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Modern Wisdom Podcast Episode Summary
Episode Details
- Title: #687 - Steven Bridges - The Most Dangerous Stories From A Professional Card Counter
- Guest: Steven Bridges, professional gambler and card counter
- Host: Chris Williamson
- Date: [Insert Date here if known]
- Podcast Description: Life is hard. This podcast will help. Lessons from the greatest thinkers on the planet with Chris Williamson.
Episode Summary In this episode, Steven Bridges, a professional card counter, shares his experiences and insights into the world of card counting and gambling. He discusses the techniques used to win at Blackjack, the psychological stress of gambling, and the intricacies of managing a team of card counters. The discussions dive into the legalities, ethical dilemmas, and the realities of life as a professional gambler.
Key Topics Discussed
- Understanding Card Counting
- Card counting as an advantage play: A method to gain an edge over the house in Blackjack by keeping track of the cards dealt.
- Difference between card counting and cheating: Cheating involves illegal tactics, while card counting is a legal strategy.
- Psychological stress of card counting: Despite having an advantage, players can still face significant losses.
- The Reality of Professional Gambling
- The apprentice journey: Bridges emphasizes that card counting is not for everyone and can be brutal.
- Bankroll management: Many new card counters fail due to poor bankroll management, risking all their money on losing streaks.
- Team dynamics: Professional card counters often work in teams, sharing bankrolls and responsibilities.
- Team Strategies
- Solo vs. Team Play: Players may either play individually with a shared bankroll or participate in a structured team play with roles like "spotters" and "big players."
- Signals and Codes: Spotters signal big players when the count is favorable, allowing them to place larger bets without drawing attention.
- Choosing Casinos and Games
- Factors influencing casino choice: Players seek casinos offering favorable rules and conditions for Blackjack.
- Experiences in Las Vegas: Vegas is noted for its density of casinos and distinct atmosphere that makes it a preferred location for card counters.
- Legal and Ethical Considerations
- Legality of card counting: Card counting is legal, but casinos may impose restrictions and back off players they suspect.
- Ethical dilemmas faced by card counters: Discussions on the treatment of players by casinos, including experiences of being backed off and the lack of care for gamblers' wellbeing.
- Managing Losses and Stress
- Handling significant losses: Bridges shares personal experiences of losing large sums of money and the psychological effects it entails.
- Coping mechanisms: The importance of taking breaks and managing stress during intense gambling sessions.
- Personal Experiences and Anecdotes
- Bridges recounts entertaining and stressful stories from his gambling experiences, including interactions with casino staff and the challenges of maintaining disguises due to his online presence.
- He shares the thrill of big wins and the emotional toll of considerable losses, emphasizing the rollercoaster nature of a professional gambling career.
Key Takeaways
- Psychology of Gambling: The mental strain of losing money can be significant even for skilled players.
- Teamwork in Advantage Play: Collaborating with other players can enhance the overall success rate.
- The Risks of Card Counting: Balancing the thrill of gambling with the potential for substantial financial loss requires careful management.
- Building a Network: Establishing connections within the gambling community can provide support and opportunities for funding.
Conclusion This episode provides a comprehensive look into the life of a professional card counter, from the strategies employed to the emotional and psychological impacts of gambling. Steven Bridges' experiences paint a vivid picture of both the excitement and challenges that come with trying to beat the house at its own game.
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*For more insights, follow Steven Bridges on his YouTube channel and social media platforms.*
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00How do you describe what you do for work when you meet somebody? Yeah, this is something which frequently comes up and it's really tricky to explain because I think the most common thing I say is have you seen the movie 21? Because if they've seen that movie, they already have a basic understanding of at least the theatrical version of what card counting is. And if they haven't seen that movie, I just ask them if they know what card counting is. And a lot of the time people don't know and then I'm in a really tricky spot because when you try and describe professional gambling, you do sound a bit insane.
0:31Right. Yeah, I keep track of the cards at casinos and have a complex system of friends who have money bankrolled by anonymous huge donors and we try and rip casinos off. Yeah, essentially. It does sound like a criminal enterprise and put it like that. But yeah, actually, you put it really well, actually. Just keeping track of the cards is quite an accurate way of doing it because most people think that you're memorizing all of the car T .C., which is way harder than what we're actually doing, even though what we're doing is relatively cool. So keeping track is like a nice way of summarizing it, because we're actually assigning each car to the deck with a different point value, separate to its point in the game of Blackjack, and then we're keeping track of that running total, which we're using to get an advantage over the house, basically.
1:15Dude, I love your YouTube. I think your vlogs that you're doing with hidden cameras as you go in and take these casinos for everything that were until you get found out and rumbled and then escorted off the premises. I absolutely love them. I think they're fantastic. So everybody should go and check out your vlogs once they finish listening to this. But talk to me about how somebody begins their apprenticeship into the world of professional casino ripper offerer. Yeah. Yeah. So Cardcount falls under the bracket of advantage play and an advantage player essentially anybody that can beat a casino game, in this case, legally.
1:53So there's a difference between card counting and advantage play and cheating. So cheating would be, you know, you're sneaking an extra card in or you're maybe using technology where it's illegal to use software to run a computer algorithm to crunch numbers to beat the game. So with advantage play, you're just playing the game within the rules, with the same information that everybody else has in the casino in theory, you're just using it in a different way. So if you want to get into card counting, It's, it's firstly something that I really don't recommend for most people because the actual lifestyle of it can be quite brutal.
2:24And the way that I have it is I play for a bit and then I have quite a large break. And I think the time I was most stressed in my life when I was playing six hours a day, essentially like a night, well, not quite a nine to five, but I was treating it like a nine to five job, playing six days a week. And even though you're playing with an advantage, you can just lose so much money. And even though you know you're going to win in the long term, The psychological impact of losing the money is really, really strong. But essentially, if someone wants to learn how to, to card count, there's books, there's resources, there's online websites now, and you just go through it like you would any other skill.
2:58I don't think it's particularly way harder than the average skill. It's just that with card counting, you have very, very little margin for error. So you have to master each element of card counting and get an effect. Otherwise, we'll just lose loads of money. because your edge is reliant on your mind being completely correct and when the margin edge that you have is only slightly above 50 % any mess up by the brain drags that back. For sure. Yeah. Which is why also we need like tons of money to even do it because we're playing with such a small edge. You can still have a losing streak that could go on.
3:32Now one of my teammates had a 300 hour losing streak and it's just insane. insane. So if you don't have loads of money to bet the amounts that were betting, which is, you know, in the thousands per hand, well the low thousands, like, you know, a K K and a half. If you don't have $100 ,000, $300, $400 ,000, then you could just burn through all that on a bad run. So there's a lot of stuff that needs to be taken into consideration. That's one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of new card counters will make. They will master how to count cards. But then when it comes to the actual bank crawl management and the risk management of it, they won't pay any attention to that.
