East Coast. We agreed to play for one hour downstairs before calling it a night and starting first thing in the morning. With such a short window, we figured that our best bet would be wonging. We would each back-count our own tables, jump in when the count got good enough (3 with 3), and jump out according to our manual, which was when the true count reached a lowly -1 or worse.
We’d been successful in Connecticut and Atlantic City and there was no reason why we wouldn’t see similar results in Vegas. Even still, we both wondered if we’d get any sleep that night. Our energy was particularly high. The prospect of applying our trade in Vegas was especially sweet. We realized that it was all a part of our journey.
In many ways, it was also our destination.