By Carl
Austin
Image courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org |
While the
players and technology portrayed in Chinaman's Chance is fictional, the
inspiration for the book is as real as it gets.
For more than 20 years I prowled the green felt jungle looking for
targets of opportunity. Just as in my novel, I always played with a team.
Unlike the book, the game we played was blackjack, not craps.
Being a
professional blackjack player is kind of like being a secret agent. If
your cover gets blown, you're dead. Not literally dead like you see in
the movies, but unable to play in a casino. That's because the casino
managers don't like it when you do to them what they do to the public, which is
use math to make money. Whereas in a game like poker, playing pros have
been elevated to rock star status, card counters are treated like cockroaches.
The pit bosses like to step on them whenever they are discovered.
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One night after
my shift, I spotted one such winner that I recognized as having just taken
about $2,500 from my table a couple hours before. We both found
ourselves at a local watering hole away from the boardwalk. I was
hard to miss since I was standing there in my dealer’s uniform. So, after we
both ordered a libation, I decided to chat the guy up.
“I noticed you
did pretty good tonight,” I told him as the bartender brought us our drinks.
“I didn’t do too
bad,” he admitted while sipping his beer.
“I’ll say,” I
agreed. “You made more in three hours than I do in three weeks,
including tips.”
He smiled at me
before replying, “Well, you know what they say. Some days you eat
the bear…”
“Then you must
have a mind like a bear trap,” I shot back. “Because nearly every
time I saw you in my pit in the past couple of months you came away with a
win.” At the time I had been working in Pit 7 that housed the
casino’s $25 minimum tables.
This caused him
to take another healthy pull on his draft while he considered the implications
of my comment.
“Look,” I
explained, “I’m not trying to put the bite on you. In fact, it
pleases me no end knowing that someone can do to the casinos what they do to
most everyone else. In fact, I only have one question for you.”
“What’s that?”
“How do you do
it?”
Looking right and
left, he drained his draft before leaning in close to murmur three words into
my ear. “Million Dollar Blackjack.” Then he got off
his barstool, slid a $10 bill to the bartender and walked out of the bar.
“Thanks for
buying the round,” I said to him, wondering what the heck Million Dollar
Blackjack meant. The next afternoon, I called a fellow blackjack
dealer at home and told him about the odd conversation at the
bar. His response wasn’t what I expected.
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“It’s Ken Uston’s
book,” Rex explained with a chuckle, as though that meant a thing to me.
“Ken who?”
“Kenny is a
professional card counter who used to be a stock broker on the West
Coast. He’s currently suing several Atlantic City casinos for
barring him.”
As soon as I hung
up the phone, I got dressed and drove downtown to the used bookstore. Sure
enough, I found several well-worn copies of Million Dollar Blackjack on the
shelves. Investing a whopping $3, I took my copy home and started
reading.
The book detailed
Ken Usui’s (AKA Uston) exploits as a stock broker by day and a card counter by
night. Living on the West Coast meant that Kenny could easily take
junkets to Vegas and Tahoe/Reno on most weekends. He used his status
as an executive to entice the casinos into giving him the red carpet treatment
as he milked their high limit tables for as much profit as possible. The
only fly in the ointment was that by the 1980’s he had worn out his welcome in
all the casinos out West. That meant there was only one stop left on
the casino gravy train at the time: Atlantic City.
Aside from being
a page turner, Million Dollar Blackjack also contained a complete card counting
system called the Uston Point Count. The UPC is a sophisticated
multi-parameter count that assigns a number of different values to the
cards. It also has numerous count-based strategy deviations. Being
a novice player who only had a rudimentary knowledge of basic strategy, I
didn’t realize I was biting off more than I could chew. All I knew
was that I spent the next month dealing in the casinos by night and dealing at
home during by day.
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Here’s your reality check… Playing
blackjack for a living is like most jobs. You clock in, you work your shift and
you clock out. You don’t rub the
dealer’s nose in it when you win. If you want to learn how to count cards you need to either spend hundreds of hours practicing or you need to be trained by a pro. Remember, the
trick isn’t only to beat the house at its own game. The trick is to be able to get away with it
whenever and wherever you want. When you
realize that all casinos are better protected than NORAD, then you need to have
your act together if you want to last more than a few sessions in the card
counting business.
Just as in Chinaman’s Chance,
even the best laid plans sometimes go awry. Over the years, money got squandered and egos were bruised. Just as in any other business there is a
certain amount of turnover when it comes to playing partners. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the lifestyle is pretty
good, if you like living in hotels for months at a time. Any of you who have ever been to a casino
know that the booze is free as long as you play, the meals can be comped as
long as your action warrants and the entertainment is first
rate.
Even more intriguing is the drama that goes hand in hand with the allure of easy money. There are people on both sides of the gaming tables who would kill to make a big score. That's why most of them wind up dead broke and/or in jail. The secret to my success and those of my teams was that we were happy to walk away with $500-$1,500 when we won and $300-$400 losses when the dealer got the cards. We weren't looking to walk out with the chandeliers.
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That's as real as it gets.
Looking for a sure thing? Carl's author website contains a wealth of information about his novels, his life and his exploits in the green felt jungle. If you're a casino player, check out Carl's other website Big Game Blackjack. There you will learn the ins and outs of what it takes to play to win.