4:05They'll blow through their bankroll in a very short amount of time and then they'll be it. They'll be bankrupt from card counting. So you've got to see the careful. Who is it, not specifically, but where is it that you're finding half a mill to fund a trip to go and travel around the US? Yeah. So the way that I actually started was incredibly reckless in that, you know, I collaborated with with another YouTuber who he's a card count earn, he teaches people to card count called Colin Jones. And I got in touch with him mainly because I thought, this would make a really, firstly it was just like a bucket list like him.
4:39I thought I really wanna do this. And I also had a small YouTube channel doing magic tricks and I thought this would make a really cool vlog series. So I got in touch with him. And I thought maybe he'll bankroll me 10K or something or maybe I didn't really have any money at the time. So I wasn't sure how he was gonna sort the money thing out at the time. But then one day I was moving house and I had a friend that was just helping me move out and I was telling him what I was getting up to and I was going to go to America for a month and count cards. And then he just shot me a message later on going, hey, can I invest in you?
5:08And I was like, sure. And I think he offered to put something like 10 to 15K and I can't quite remember the exact number off top of my head. But then as we kept chatting, he just up that and eventually just said that he'd put 200K in pounds, so more than that in USD. And that's the money that I played with. Now, at the time, I misunderstood how the risk of card counting, like the actual numbers on card counting, how long it takes you to get to guaranteed profit. So, I didn't realize how risky this was, and it's extra bad because he actually gave me his mortgage. So, I was playing with money that he couldn't afford to lose, which is insane by all accounts and goes against what every professional gambler would say.
5:49All professional gamblers would be like, you've got to have your bank for all that separate. if you lose that, you've got to be okay. But we were essentially all in and it would have probably ruined his life if I'd lost all of that money. And also the crushing guilt I would have felt. So I don't really know where you get 200 grand to count cards. Have a friend that has a mortgage and then he gives you the money. But I reckless a reckless friend. Yeah. But nowadays as you network with card counters, card counters tend to have money because it's like a profitable thing to do. And then you meet other people that want to invest in card counters and you build up your network that way.
6:20And now it's relatively straightforward if we're going to do a trick, we can just send a couple of texts and WhatsApp and then raise 300, 400K or whatever it is that we need. And they take a cut of some kind. Yeah, essentially. So the way that we do it, different teams do it differently and the percentage splits are different. But the way that we do it is we have, it's kind of like you're forming a company just for one project, then you dissolve it at the end. So you've got the winnings at the end and you'll divide those, 50 % will go to the investors and and 50 % will go to the players. And normally with the players, you'll pay them out based off playing time, not based off how much they've actually won.
6:55Because the only thing that's within the card count is control is showing up and counting cards. Whether or not they actually win, provider their game is good, which we test ahead of time, is not up to them. So we could have a card counter that's put in loads of hours and got the most hours, but they actually made a loss. Whereas we can have someone that played the least hours and they made a profit, but we don't judge it based off results, we judge it based off time that goes in. So we split it proportionally like that. Sometimes you'll have a manager and they'll take a manager cut because it's quite a complicated logistical thing to manage.
7:23So, you know, a manager might take 10 % or something, but then the rest of it usually split 50 -50 with the investors and the players. Talk me through a typical team. People that have seen 21, you've got a variety of people, but like probably not a previous bank robber, I can't remember the movie. But what's the typical Avengers assembled that you take on these trips? Well, the actual, the makeup of the team is in the people. It is a complete mixed bag of people. There's maybe some card count of stereotypes, like being white and being in your 20s is a little bit more common. But in general, our team is quite a wide range of people.
8:02We've got like a core team and an extended team, and it's not always the exact same people playing on a trip. But the ways that the actual team forms for a trip is that you have two main approaches, either what we would call solo team play, which is when all the carcassers are playing individually at individual casinos in different parts of America, or wherever else it's going to be. But they're all sharing a bankroll. And that can be really useful because it's one of those things where the, what's the phrase, the sum is, the hole is greater than the sum of the parts, that kind of thing. Because if you have one car counter with $10 ,000, and another car counter with $10 ,000, and they were both playing, they can play with a certain level of bets, and they can make a certain hourly rate on average.
8:43But if you put those together and combine the resources, it's not the equivalent of that 20k divided by two It's actually like one car counter with twice the money playing twice as fast So it's really advantageous for car counter to team up and Work together because it just it gets you to the mathematical long run quicker You can have you can place bigger bets you can win more money in theory and that's kind of how that works So that's solo team play the other type of team play which is like the movie 21 and And the version that I find the most fun, there are very few card counting teams that do this is what we call big player, spotter team play.
9:19So one of the things which makes card counters get caught is that we have to bet, we're setting a plane back to everyone else and there's only certain moments where we have the advantage over the house. That's when the count is high. So sometimes if I'm playing in Vegas or wherever, I might be betting $25 a hand and then the count goes up and I'll bet a grand a hand and that's a huge jump. And any surveillance person that's paying attention to that will know that most people, if they're playing Blackjack and have that kind of money, aren't betting $25 sometimes and a grander other times, they might vary their bets a bit, a bit, but never that much.
9:53So that can be a huge red flag and we can get caught that way. So with team play what we do, is we'll have different spotters, so card counters that are sat at different tables just betting the table minimum. They'll be keeping the count. And when the count gets high, they'll do a secret signal to get the attention of the big player who is also a card counter and his or her job is just to bet really big. So let's say I've signaled them in, I won't be as you know, it'll be less, it'll be more subtle than just waving, but I'm just coming over here. They'll come over, I will either tell them what the count is via a code word or I'll just use more signals to tell them what to do, how much to bet and how to play the hands and they'll just come over to the table, midway through the shoe and start betting big, but they'll leave when the count drops because I'll tell them to go.
10:36So it's really cool because everybody's consistent. All of the spotters are playing the minimum, close to the minimum, and the big player is only ever betting a grander hand roughly, whatever it's going to be, which makes it more difficult for surveillance to catch the actual big player and the team. Saying that, nowadays, because of Moves Up 21 and that system becoming more popular, who knows if it really gets you more time, but it's definitely more fun. Yes. So what you're trying to avoid is any one player changing the amount that they bet. So the variant that they bet shouldn't be much more.
11:13Okay. So going back to this solo team play or solo play generally, how do you increase your bet when the deck is hot? When you're on your own. We just do it. You just have to do it and sort of hope. It's kind of a only looking for card counters. They've got a heck of a lot to do. They're checking to make sure that dealers don't make payout mistakes, which at, you know, high limit room could cost the casino a lot of money. They're checking to make sure that people aren't trying to steal, that that drunk guy that's walking around isn't about to punch someone or grab some chips from the tray. So there's got a really hard job.
11:49And they're actually some of the most under appreci - no, definitely the most under appreciated casino staff that exists, like they get a really raw deal in general as a whole other chat. So the main thing is that surveillance have got other things to do. So they're not always watching me play Blackjack. So they'd have to see me watch me see me change my bet And only then if I do that a few times Maybe they'd start to run a patent Maybe they decide they have to run my game down But in general the way that I play and this isn't how all car count is play But the way that I play is pretty aggressively So I'll try and bet as a little as I can When the count is low and as much as I can when the count is high because that maximizes the amount of money that I have the potential to win per hour And it's those little, the bets that you're betting when you don't have the advantage that cost you quite a lot over time.
