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“In Vegas, everybody’s gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The boxmen are watching the dealers. The floormen are watching the boxmen. The pit bosses are watching the floormen. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I’m watching the casino manager. And the eye-in-the-sky is watching us all.”
Ace Rothstein, Casino
Our two-bedroom suite at the Bellagio overlooked the water fountain that lined the Vegas Strip. We had a direct view of the faux Eiffel Tower across the Strip at Paris and the music from the water show graced our presence as we entered the room. It was 11 p.m. in Vegas and 2 a.m. back in Boston, but there was still a little time to do some work. As expected, D.A. had built into that night’s schedule a session across the street at the Venetian. We didn’t like to play first thing in the casino where we stayed, because we worried about being identified as card counters right away and getting trespassed from the property early. It was an unlikely possibility, but for some reason we felt more comfortable getting our feet wet each weekend playing elsewhere.
We threw our bags into our respective rooms in the suite and locked up any money we didn’t need in play that evening. I finished entering the safe’s code, which locked the door. I headed to the oversized bathroom in the front foyer of our suite. It was a room of marble decadence and lavish fixtures. I heard D.A. enter the pass code and open the safe back up. As had been our tradition, the safe’s code would always be 2121, a tribute to the game we loved and an easy way to assure that neither of us would ever forget it.
It was getting late and we decided that our energy from the flight had been tapped, so we decided to forget about back-counting, call-ins, signaling, or wonging and just play an hour or so at the same table. It wasn’t ideal, since we might possibly play through some negative shoes, but we’d use our discretion and take care in our betting, walking away from significantly negative situations and holding firm to our 6-unit betting-ramp max. It was our intention to use a $150 unit this weekend, but given the timeframe and the nature of our play—that is, both of us playing through shoes at the same table—we decided to err on the side of conservativeness to start out. We agreed to use a $50 unit.
Instead of acting like strangers we figured there was no harm in sitting down as friends. After all, we weren’t betting all that much, our ramp was capped, and our target session was only 45 to 60 minutes long. We planned to stay low key and limit our index plays to the types of decisions we’d see amateurs frequently make by accident, except that we would try to do it when it was mathematically correct to do so.
The final agreement was that we’d be careful not to bet the exact same amount for each hand. Most of the time, we figured, we would both be betting the table minimum anyway, but if the count rose, we agreed to offset our bets. So if the bet called for $200 each, one of us would bet $250 and the other $150. We knew this wasn’t precise wagering, but that by betting different amounts it wouldn’t look so suspicious.
The Card Counter’s Guide to Casino Surveillance, written by an active surveillance manager who published the book under the nom de plume DV Cellini, became our team manual’s complement. Our own manual consisted of our rules and regulations, but packed into the 88 pages of The Card Counter’s Guide was more useful and relevant information than many of the blackjack books in publication combined.
Cellini offered a firsthand perspective on all things card counting, from the most common giveaways counters have to tips and strategies to keep pit personnel off our scent. In fact, I believe that every aspiring blackjack player needs to read The Card Counter’s Guide to Casino Surveillance.
This wasn’t a book you could find in the library. It was underground all the way and we managed to find a copy buried deep within the stacks of the gambler’s Book Club on the outskirts of downtown Vegas. The store wasn’t in the most glamorous section of the city and it had a stench that evolved over the years from the gamblers who had patronized the store, looking for that edge. The book wasn’t cheap either but it was worth its weight in gold.
In addition, I’d managed to secure a rare copy of Bill Zender’s Card Counting for the Casino Executive, another resource that came at a healthy price. Again, like Cellini, Zender’s spiral bound manual designed for casino personnel gave us more ammunition to evaluate our strategies and how best to put them to use. It’s helpful to understand what your opponent already knows about you so you can determine what they don’t know about you, as well.
Many books are out there on the subject of card counting, but the several-hundred-dollar price tag on Beyond Counting by James Grosjean, or the several-thousand-dollar cost of Stanford Wong’s Blackjack in Asia, were out of our range. Over the decades, the limited copies and antiquated information in Wong’s book made it a collector’s item, more than a resource.
We’d carefully considered many of the telltale signs of a professional card counter, such as wearing baseball caps, having a three-day scruff, or constantly blocking the face with a hand. Those were just a few of numerous weak approaches to concealing one’s identity. So we normally played hat-free, except for times like these when we were just minutes off our six-hour flight and didn’t care to shower and clean up.
