Many casino gamblers expect to lose money. And they are rarely disappointed.
But advantage players do the opposite. As detailed in my new book, “Advantage Players” (Huntington Press), casino winners meticulously study the games, devise strategies, put up their money, play accurately, and go home with wallets fattened.
The book takes a deep dive into the world of advantage players — people who play games advantageously. “Advantage Players” delves into a secret society of professional gamblers who always aim to find an edge.
They do it through legal techniques that include card counting (tracking the dealt cards in a blackjack game to gauge the cards that remain), hole-carding (capitalizing on sloppy dealers who unwittingly reveal their hole cards) and shuffle tracking (following specific clumps of cards through shuffles, thereby knowing when they will be dealt).
The most talented advantage players combine all three moves — or more.
As one source, a veteran winner, gushingly told me, “We out-house the house.”
Because casinos hate to lose and can kick out anyone for any reason, sometimes advantage players (or APs, as they like to be called) take extreme measures to stay in action.
John Chang, a founding member of the famous MIT blackjack team, which was the subject of the movie “21,” told me about going far to keep from getting picked off by casino surveillance.
He dressed up as a woman to hide his identity. Team members saw it as the only way to play without getting booted. “
Cross-dressing worked in the Bahamas and Illinois,” Chang said. “But in Atlantic City, they looked at my hands. An Asian host whispered in my ear, ‘We know who you are.’ ”
Security loomed and, as Chang rose to leave, a guard said, “Lose the pearls, Esmeralda.”
As Chang remembers it, “I had to run around the casino in high heels and make sure they weren’t following me.”
More successful was his portrayal of the mega-rolling nephew of a Chinese computer mogul. Staffers at Caesars Palace were so impressed by Chang’s “lineage” that they let him log big wins on 11 straight occasions before cutting off his comps and play.
Such is the life of a successful AP.
Kelly “Baccarat Machine” Sun and poker great Phil Ivey, both profiled in the book, teamed up to beat baccarat for tens of millions of dollars.
Sun trained her eyes to recognize minute inconsistencies on the backs of playing cards. After that spree, she pulled the ultimate advantage play: selling her life story to Hollywood. It is now being developed into a feature film set to star Awkwafina.
Don Johnson (the gambler, not the actor) garnered headlines for being the biggest nightclub splurger in Las Vegas. But, he explained, that was a cover as he crushed high-stakes blackjack unhampered.
He worked with a crew of fellow APs who blended in with nightclub hangers-on and fed him information about upcoming cards while remaining unnoticed.
However, as is conveyed in the book, advantage players are not relegated strictly to gambling.
Magician David Blaine, art dealer Stefan Simchowitz, smoked salmon slicer Silverio “Jay” Benitez, and movie directors the Safdie Brothers all use advantage play techniques to find success in their professions.
The Safdies’ AP move is to cast non-professional actors — such as retired NBA star Kevin Garnett and it-girl Julia Fox in the nerve-jangling “Uncut Gems” — and get rave-worthy performances that ooze authenticity.
“We’re not looking for actors who are responding to the back pages [of trade magazines],” Ben Safdie said. “We’re looking for people who are already playing the characters’ lives. We transplant them into the films. I never understood doing it any other way.”
My own bit of advantage playing is laid out in the epilogue. Two years ago, I was diagnosed with stage-four Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a rare and incurable cancer.
My original oncologist in New York steered me toward the standard treatment: brutal chemotherapy that would have left me hospitalized. It tends to work temporarily and often ends in death after five- to eight-year life-draining chemo regimens.
Going into AP mode — I played on a high-stakes card-counting team, so I am no stranger to the mindset; plus, I was writing “Advantage Players” — I found a better game at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. An oncologist there has helped to pioneer non-toxic treatments for the disease.
I used AP aggression to wangle a quick appointment and wound up with a protocol that uses targeted drugs instead of chemo. I am treated this way by Dr. Peter Martin, a brilliant oncologist and researcher, at Weill Cornell Medicine in Manhattan. Currently, there is no cancer evident in my blood. The treatment has no side effects for me.
Of course, the real APs are the scientists/doctors who outplayed cancer and came up with the cutting-edge treatment.
As the book makes clear, sometimes being an advantage player means turning the tables on death. Other times, it leads to selling art creatively, raving about blackjack, or producing better movies. No matter what, though, I hope readers will be inspired to bring out their inner advantage players and be all the better for it.
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