12:35So we just go for it. And now I've spoken to quite a few events people just because they've reached out to me, which has been really useful. And I think that in general, a relatively aggressive approach doesn't really lose you much more time than playing really conservatively and trying to do all this, what we call cover play, where you might make a little mistake with your play so that you don't look like you know what you're doing. I mean, these things, I don't know if they help more than they harm in terms of your actual hourly, you know, expected value, the money that you are. When you're doing the big player team stuff, each different person must have, not necessarily a cover story, but they're projecting a particular type of person when you go in there.
13:16So what sort of a person are you and then what's your ideal big player persona? Yeah, our big player is an absolute legend, but I'll get to him in a second yet. So for me, when I'm a spotter, actually, I'm more concerned with just not drawing any attention to myself, especially given that having the YouTube channel makes me, I can get recognising casinos. So I try and just keep a relatively low profile when I'm spotting, because I don't want to be the weak link that gets the team busted. But in general, when I'm a spotter, I'll just sit there quietly and bet the minimum. Try not to really draw any attention to myself, which is very different to how I'll play when I'm not a spotter, when I'm doing solo play, like we were just playing in Vegas, and I was playing various different characters with different elaborate disguises, and I would really lean into being an extrovert or being super obnoxious.
14:06We've done all sorts of weird stuff. We did a stag too, so what's the American party? Bachelor party. Bachelor party, where we were all wearing t -shirts the same and acting drunken, just going around and being incredibly loud. And signaling over the BP in those cases was literally, I was like, hey, come here. I was a totally different strategy. So sometimes it's a case of standing out to blend in, but our big player, we've played with a couple of different big players and they all have a different style. There's not really a right way, but I think one of the elements is just them looking comfortable with that amount of money.
14:38If someone's new as a big player or new to card counting, then just betting, you know, $1 ,000 a hand or a couple of K hand can be really daunting. But our big player that we most commonly use is called Irish AP, that's what he goes by. And he just plays this very loud obnoxious, I don't extrovert, but kind of aggressive, angry gambler. So whenever he's losing, he's kicking up such a fuss and just being like, just cursing constantly and just complaining about the cars, he's been dealt. Not really taking it out at people, but taking it out at cars. So he just plays this role where he's so annoyed that people are a little bit scared of him, which I think, in a way you can buy us more time because they're not looking at him through the lens of a car count that's trying to blend in.
15:22They're looking at him like, oh, this angry gambler that we kind of want to stay away from. Right. Obviously question, what's the legality of all this? Yeah, it's totally legal. In general, I mean, we could get into real specifics. Team play technically could be deemed maybe illegal in certain state and certain states, perhaps. But there's a lot of asterixers on that. just because I don't want to speak to you definitely, but in general, card counting is fine, because you're just using the same information that anybody else has. The way that I describe it is, can you imagine that you're playing high level chess and you're like one of the best chess players in the world and the tournament manager comes over, taps you on the shoulder and goes, excuse me, we actually have seen, well we can tell that you're thinking four moves ahead and in this tournament three moves ahead is the max.
16:08It's just deemed not fair. It would just be ludicrous. All we're doing is using our brains, the same way that anyone else could, We're not cheating. It doesn't legally classify as cheating, and therefore it's legal everywhere, as far as I'm aware. The only sort of, not exactly exceptions, but there's certain countries like the UK's actually weird to count cards in because you don't really have a lot of legal recourse if you get kicked out. They can potentially just withhold the money. And there's been stories from other advantage players like Phil Ivy did this whole thing with it wasn't Blackjack that he was playing, but he did this advantage play.
16:42It went to court. He didn't get paid out. from him back correctly. So there's some weird stuff where there was a person in... I can't remember if it was Ireland or Northern Ireland that played roulette and then didn't get paid out. They weren't even... they weren't cheating or doing advantage play. They just were playing roulette, one alone of money, and then it was deemed that they were a... oh, it's a private business so they can do what they want. So there's certain places where you might have more difficulties than others, but legally speaking, it's not cheating and it's perfectly legal. Right.
17:11So this to me kind of jades, not as if I thought casinos were bastions of ethical, high -folluting trueismists, but what I did think was if somebody does manage to beat the house, that they've done it fairly, and if it's not legal, the casinos should take it on the chin given that they're fleeting every other non -advantage player in there. Yeah, it's absolutely wild because really, we don't even dent their bottom line. And most of the time they know that, I think they just have a vendetta against card counters because we actually don't... the way that we get treated sometimes. I've had police called on me, multiple security guards, just intimidation tactics, or them refusing to cash you out unless you show ID, which is not a legal requirement, all all these weird things that they'll do for what essentially didn't the average casinos bottom line.
18:06It's so rare that we'd make any kind of impact, especially like these big casinos in Vegas. It's so funny that the lengths that they'll go to to stop you counting when it just... Sometimes they will ruin a Blackjack game to make sure it's not countable. And it's just why you're doing it. How would they ruin it? Well, the certain things that they can do, for example, if you've played a regular shoe game of Blanche app where you've got maybe six decks of cards shuffled together. They'll have a cut card that goes towards the end. So when you hit that cut card they know, oh yeah, we've got a shuffle now.
18:38But if you move that cut card further forward, that means that you might only play say three of the decks before a shuffle or two of the decks if you're going to be absolutely wild. But the further forward that gets the fewer cards or less cards that you're going to play before a shuffle. Now the less cards you're going to play, that's bad for a card counter because our information gets more useful, more accurate towards the end. So they'll sometimes put the cut card more forward so that it stops card counters. But the cost of that is actually they're losing a lot of time in rounds per hour that other non -card counters would be playing.
19:10And people have crunched the numbers and even just moving it a couple cards forward costs like the average casino a ridiculous amount of money per year. So they do all sorts of things. I just describe it as they drop a nuclear a bomb on a house to blow out a candle. Yeah, they'll stop car cameras, but they will cause themselves so much damage in the process. So do you see the process of this largely just being a race against the clock to be discovered, to be rumbled? What would you say is the percentage time that you actually manage to get in, do the thing, and get out, having not been recognized or noticed, and how many times do you get in there and get kicked out?
19:45I think most of the time it ends with being kicked out. Well, that's kind of the goal in a way. Not that we want to be kicked out, but there's a phrasing card counting called, don't back yourself off from a casino, back off being just the term for being asked not to play Blackjack. If I leave a casino because I think they might kick me out soon, then what's that achieved? I've left. Might as well have stayed and played another hour before they'd actually kick me out. I normally will play until a back off. On the trip I just did in Vegas, I was trying short sessions and going from casino to casino, trying to leave before a back off.
20:18But then as soon as I compared my hours played with another teammate who was just playing until back off, he got way more time. And sometimes we'll feel what we call heat, which is just suspicion. We can tell when they're on to us. We'll feel that. And we think, oh, maybe we should leave. But if we actually just keep playing, it might take them an hour or another two hours to actually get the go ahead to back off a car counter. So in general, the approach that me and my team make usually is just to keep playing until we get back off. So in which case, the vast majority of the time will get it back off.