Other tells included an intense fascination with each and every card that was dealt, but that was never a concern for us. We’d gotten so good at keeping an accurate count that we could carry on a conversation throughout the game or even turn away from the action until it was our turn to act and quickly scan the entire table at once to update the count.
Card counters are also notorious for ordering bottled water, coffee, or sodas, due to team or self-imposed non-drinking policies. Some would order a soda water with a lemon or something that gave the appearance to surveillance that it could contain alcohol. But casinos are smarter than that and use different glassware for mixed drinks than they do for soft drinks. It’s one of the many little casino secrets that Cellini had opened our eyes to.
Between The Card Counter’s Guide to Casino Surveillance and the dozens of other books we’d read on blackjack, we knew that avoiding detection was an art. Some subtleties came with experience, and with nearly a year under our belts, we’d seen a lot.
Even though it was early by Vegas standards, my body was telling me that it was time for bed. I didn’t have much energy left in me so I figured it would be a short session. Within seconds of sitting down the cocktail waitress had made her way to our table.
“Anyone care for a drink?”
We paused.
“Uh, bottled water please?”
“Yeah, me too.”
With baseball hats donned, 5 o’clock shadows, and the recent order of bottled waters, we weren’t doing ourselves any favors. But soon we made an even more critical mistake. We’d gone on a good run and the adrenaline was pumping. We continued to see positive counts and the profits were starting to add up. Forty-five minutes turned into an hour, an hour turned into two, and two hours turned into three.
A new floorperson who was younger, female, and probably mid-30s, relieved the current one who was originally from Boston himself. He had lived in Vegas for years and wasn’t particularly interested in chatting up our east coast connection. Initially, we welcomed the change from his laconic demeanor, but soon realized that we may have gotten ourselves in a bind. It was standard protocol for the new floorperson to get briefed, but I noticed something odd about the exchange. I couldn’t hear their words, but I could see their eyes, which seemed to abnormally linger in the direction of our table.
I was feeling very uneasy.
The encounter had occurred over D.A.’s left shoulder as he sat at third base, the seat farthest to the left, so he hadn’t seen it himself. But I was over in the second seat and had a direct line of sight. I thought that maybe I still had some jitters from having been backed off at Foxwoods a week earlier, so I tried to ignore my paranoia.
We played through a new shoe and not once had the new floorperson observed our play. Not up close and not from a distance. It was a bad sign. No heat whatsoever. Perhaps she was disinterested in our table. It wasn’t likely. No attention at all probably meant that the responsibility of closely monitoring our play had been exclusively taken over by the eye in the sky.
Older casinos had outdated cameras that were fastened into fixed positions. Those cameras view only whatever is in their direct line of sight. Newer establishments, however, used cameras that could pan left and right, tilt up and down, and zoom in and out. Because of these capabilities, they’re referred to as PTZ cameras. Most casinos today operate with a ratio of one PTZ camera for every two tables. Even more sophisticated were the PTZ “chase” cameras, which worked together like electronic sets of eyes, able to follow a player throughout the property and even onto the street. There was no doubt that the Venetian, which had opened in 1999, was well equipped with the best tools available.
I was sure that something wasn’t right. Even though we were winning and our counts were consistently positive, for the first time since we’d sat down the count reached a point that warranted max betting. We were like Pavlov’s dogs, salivating at the prospects that came with the sizeable true count. I wasn’t sure if I should warn D.A. and get up from the table because of the suspected heat, or play through the hot shoe. The shoe was so rich in remaining good cards, I decided we’d stay.
What we should’ve done was leave.
D.A. was unaware of my concerns, though I’d hinted on a couple of occasions that it might be a good time to call it a night soon. He succeeded in convincing me that we should stay because he “was feeling lucky,” something we often uttered when the count was in our favor. I became blinded by the count and I chalked up the heat to mere irrational fear. I placed two max wagers on the betting circles in front of me. The decision to stay was my fault.
The pit’s phone rang. Each pit has its own phone to communicate with other pits, to touch base with the casino shift manager, to make reservations for players at casino restaurants, and, of course, to talk to surveillance. The young woman answered the phone, nodded a few times, paused, then looked me squarely in the eye before continuing her conversation. Not good.
“Let’s get out of here,” I mouthed across the table as I tilted my head to the left to help indicate what I was saying.
D.A. sensed my anxiety but couldn’t lip read my silent message.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” I said aloud, my voice bellowing.
I reached forward and pulled the black and green chips off the table, but the dealer had already dealt the first card. All I could do was wait until the hand was over. D.A. knew from my words and tone that something was seriously wrong. I wasn’t imagining things. The heat was real and it was time to go. Only four players were at the table but the dealer seemed to move at a snail’s pace. Hurry up! I kept thinking to myself. Deal! Her upcard was an ace.
