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“Forget everything you know about luck, karma, voodoo, vibes, magic, and destiny. Here’s the secret to playing blackjack: Everything that happens—everything—is just a mathematical expression of probability.”
Dave Stann, Hollywood Blackjack
We sat at the bar in Lowell, a downtrodden, small-sized industrial city about 45 minutes north of Boston. Clearly, it had seen better days but in Billy Blackjack’s email, he was adamant that we meet on his terms, in his city, at an old Irish Pub poetically named Lucky’s. It smelled of cigarette smoke and broken dreams. It was obvious that this establishment had its own rules and those didn’t include the anti-smoking statutes that had been implemented throughout the state the year before. A policeman in a booth by the window was finishing his coffee and reading the sports page, a young couple covered in tattoos stood at the jukebox punching in their requests, and it appeared that the man who called himself Billy Blackjack had yet to arrive.
Lowell was the sort of place you heard about on the 6 o’clock news for a drug bust, a mugging, or a bar fight that ended badly.
I could tell from his own description when Billy walked in. He came straight over to us and without an introduction said, “Let’s sit in this booth over here.” We grabbed our beers from the bar and followed him over. “Hey Patrick, I’ll have what they’re having.”
“No problem, Bill.”
We learned that Billy had inherited some money in the ’90s from a wealthy but distant uncle he’d never met. He was slightly older than me so I was awed by his claim to have $200,000 in discretionary cash ready to invest in a card-counting group. He’d attended a seminar of Semyon’s and was intrigued by the game, but admitted that he didn’t have the wherewithal to learn the skills himself. As a blue-collar construction worker for the state, with no formal education after high school, he confessed that the mental energy of counting cards was more than he could, or wanted to, undertake. I’d briefly shared through email our team’s history—how we’d also begun with Semyon, but had been trained by Mike, as well, and had plenty of successes. We explained that there were now four of us and we were looking to expand our bankroll.
Our biggest challenge was convincing Billy that we were the right group in which to invest. He’d connected with a couple of other teams, quickly discounting most of them. But there was one other small squad, also local, that he was excited about. In fact, he’d already had the chance to go on a trip to Foxwoods and see them in action. Fortunately for the group, and unfortunately for us, they came out on top and Billy erroneously believed that good card counters would win every session.
We knew that we’d have to educate him on the swings that were unavoidable in the game. We talked about statistics as generically as possible, but to a point that was necessary to manage expectations. We explained the importance of keeping a bankroll in place for adjusting our betting unit up or down, rather than breaking the bank after each session.
We described the generalities of our strategies and why we stood a greater chance of succeeding than other groups. We continued to stress that it was about playing great blackjack consistently over thousands of hands.
“Okay, let’s do this,” he said emphatically. We weren’t sure if it was the three tall beers he had downed in the hour we were together or his irrational exuberance for the game, but it didn’t matter. We had just secured a $200,000 investment and our betting unit was going to $400, which was a huge jump up from the $50 we were at. Instead of maxing our bets at two hands of $300, we would now max out at two hands of $2,400. Not to mention, we could take our personal savings off the table, out of the way of the risk of short-term ups and downs.
“When do you need the money?”
“Uh, well, this week actually. We have a trip planned for Friday,” I replied.
“Okay, I’ll call you in the morning and tell you where to meet me.”