20:49But it depends on the casino. Sometimes I could last. The shortest was about 12 minutes. And this was pre -YouTube videos, but someone just thought, he looks like a car counter, called surveillance. And then surveillance were watching me from the very first hand played and very quickly figured out that I was counting. But then I've had nine hours in the casino in a shift and gone back the next day. And sometimes just weeks at one casino before they actually caught me. So it really varies, but we play aggressively until the back off usually. How do you choose the particular casino that you're going to go and take on?
21:21Because if it was a Hollywood movie, it would be because of a vendetta that the guy's current ex -wife is now dating the owner of that particular casino. I guess it's probably more strategic than that. Yeah, a little bit. Although there is a small element of revenge sometimes in there. I think a lot of casino staff think that if they give the card counter a really hard time, and back them off and make it really hard for them to get their money at the cage and send their photo everywhere and just be really aggressive. But the car counter will go, that was horrible. I'll tell all my car counter friends how bad this casino was and we'll all avoid it.
21:56But the exact opposite will happen. The car counter will tell other people, I had this really hard time at this casino. And then the car counter they're telling will be like, all right, where is it? I want it because there's a sense of that's not right. So might as well prioritize that casino. But in general, we'll play any casino that offers a good Blackjack game. Not all Blackjack is created equally. There's different subtle rule changes that can affect how much we'd win. There's certain elements of the game which might affect how risky it is or how long we'd have to play to guarantee that we're going to be up.
22:26But in general, if there's a casino with a good Blackjack game, we'll play it. Okay. Vegas is Vegas a genuine hotspot. You've mentioned it before, but surely they've got to be shit hot when it comes to security. They probably got the best surveillance department in the world, but also they're the most used to car cameras. So the back -offs tend to be, tends to be quite chill, I say, as I'm thinking of lawsuits that are going on against Vegas casinos. But in general, they tend to be pretty chill, but they are very, very fast. So we play Vegas mainly because we really like it, and it's so casino dense.
22:58There's all these casinos that you just have this, what feels like unlimited options, and because it's so fast moving, it feels like even when the shift changes, it's like a whole new casino. So there is a lot of opportunity in Vegas. A lot of carcass hate Vegas and they think it's really bad. And it might be compared to other places, but also Vegas has a certain kind of weird charm to it that just makes it a fun place to play. Macau, is that too dangerous? Go over and get taken by the CCP? Yeah, I've not... It was on my list of places to try, but I think I spoke to a carcass friend and he said that they don't have any shoe games.
23:32I don't know if that's true, but nowadays it's becoming more and more common that there'll be this machine that is constantly shuffling the cards. You play out a handle to pick up the cards, put them back in the machine and it constantly shuffles. And those you can't count because, I mean, there's nothing to count when they're constantly shuffling. And I've heard that Macao is just as that, which is a shame because I'd be well up for it. You know, there's a couple places on my list that countries that I probably won't name, but that I wanna go try. But yeah, I don't know if Macao's playable. Is it fun or stressful?
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24:00Like, talk to me about the felt sense of either being part of a team and being a spotter or doing solo play. Like, what's the actual felt sense of it? Is it aggrined? Yeah, it's a combination of things. It can be aggrined for sure, especially on those seven hour blackjack sessions. I know I keep referencing the last trip, it's just because I just got back. But there was one time when I was just so tired and wanted a break, but I haven't been backed off, so I just kept going. and I was sort of begging the casino internally to back me off so I could take a break. But you just don't want to give up this opportunity because who knows if the stars are going to align, there might have been a surveillance person that's written you off, not from something you did and they think, he's not a cow counter, so you don't want to give that up.
24:40And that can be a real grind, playing the same card game. Because also the thing is, you're not making decisions in the same way that the average player is. You know, the average player playing Blackjack will get their 16 versus a 10 and they might think, Oh, should I hit this time or should I not hit? And they get to sort of play the game. But all we're really doing is we've internalized like a decision tree that we've memorized. And that changes depending on the count. But we've just got a preset memorized formula and we're just pressing go on that formula. So we're not really making any decisions.
25:09It's very much like an automatic process. So that can be a bit tedious. In general, though, it's more of a thrill than it is anything else. You are still getting the same, I guess, dopamine hit from gambling, except you know that you have an advantage which is a very satisfying thing and the whole thing, it does feel like a massive adventure, but it's like such a weird combination of motions. It's super stressful. It can be really stressful, especially some of the times when we've been back to off -and -off, not power on money or being incredibly aggressive, but the overall experience is incredibly rewarding.
25:40And as soon as I come back to the UK, I'm sort of thankful that I get a bit of a break, but then I'm sort of itching to play again because of that combination of things. Yeah, what is some of the worst back -offs that you've had in your career? Yeah, the worst one I had was I think, oh, there's been a couple of contenders recently, but I think Tulalucasino in Washington state, people have asked me, why aren't you calling these places out? So there you go, there's the exact name. Tulalucasino Washington state gave me the worst, I think. I was playing there, and in essence, I'd been backed off from their sister property.
26:14Well, they sort of forcibly IDed me and I'd left, and they'd chased me out of the casino. So I was playing it to Layla and it just hit this point where a guy came over to me, tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and I knew it was a back off and I did the thing that you probably shouldn't do. I acknowledged that the guy was backing me off. I just said, okay, I get it, no more blackjack. Because I was trying to alleviate any hostility before it even happened. But he said, no, no, no, I just want to see your ID. I said, well, I don't really, I'm happy just to go. I'm good. I just want to cash out and leave.
26:47It's important for me to know here that a lot of people think that when you're in a casino, you need to show ID or you need to have an ID. Now, yeah, if you're going up to the table and you sit down and they ask you for an ID and you don't show it, they have the right to not let you play or they could ID with the door and turn you away if you don't have an ID. But if you've played Blackjack, have your chips, you then have the legal right to cash them out and you don't need to show an ID, a couple of asterisks if it's over 10 grand, changes things, but you don't need to show ID. However, casinos will often try and force you to show ID so that they can get your name upload it to their little system, write their little report, maybe send it to other casinos and there's a carcass and you really don't want to give your ID for the most part.
27:28And presumably using fake ID would then be a federal crime. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm not sure if there's maybe some weird loop holes in that, but it's something that me or anyone on my team is ever experimented with. But yeah, there's a good phrase. I think it's from Molly's game, if you've seen that movie, but I think it's, uh, the phrases don't break the law when you're breaking the law, which is something I always think about when, when card counting, what we're doing is not illegal. Just it feels like a crime, but it's not quite a crime. So don't mix in a crime like fake ID.
27:58Okay. So this guy, right. Yeah. So he comes over and he's just a me. He's got this, such this sort of, I don't even know how to describe it, but this, this kind of macho alpha energy where he's decided that he's getting my ID and he's immediately just demanding it and I'm declining it and then he just escalates and he goes, I'm not going to play games with you. You either show me ID or you get out. I'm like, well, I just want to grab your chips. Get out. You can't even cash them out, which is the first time I've been in that situation where the casino was denying me a cash out. And I'd been advised by card counterfriends that if I just stand my ground, eventually they will cash me out.