“Insurance, anyone?”
Fuck. The true count was +9, clearly high enough to warrant taking insurance. We both reached into our stacks and pushed chips onto the insurance line. Sure enough, the two other players at the table shook their heads in disdain.
“Oh man, you don’t want to insure that. Besides, the dealer doesn’t have it. I can tell,” one man said.
“He’s right,” said another. “You only take insurance if you have a snapper yourself.”
We had held to Stanford Wong’s tenet in Professional Blackjack, “Advice from well-meaning, but ill-informed gamblers that you should insure only a natural is worth its cost—nothing.”
Now that our insurance bets were out there, all we wanted was for the hand to end so we could make our exit.
“Oh, well whatdya’ know … blackjack,” the dealer said as she flipped over her hole card revealing a king.
We immediately grabbed our chips and stood up from the table. I was a half-step ahead of D.A. The dealer, seeing that we were leaving, offered to color us up, but by then we were already a few steps away from the table and headed toward the door. I looked back to double-check that I hadn’t dropped any chips and to make sure D.A. was on his way, too. The floorperson was still on the phone and intently watching our every move.
As I turned back toward the exit I collided with what felt like a wall. It knocked me to the floor. I looked up to see two men dressed in uniform. Security. These guys weren’t the mall cops I’d read about in most blackjack books. They were large and they were angry. My fall was enough distraction to allow D.A. to slide past them, and when they paused to realize that D.A. was out of reach, I managed to bounce back up. I picked up the few chips that had been jarred loose from my grip and began my sprint to the door.
We had one goal and that was to get out and avoid being detained. We weren’t worried about stories we’d heard about back-room incidents. No, in today’s world, once a casino catches a counter they can just formally bar them from ever playing on the property again. But we knew this wouldn’t be like the back-offs we’d each experienced in Connecticut. There was too much heat and, from the looks of the security guards, we weren’t expecting a kind and gentle casino shift manager to offer a handshake anytime soon. These guys were instructed to detain us and read the infamous “Trespass Act” (NRS 207.200), which says that if that player ever sets foot on their property again—their private property, that is—they have the legal right to arrest them. We’d scoured the website gamblingandthelaw.com and knew that if we could reach the exit without being stopped, the Trespass Act would not be read and we could return at some future date and play under an alias without risk of legal action.
Since D.A.’s initial back-off at Foxwoods, we’d been preparing for the future. We invested $10 per players card that our friends would secure for us at casinos nationwide. Combined, our casino-going friends gave us multiple lives at more than 25 different casinos, including more than 15 in Vegas alone.
We had options almost everywhere, but if we didn’t get out of that casino unscathed, we might never play there again. Risking arrest wasn’t what we’d signed up for. Slowly our shelf life would continue to diminish and we’d burn ourselves out of the game completely, like many of the players on MIT teams had.
With my peripheral vision I saw the eyes of gamblers around us. They probably believed they were witnessing the attempted capture of criminals, but what we were doing wasn’t illegal. That mattered very little to the casino bosses, however. They saw us as a threat, no matter how minor, to their bottom lines; and that, in their opinion, was the real crime.
A third security guard was coming directly toward us and we darted to the right, off the casino floor and toward the pedestrian bridge crossing over Las Vegas Boulevard. I knew we had a sizeable lead at that point even though I still felt like a rabbit at a dog track. The security guards were hungry for our capture.
With the lead clearly in hand, we both looked over our shoulders to see that the guards had given up. Panting, one reached for the walkie-talkie that was fastened to the shoulder of his uniform. They were too far away for us to hear more than the faint sounds of a distant transmission, but we continued our jog until we were across the Strip and in the safe confines of the Mirage lobby.
It was nearly six in the morning on the east Coast, and we were exhausted from the extended session and subsequent foot chase. We agreed to break one final rule and cab it back to the Bellagio. On the short ride back I told D.A. what I’d seen—the new floorperson, the phone call, and the eye contact. We took turns giving our point of view on the chase, surveillance, and even the count at the time we made our dash. As tired as I was, I hadn’t experienced a rush like that in my life. I was hopeful that my heart would stop pounding and that I’d be able to fall asleep.
By playing for as long as we did and for not adhering to our many team policies, we’d acted unprofessionally and it came back to hurt us. Although we were up about $4,900 for the night and our weekend had only just begun, we were disappointed in what had just happened and we vowed to never make those same mistakes again.