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“I am cold blooded. I play to win.”
Lawrence Revere, Playing Blackjack as a Business
I wasn’t exactly a whale, but the size and quantity of my bets were enough to make Ming sweat. I knew that the yellow cut card would be coming within the next few rounds of dealing. This was it. Any anxiety I felt was easily trumped by the palpable tension among the gallery of people around me, Laura, Ming, and (I surmised) casino surveillance.
Laura reached again to pull a card from under the coarse hairs of the front of the blackjack shoe …
Eight—for a total 23 …
“Dealer bust!” exclaimed Laura with a giddiness not appreciated by her supervisors.
Although it had all happened just moments earlier, Laura, the blackjack dealer at the Mirage, had become a distant memory. It was Friday night in Vegas and D.A. and I had just had our biggest score ever.
We were minutes away from retirement from the game.
My pockets were so full of chips that it was uncomfortable to walk. I didn’t want to risk chips or cash falling out, so I did my best to hurry to the car. The win was big enough that it garnered our first significant amount of heat on the Strip in months. To protect ourselves from being barred, we knew that leaving the casino together wasn’t a good idea, especially since we could always come out of retirement in the future.
When I reached the car, I got in and locked all of the doors. I took a deep breath and reflected on what had just happened. It had been more than three years since I first started learning the game as a professional. Now my career was coming to a close. We were going out on top and the big win was the icing on the cake.
I texted D.A.
Valet in 15
I wanted to give D.A. enough time to finish up at the table, color up, and make his way to the valet stand where I would circle around and pick him up. I also remembered that he’d ordered a drink and would probably enjoy savoring victory for a bit. Alan Berg, in The Counting Game, An Accountant Reveals How to Win at Blackjack, wrote “Just as red Auerbach of the Celtics lit up a cigar when he had the game under wraps, I might order a stiff drink when I know I’m going to leave the table a winner.”
D.A.’s go-to drink was Maker’s Mark and Coke. He ordered it at the end of a day’s work, especially when he played the demanding role of signaler and if I’d colored up for a sizeable profit. He would linger for a bit so we didn’t appear to be together.
I took a moment to gather myself. I thought back to the beginning, how my friend, Steve, had suggested I read Bringing Down the House, my bachelor lifestyle, the seminar with Semyon, the private training with Mike, New Year’s Eve trips, Strip hotels, dive casinos in Detroit and New York, playing in London, limousines, title fights, Cirque du Soleil, steak dinners, comped suites, and, of course, the money.
I turned on the car and made my way down the ramp, through the winding exit of the Mirage garage out to side streets that wrapped around toward the front of the hotel and the valet stand. When I pulled up, I saw D.A. burst through the front doors, sprinting to the car.
What the hell’s going on?
D.A. made a beeline to the car, passing through a line of patrons waiting for a taxi. He could’ve done some damage if he wasn’t careful, but he managed to avoid knocking anyone down. Steps behind him, security guards trailed with two-way radios in hand.
In all of our time, I hadn’t seen what a real chase looked like. After all, I was usually the one being chased. In a strange way, the few seconds I witnessed were fascinating to watch. We were finishing up our playing careers and I tried to enjoy every moment of it, but my first instinct was to make sure the car had a free path out. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic, and when D.A. finally got in I knew the route to take where no other cars, limos, or taxis would impede our path, and no pedestrians would be at risk. His big body slammed into the passenger seat almost simultaneously as his side door slammed shut.
“Hi Turney,” he joked, referencing the assumed name I’d been playing under.
“What happened? Is this because of my win?”
I was confused. D.A. was supposed to get up from the table shortly after I left. I couldn’t comprehend why security would be in pursuit.
“No, it’s because of mine!”
As I pulled out of the Mirage parking lot and took a right onto Las Vegas Boulevard, security was no longer a concern and we could talk about what had happened on the way back to MGM. We passed the pirate ship at Treasure Island on our right and I continued my questioning.
“What do you mean? What happened? You were playing the table minimum.”
“I was until you left. Then my drink came and, while I was waiting for it, the count was still high. There was another round to be dealt. You said you wanted to go out in style, so I raised my bets.”
“I wonder if they knew we were together.”
“Well, Ming definitely wasn’t smiling anymore and your girl Laura was practically shaking. Once you left, I knew I only had a minute left and the table had cleared out. I was heads-up with Laura.”
“So what happened?”
“I played every spot on the table! Laura was still stunned from your win. And then when I bet, her jaw was on the floor. With all the commotion, she didn’t dare get Ming off the phone. A few people were still around the table talking about your session, asking me questions about observing your ‘crazy’ play. So when I put out seven bets, people were freaking out even more. Ming was scrambling between his phone call and trying to watch the table, and security was over my shoulder. It was complete chaos.”
“Unbelievable. What happened?”
“Laura drew to seventeen. I lost three bets and won four, plus a split and a double down. People were freaking out. I just grabbed my chips and ran. I didn’t even know those security guards were behind me until I was halfway out the door. Good thing I used to play football.”
“Yeah, but weren’t you a kicker?”
“Whatever, man. They still couldn’t keep up.”
“So how much did you win?”
“Sixty-five hundred more.”
“Are we sure we want to retire?” I joked.
We had a lot of chips on us, so cashing them in would be a daunting task. It was a part of the job that wasn’t much fun. Sneaking back into a casino that we hit hard felt a bit like going back to the scene of a crime. The difference was that we beat them fair and square. Nevertheless, cashing in that amount of checks wasn’t going to be easy. It would need to be done in tedious stages.
But now we could relax and enjoy the rest of our trip. No more schedules, no more odds, no more disciplined strategies. In between our chip-cashing trips back to the Mirage, we played craps, bet on sports, drank beer, hit the clubs, and managed to get in a round of golf on Saturday morning.
Vegas was fun again, but a different kind of fun. We could just be gamblers for a couple of days, without feeling like we were cheating ourselves by playing games at a disadvantage. We didn’t have to get rest, or eat healthy, or adhere to a team manual. We didn’t have to limit our playing sessions or get into character. We didn’t have to make trips to the bathroom to divvy up cash, and we didn’t have to run from security anymore.
Over the years that we played, we’d learned a lot about the game of blackjack. We made many mistakes along the way, but worked tirelessly and learned from them. Our skills got better. We went from no tipping at all to a formalized tipping policy. We went from “there’s one correct play for every decision” to an approach that maintained our edge, while prolonging our playing careers. We played sessions that were too long, we worked with other players who lacked skills, and we joined forces with people with questionable integrity. Early on, we sometimes over-bet our bankroll, particularly when spreading to two spots on the table, when each bet should have been reduced to address increased risk. At times we played the game too correctly and casinos asked us to leave because they could spot our advanced play.
But we made changes and evolved, and we constantly worked to improve our skills and our methods, just like any good business would do. At the end of the day, we worked out the kinks and evolved into a highly efficient and profitable team. We enjoyed success, no matter how clandestine that success had to be. It was more than we ever imagined possible just a few years earlier.
This was our last hurrah. We’d grown tired of the grind. The labor of it surpassed the enjoyment. We’d earned the right to have a couple of days to just be ourselves and for the first time in a long time, our only objective was to have some fun.