28:36So that's what I decided to do. And I just wouldn't leave this casino until they cash me out. And they immediately brought over extra security, a gaming commission person who, once again, the gaming commissioner should be impartial. But when it's a, I mean, there's a whole host of other politics regarding that stuff. Often the gaming commission isn't impartial. They're a bit biased towards the casino. So there's the gaming commissioner, multiple security people, other casino staff, and there's whole big argument breaks out. Well, I'm just basically shouting, I just want my chips. All of this is, I got on hidden camera, and they just won't do it.
29:10They say that they're gonna call the police, they call the police, and then they all start to kind of leave me alone. At this point, they start to just sort of leave, maybe accept one guy, and I'm a bit concerned because this casino is in sort of tribal land. So it's on an Indian reservation. So the law regarding Indian reservations is a little bit different regarding the rest of US law. They have like tribal sovereignty. So they can have their own laws that are a bit independent. So in a they can have tribal court. And obviously the casino is bringing in all the revenue. So in a way the casino is funding these things, maybe not directly.
29:45And the whole thing is just a little bit a little bit different to what I'm used to. And that goes for the police force too. I thought the police were essentially paid for by the casino. And whether or not that's true or not, that's kind of how I was reading the situation at the time. So I was a bit worried that the police would immediately sign with the casino, and I might be in a very bad situation. So I started slowly walking towards the door, not wanting to leave, but at least if the police came in, then I could say, I was just leaving if they came with really aggressive energy. And as I'm getting to the door, the police arrive, and they immediately tell me to sit down, ask me what's going on.
30:18And they asked my idea, I gave it over, I wasn't really familiar with the laws regarding when a police officer can have your ID, but I thought they're suspecting me of a crime, which they weren't. So that was a weird thing. But I gave it over the ID. We had this whole thing, and in the end, just escorted me to the cash desk and got my chips cashed out. And they may have given over my ID or not. They said they wouldn't, but you never know. But I was actually really relieved that the police started with me. I've had other situations where the police have just taken in a media, no, we don't want you here, we don't want to help you sign and also gaming commissioners that were totally useless.
30:52But that was a kind of a scary situation because of just how aggressive the tone was and how many people there were and how early it was in my card counting journey and the fact police were called. So that was pretty bad one. But there's been so many of that quite similar. Yeah, that, especially if you're tired and stressed and have been playing for a long time, keeping your cool as you're being pushed away from a game that you know is taking every other person's sat in this casino's money and the fact that you have managed to spend enough time to be able to learn a process that gives you a, what's the edge?
31:25What is it? Oh, it's like one or two percent. It's like tiny. It's a brand new. It's really, really small. Funny you should say that though, because there's been two instances that really bank this up one time also in Washington. It was a guy that was at my table. so drunk he couldn't stack the chips up properly and he was just playing and just pushing the chips in a pile. No idea what he was doing, losing hand after hand after hand. He was tipping the dealer every hand, like 25 bucks. And I just made eye contact with the dealer and just sort of said, is he okay? And the dealer totally just fubs it off.
31:54He's fine. And then 20 minutes later I get backed off. And I just thought, you're letting this person play that's clearly not in of sound mind to play because it benefits the casino, whereas here I am being kicked out for playing the game, honestly. And another thing that happened when I was in Vegas that isn't in a video yet, but I found out that there was a player at my table and she was, I think, a 77 year old woman. She's been playing for over 24 hours and she hadn't eaten or slept. And I sort of spoke to a couple of members of staff about this. I mentioned it to a dear, I was like, hey, she's been playing for, you know, this long, do you think, you know, like, is there something?
32:34And the dealer laughed it off. I then spoke to a pit boss, same kind of thing. At this point, I knew that they were running my game down. I knew that I was my time was limited. So making a bit of a spectacle wasn't really going to cost anything. And each person I spoke to, in essence, was just totally fine with this woman continuing to play. And it's just one of those things where I get that everybody makes their own decisions and has are right to do what they want. And I guess, and I get that there's higher ups in the casino that are setting these policies about how they handle people that have gambling problems.
33:06But I also was just left thinking, isn't there like anybody that's just sort of going to go, hey, maybe take, maybe take a 10 minute break, maybe go have a sandwich and just see, just not like, what point is it just a human decency thing that's going to be taken? If you are going to casinos in the hopes of finding some ethical decency, I fear that you may be looking in the wrong place. I know, but still casinos are made up of individual people, right? When I look at them as institutions, I'm like, yeah, they're horrible. But they're still like perfectly nice members of staff that I've met in casinos.
33:38Yeah, this kind of thing happens. I mean, recently there was a, I was just being told, I was told by someone that works in casino industry that a casino in Vegas is being sued or being sued because somebody died at the black chat table and the dealer kept dealing the cards. They had a hard, they had a heart attack. And they only realized when the when the dealer switched and it was a new dealer and this deal was like are you okay? Oh my god, dude It's why I was watching a story might have been a sunny V2 video about this Chinese Millionaire multi millionaire who lost in the space of 18 months two years in Vegas was flying back and forth and lost maybe 200 million at the same casino.
34:22And yeah, it was just propped up on a cocktail of all sorts of stuff for the entirety of the time. It was, I think, it was playing Blackjack too. Yeah, it's wild. Like, surely the whole... Because I've seen what Blackjack can be when it's fun and when people are having a good time. But there are rare occasions where the whole table is losing money as it's going to be the case. But everyone's still having a good time. And I'm like, oh yeah, It can exist in this space which isn't completely depressing, but so much of the time there's no... There's just, it just seems like there's no actual care of the people playing, which really like.
34:58How do you deal with these sessions where you end up being lots of money down and how much can that get? And how much can that get across a team as well in a day? Yeah, we can lose tens and tens and tens of thousands. I think the biggest loss that we have on record for our team in one session, and I think that was probably like three or four hours was one of my teammates called syntax. He played and lost 42k, which is, I mean, we have like a little results group chat and he posted the group chat. This is a result. And we all just immediately feel it, because it's so much money. No matter what the context is outside of that, no matter what you're up at one point or anything.
35:40It's still 42 grand your brain automatically thinks how many years renters that or how it's just It's crazy so The times that are the worst are when you're losing not necessarily a huge amount But it's repeatedly session after session after session and you're on what seems like a never ending losing streak The first time we played in Vegas in 2020 we won I think it was something like 97k in two or three days which is the best thing ever. And then in the next couple days, we proceeded to lose 110 from that point. I just, the way down, Chris, it's not fun. Because each time you're thinking, someone's gonna have a win.
36:20And then, but maybe there's a couple case in the wins, but then someone else loses 10, and you're just like, it has to stop. And I remember I had a session where I lost 30K on that downswing. And I just went into the restroom, and just sort of had to splash water on my face, and just try and compose myself. And then I went out and there was a bunch of security guys waiting for me, which was lovely. Fantastic. You just what you need. It can be really tough. And I think it sort of takes more than it gives in a way. I think you have to have that. It's a certain kind of person to be a card counter.
36:51Just for like, I don't mean who's capable of it. I think a lot of people could learn it. But the actual lifestyle and having to go through those losses and having to lose that money and not change what you're doing, you can't chase your losses. You just have to keep playing like a machine. There's times I really want to leave, because I'm down a lot of money, and I just want to break, but the count's still high. So you've just got to keep going, and you're buying in, you're losing. You're buying in, you're losing, and the dealer keeps getting black jacks, and you're just like, this is, what are the odds of this?
37:19But you still have to just keep going, and those are some of the hardest times. That's the reason why playtime is so important, then, because you need to be able to accumulate. Knowing that given a long enough amount of time, you're going to be one or two percent up, which means across infinite time you would win. And therefore, if you have two short of a bunch of sessions, just straight up variance allows to chip into you and chip into you, and chip into you, and despite playing the right way even on hot tables, you can still lose, or it can just, the count can just never get to where you need it to be, and you will continue to walk away, which means that's why it needs to increase.
37:59You need to have that longer time. For sure. Yeah, it's all about getting those hours in. Quality games can also affect the amount of hours you need, but in general, yeah, it's just all about getting those hours in. Because in the short term, you are just flipping coins and typing for the best. All right. So what about good games? What have been some of the best ones that you've been a part of? Oh, if I mentioned them, they might make them worse. Yeah, I'd be actually really cautious about saying this place has got the best Blackjack game because I genuinely... No, no, no, no, like what days, what days of you or what sessions have you done?
38:33Oh, right. Oh, right. Which of the days where it's just like we can't lose? Yes. I think some of the team sessions which have ended in what we've been doing team playing, they've just been, you know, anything, honestly, anything above like 30k, when feels like fantastic, no matter what stakes we're playing at. So, yeah, 30k, 40k, wins are always really satisfying. Yeah, there's just been sessions. I think I had a 19k session in one of my recent trips, which maybe doesn't sound like a lot in the scheme of what we've lost at times, but there's something just so satisfying about even just winning 10 grand, 20 grand, and knowing that you're going to post that in the chat, and everyone's going to see that.
39:14That's incredibly satisfying. So yeah, we more look at it in trips as opposed to days, but we've had some very, very successful trips that have just been really, really big wins in the 6th figure range. And that for being a couple of weeks' work is pretty good, even if you're hospitaling it between a lot of people. Yeah. How you've mentioned $10 ,000, anything above that, is difficult to get cashed out without giving your ID in. So do you purposefully know when you're at about 10 grand and then stop? Yeah, that is a strategy. So just so I'll have to make this super clear in case it sounds like I'm promoting a legal conduct.
39:48But if you have bought in or have got essentially 10K's worth of chips, generally, then there's a currency transaction report that the casino has to fill in. And if you are caching out 5K at one cage and then going to a different cage and caching out 5K, you could dodge that report because they might not realize you have the 10K, that is actually a crime called structuring. So if we hit that 10K mark for whatever reason, then we have a hard rule where you just go and cash it out and you give out the ID. Now, maybe you don't necessarily need to cash it out there and then, depending on the circumstances, but in general, you're still going to have to show the idea.
40:25So, yeah, if you're playing a session, provided you're not midway through a shoe because you never want to leave when the count is high, that would be very, very bad because you're throwing away money. But yeah, if you're up 9K in the session and it's the end of the shoe and you realize, oh, if I win 1K more, I'm going to have to hand over my ID. It's probably not going to be worth giving over the ID, so then we'll just leave. but we'll never actually physically dodge those checks if we legally have to do them. All right. And how the fuck do you get six figures back into the UK? Yeah. This is weirdly a question that no one really asks, which is like, no one really asks about the actual cash management.
40:58But yeah, we have like so much cash, we have to move around. Airport security is always a no. And it's in cash, right? It's in, oh yeah. It's in cash. It's in cash. It's in cash. The hell of a, where is this $150 ,000 come from? It literally is that. So we just, we each have just money about filled with money and we have to just go through. So I mean, when you go to the airport, if you're transferring more than 10 grand in US currency, you have to sort of declare it. So we just go through those checks and, you know, we fill out a form. You've got to fill out a form. Again, maybe when you get to the, get to the airport, even the airport staff don't often know what you have to do.
41:34And we have to really insist, no, we have to speak to a board of patrol officer. Before we go through airport security or we're in a real bad spot. I'm like, oh, okay, well, I guess if you go down stairs and knock on the door. So there's weird things like that. But yeah, we just take it and sometimes it's just these awkward conversations that we have to have. Do you tell them where it's come from? Well, yeah, I mean, the origin is honestly gambling. It's just it doesn't sound very probable. And it sounds like the perfect. It's like the kind of thing you would do if you were trying to super reassuring.
42:11So sometimes I go through my phone and I'll be like, look, here's all these photos of us in the casinos and it's amazing. Here's me being chased out by a port by the casinos security. Exactly. Yeah, but there's nothing illegal about taking cash around. The thing that we're really worried about or I'm concerned about is a law in the US called Civil forfeiture. Have you ever come across these YouTube videos, Chris, or this piece? No, what's that? It's absolutely insane. So someone will get pulled over by a cop for whatever reason And then the cop might go, oh, do you have any firearms or currency in the car?
42:42And the person might go, well, actually, yeah, I've got some, I happened to have my life savings. This one guy doesn't trust banks. He had like, I can't remember how much it was, but I think it was in maybe the low six figures. So we had a significant amount of money. And then the police officer has the legal right to just seize that money if they're not convinced of where it's come from and that it's legally held. They can just take it and have it. And as far as I'm aware, it can be really difficult to get that money back. That money can be used within the police force or something weird. But just one of these laws that seems so backwards where they can just take the money from you.
43:20And that's it. You'll get a little receipt, but getting it back is a whole other thing. So I've often worried about, oh, what if I get pulled over? Because you don't want to lie to a copy, though. You don't want to say, oh, I have no credit. I don't know, man. It's a totally different set of problems, then. But yeah, that's the thing I worry about the most is just being... It's honestly just police in the US regarding the cash. Of course, being mugged and stuff is still a concern. In fact, just on the... I was playing in the... We were playing in the Bahamas recently. I was in the Bahamas. We were in the Bahamas.
43:53So I went to the Bahamas for two days, and before I went, I was at a wedding in Norfolk, Virginia, and this is when we'd confirmed this episode, and I'm watching some of your vlogs and stuff. And I'm like talking to this guy and this guy was a part of the Navy this wedding, right? He was saying, dude, do you gamble? No, no. I know a guy that does actually. Well, I'm about to speak to a guy that does and he says, dude, the SLS and Paradise Island, the two casinos that you've got in the Bahamas is that They're dealers. They haven't got a clue. The airport, the Casino security on that tight and a blah blah blah.
44:28So I remember thinking at the time I might be able to tell Stevenson, you just know about it, but it seems like you beat me to the punch. Yeah, that's really funny. I mean, I wonder if we were there at the same time. But yeah, I was over there and we just had a situation where we, this is like a weird tangent story, but we were playing at this casino and it was just me and Irish that were at the casino. And we ended up leaving the casino together. Normally, we wouldn't be seen with each other, but we both got so lost in the casino and didn't have like cell service that we ended up just in the end, walking out and hoping that the camera hadn't seen us.
45:01We left this casino, finally find a bit of road. We really got so lost in this massive building and the taxi pulled up and we got into the taxi and the taxi started driving. And then the, I was a little bit concerned that it wasn't a real taxi, but I wasn't sure and there'd been another taxi driver that told me that the taxi's in Bahamas are chill, so I wasn't super worried. But then the taxi driver started offering us like prostitutes and drugs and I was like, ah, maybe this guy isn't a legit taxi driver. So we're driving and he said, oh, you're going to need to give us directions because I don't have a satnav or a GPS.
45:37They have a weird flag for a taxi driver. Okay. And we've got between us, I don't know how much it was, but 50, 60, K, something like a lot of money. And then the taxi guy says, by the way, I'm just going to need to stop off at the strip club to pick up some food that I've ordered, like this is for in the morning or whatever. And it just sounded like the most sketchy thing. We're about to be mugged. Covered. That's kind of how I felt, right? And I saw we were like, no, no, no, no, we'd rather you just take us home. He goes, it's on the way. This guy doesn't even know, he doesn't know the address.
46:13So it's on the way. And he says, no, no, no, I have to do. I've already picked it up. And I messaged Irish saying, are you a bit worried that we're about to get mugged? long story short, we actually go through these quite unsafe area of the Bahamas. Bahamas is like super chill, but there's obviously going to be crime areas in every place that you go. And then he pulls up outside this building, which didn't look like a strict club and there's some like heavies outside the building. And he gets out and he goes inside, which maybe feel a bit better because he left us alone. But I'd like been shoving my cash down like my trousers to sort of just hide it, because I was like, being mode is one thing, but being mode and robbed of like 50, 60K is another.
46:52And then a guy, one of the heavy said, don't worry, I'm a cop. And this guy was stoned, I was mined, flashed this bad. And he goes, I've known this guy for years. Well, if you've known the guy that's, you know, proposition, like trying to sell prostitutes and drugs, I don't know if I felt like this is a great character reference. But the whole thing in the end was just like a false alarm. And the guy got back in with his takeout. And drove the strip club. From the strip club, which, okay, and drove a story of the NBA. But it was just like the first half of that story was the story where you get mugged, and then we luckily didn't have the second half.
47:23But it's moments like that where you get yourself in these situations where you're in some street you don't know and you've got a lot of cash on you, and then you don't really know what to do. There's been times in the US where I've looked up afterwards where I've been and gone, oh, this is an incredibly high area place that I was staying. Should not have been there. Yeah, on the map, this is the red part for crime. and yeah, one really about that. I'd rather go and dump my pants. Yeah, we left the load of cash in the car once in West Philadelphia and that was done. But we just left the backpack in the car, we forgot about with cash.
47:56And I just thought the next day that it was gonna be gone, but it was there as was a ticket on the car, but I'll take that any day. You can use the cash in the backpack to pay the ticket that's on the car. Exactly right. Yeah, unfortunately that wasn't a team experience. I had to pay that, but never mind. Shame. So you must be having to do more elaborate disguises and covers given the fact that you've got a YouTube channel with half a million people on it and it's not going to be any easier after you've done this episode with me either. So I guess you're the detailing of your experiences and the difficulty of your experiences are inversely correlated to each other.
48:35Yes, it's weird. It's like I'm my own worst enemy because as my YouTube channel goes up, then my car can it's harder. So it's like, when I started the series, I obviously knew that this could happen. But the way I looked at it was, well, either the series kind of simmers and it doesn't really do any harm, in which case, I'm card counting and it's fine, or it does really well, in which case, it's like a luxury problem, which is sort of where I'm at right now. But yeah, I've had to get all in on disguises. So for the previous trip I just did, which isn't on YouTube yet, I, we designed these different looks, you know, we're using beard dye and changing my beard and getting goatee and fake tattoos that were like the ones that they use in movies so they look quite real.
49:12And I even went to a place called FANGS FX which make sort of fake teeth and change how you're jaw -sits for actors in movies. And I didn't get fake teeth in the end but I got like these jaw pillows that just would push out the side of my face and upper a bit of my face that changed sort of how my face looked. So we were just doing everything that I could pulling out all the It really worked as well. I mean, I got backed off and I got caught eventually people find out who I was. Not because you're seeing bridges though. Well, yeah, exactly. It only takes one person's interference to be like, wait a second.
49:46I'm a guy. And then that's it. But it absolutely brought me so much more time. And yeah, it got me way more time. So it was really, really helpful because I was keeping track of different looks in different casino chains. So I'd know, okay, this casino chain, I'm still clean with this look. So I'll just hammer this casino chain until I get back to off. You know, when I was mentioning before how I had this set was seven hours session or whatever and I just was praying they'd back me off. It's because I wanted to stop spraying my goatee with dye every day when I got off and having to make up white all the such a nut getting dye in my mouth.
50:19I was just like, please let me change this to the skies. But I was keeping track of the, luckily I've got surveillance people that will send me information which is super handy. I was going to say, so you've got this now. network of fans who work actually in the casino world. You also probably have even larger network of enemies that work in the casino world. But there's like a FBI most wanted, do not admit under any circumstances, known advantage player list. So there's some places that you're never gonna be able to go back to now. Like are there some chains that are just completely boxed off for you?
50:58Yeah, not necessarily some chains, because in a way, it's not like every person that works in all these casinos knows who I am by look, right? But all of the casinos chains will know who I am, and there'll be a description of the photo of me in their database. And there will be a case of if you see this guy, back him off, I don't let him play. However, if I go to a new region in the US that I haven't been to for ever, then there's no, it's not like they're looking through this list of like no advantage players. for every single person, there's thousands of people that are unwanted players for whatever reason.
51:31So it has to be the first, someone has to actually spot me for the first time and then that's what goes to the top of the list and then it can become a bit of a problem. But yeah, there's maybe some casinos where I've played before and because I've done a YouTube video, there'll be extra, maybe everyone in the casino will have seen it because hey, we're in this video and in which case I probably would struggle at going back to those, but I don't think there's a chain that I wouldn't be able to play at. Apart from the UK, there's no casino I could go into the UK. Unfortunately, in the UK, you've got to be a member to go in 99 % of the casino.
52:03So I get stopped at the door. Of course, of course. Are there any other games? I mean, you know, it's so funny to think about you being a professional gambler, but you're not. You're a professional blackjack player. Like it's not, it's, it's this. It's a whole panoply of different games that you could play in this Wizard of Oz, Charlie Chocolat Factory way to lose money and you just play one. Like, do the Blackjack advantage players speak to the... I don't know what it'd like the fucking backer at advantage players or the roulette advantage players? Yeah, so this sort of this larger community of advantage players and the other forms of advantage player kept pretty lock and key.
52:45And I basically only do carcading. Part for a few reasons, but the main one being is that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing other kinds of advantage play on YouTube. Card count is a thing that exists in basically every casino. You could go on account cards, whereas other forms of advantage play tend to be very select loop holes that might get patched. So if I shine a light on something that's possible in one game in Louisiana, then that would get patched and it wouldn't exist anymore. So there's a certain kind of degree of stuff that I wouldn't really want to tackle on YouTube. So I just sort of stay in this lane and go really hard on this lane, but there is like a I'm not gonna go as far as saying any game could be beaten But there's there's lots of different ways that you can exploit various different games that people have figured out right and Has it ever been the case have you ever been in a casino and seen some other advantage player either playing blackjack or playing some other Game have have like multiple teams crossed streams at some point Yeah, I don't think I've ever really had a situation where two teams with big players spotter's, I'd be absolutely nightmare at the same casino.
53:52That's never happened, but there's been loads of times where there's been other card counters. Not that there's loads of card counters, but I sat down at the table before, started playing, and then when I raised my bet, somebody else was raising their bet, and I'm like, wait a second, and then you're watching how they play, and you're waiting for a hand like soft 18, you know, A7, because those are the kind of hands that non -card counters tend to play wrong. So you wait for a hand like that and then you see, oh, they played it correctly. This person's either really lucky with their timing of their bets or their a card counter.
54:21So if that happens, the etiquette is whoever got their last will lead the table. But I will say that time. And it's just a nonverbal signal that's unwritten into the rules of the degenerates of the blackjack world. Sure, otherwise it's like synchronized swimming, right? It just becomes really obvious. When I raise my bet to a ground at the same time, somebody else raises their bet and then we both lower it at the same time and raise it, it just looks super obvious. So that can be an issue. But I've also had times, multiple times, where I sat down at a table and someone just gone, Stephen, good to see you and just continue to talk to you.
54:58Well, even with that, like if they know that you're there to count cards, like they're just going to follow what you do. Well, if I don't know if you're a lot of time encounters. Right. Okay. So I kind of be like, do you like to play alone? That's just weird, stifled cards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now it can be funny. I kind of encourage, if it's a non -card counter, I'll be like, take insurance when I take insurance, which is a move where you, that if the dealer's got blackjack. I'll just give you that little tip or something, but if they ask me a question, I'd be like, well, I wouldn't, but there's also been times with the dealer where, if you're playing in the dealer, it was your counting.
55:33And then, let's say you're gonna tip the dealer, you go, oh, do you want me to tip it to you or do you want me to play it? So you can do this thing when you put the chip in front of your, your, your own bet and then they're gambling with you, right? So there'll be a time when I was like, oh, yeah, it's just a common thing right that that that's done in, um, in scenarios, uh, not countless just everybody. So you'll be like, oh, I might say, do you want it or should I bet it for you? And they'll go, what do you think? And if they know, I can't I go, I think you should definitely bet it. That's the best thing.
56:02Dude, yeah, I mean, you must have had the amount of dealers that you've spent intimate time with, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours, you know, of time with these dealers. What's the experience, I guess, that you're trying to remain under the radar, so maybe you don't speak to them so much, but like, yeah, what's your insight about the life of a typical US Blackjack dealer person? I mean, they vary as much as regular people. Very, I think my experience with all casino staff is a complete mix bag. There's been some people and dealers that I just think, oh, these people are so fun. I want to be friends with them in real life.
56:38And then there's other people that just are very nice people. So it's hard to sort of really give a, to sort of try and paint like a brush, or kind of give an idea of the typical person that works in a casino, because they vary so much. I mean, certain security people can be a bit power trippy at times, a lot of pitbusters can be quite power trippy, but some of them are really nice. So it's kind of hard to sort of give like the archetype of a dealer. I think, yeah, I mean, I've met a lot of dealers that are really nice. A lot of dealers that have known I'm counting and they haven't dogged me in.
57:08So those people are nice and they have, they could have just made things really difficult. But then I've also gone in and met dealers that have gone and pointed me out when I've walked in the door after driving six hours to get to the casino. So yeah, it's a real mixture, but yeah, you can have some really nice interesting chats. And actually the dealers being talkative is one of the things that keeps me going on these trips. If it's not a team trip where I'm with the team, you're away for whatever it is, two, three weeks, and you don't know anybody, and you're just driving around, and your only human interaction that you get is when you order a coffee by some food or are playing at the batch at table.
57:43And there's an extra of that. Being able to talk with the dealers is one of the things which actually kept me keeps me like sane on these trips. So yeah, it's really nice when you get a deal that's up for having a bit of a chat. Dude, yeah, I didn't think about that. I didn't think about how, you know, it sounds all romantic and fantastic and cool and sexy. But the reality of it is remembering plus one D1 with zero in your mind for eight hours, and then goes bad and then getting up and doing it all over again for a couple of weeks. Yeah, I mean, it can be such a short, I mean, I've done trips where the amount of time spent driving has basically one to one ratio the amount of time playing.
58:23So for every hour of playing, hour of driving because there's so much just got to go to the casino next casino. And you can, it's not an exaggeration to say you can drive six hours to the nearest casino because you've had to leave the town where that town with the five casinos of all call each other and told them what you look like. so you burn out that time when you just got there, you drive six hours to get to the next place, and you walk in and someone in my case recognizes me, or maybe you just get a quick back off, and it's just those times are just brutal because you get back in the car and you go, all right, you gotta go drive another three or four hours to the next place now.
58:57Yeah, so way more, way more about logistics than it is necessarily about mathematics. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the actual math that you're doing isn't that complicated. It's just a bunch of relatively simple components that get quite tricky to do together. The math gets about as complicated as you have to look at the discard tray where the cards are, estimate how many cards are there to the nearest half deck, and then you divide your count by that number. That's about as complicated as it gets, but even that you're rounding down all whilst trying to keep the conversation going or not look like you're concentrating a lot.
59:34Stephen Bridges, ladies and gentlemen, Stephen, I love your YouTube channel. Everyone you go and check that out, where else should people go? Where do you want them to go on the internet to look at your stuff? Thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, I am mainly on YouTube, but I'm also on Instagram and X and threads kind of, I guess. So yeah, you can find me. It's just Stephen Bridges wherever those places are. Oh yeah, Stephen, good luck with whatever you're doing next. Cheers Chris.
From the publisher
Steven Bridges is a professional gambler and mostly-legal card counter.
If you've seen the movie 21, you'll know that it's possible to count cards while playing Blackjack in a casino to beat the house. But this isn't just limited to the movies, Steven is part of a team who takes on the biggest casinos in the world using hardcore maths, disguises and secret signals to win big.
Expect to learn the details of how a team of players is needed to take on a casino, how Steven chooses which casinos to count at, what are the best and worst places to play Blackjack in Vegas, the most amount of money Steven has made and lost in a single session, how he deals with losing absurd amounts of money, just how difficult it actually is to count cards and much more...
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