Blackjack for Blood

a top player reveals that all it takes is lots of homework and a steel-trap memory

Victor Morrison is that success story uniquely of our times--intellectual, corporate strategist and gambler. He is a daring young man who can speak articulately about Pascal's theories of probability or Von Neumann and Morganstern's theory of games, and equally sharply (continued on page 240) Blackjack (continuedfrom page 143) about profit and loss and maximizing returns on investment, and is just as acute in explaining the theory and practice of winning at blackjack. He is one of the top-seeded backgammon players in the world. He is a veteran bridge champion. He has played in most of the important casinos in the U. S., the Caribbean, Mexico, Europe. He holds a high position as a financial analyst with a $150,000,000 multidivisional corporation based in Manhattan.

I telephoned him one Sunday morning and asked whether or not he was planning to make the Las Vegas scene soon. He said he might be going out in five or six weeks and, yes, he would be agreeable to meeting me in the City of Dreadful Chance and answering a few questions.

Morrison is one of those mysterious creatures who have come to be known as counters, because they not only have mastered the strategy of blackjack but are able to keep count of the remaining high cards in the shoe (the box containing four shuffled decks of cards) and therefore vary the size of their bets according to the constantly shifting odds. He is not a professional gambler--he disdains the word gambler. He has a master's degree in business administration from the Wharton School. The subject of his thesis was "Calculating the Cost of Capital for a Multidivisional Firm." He has his present job organized so that when there is an important backgammon tournament or a seductive casino junket, be can take off.

•

When Victor and I met in Las Vegas several weeks later, he was ensconced in one of the best hotels on the Strip. I intended to explore his attitudes toward his corporation, toward love, toward life in general. I also wanted to find out how to win in Las Vegas. I wanted to know the secrets.

So, that first day, I went, with some anticipation (and plenty of greed), up to Victor's suite. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed. His portable backgammon set was open. And he was playing both sides.

"Isn't it true," I questioned, "that keeping a count gives the player an advantage over the house?"

"Sure," Victor said, "but the average person has as much chance of beating the house as he has of reading a book about tennis and playing like Ilie Nastase. The more books on blackjack that come out, the more the casinos love it. Look up the statistics on the revenues."

I did. In 1975, Nevada casinos plucked a billion dollars' profit from the gamesters. In 1976, as more and more persons learned counting and betting strategy, the casinos made one billion, plus an additional $260,000,000. The greatest increase came from blackjack.

Victor was in this hotel on a junket. He said all he had to do was wager at least $5000. "The idea is, they want me to win big or lose big," he explained. "They don't care if I win five or ten thousand. A big winner is a big advertisement--if he doesn't win too big. They would rather, if I lose, that I lose big. They want high rollers on these junkets. So they expect me to play in $25 units at least three, four hours a day. They keep track in this way: I sign markers when I buy chips. Now, there are some casinos here--the Marina, for instance--that handle junkets by requiring you to buy special chips. I was on a minijunket at the Marina once. I was required to buy $1500 worth of a large red chip that could not be cashed in at the cashier's. I had to play them at the tables and if I won, I got regular chips. Anyway, why wouldn't I play? That's what I came for. Of course, if I wanted, I could screw a casino that has special chips. I would place $730 on the red and $730 on the black in roulette, and then $20 on zero and $20 on double zero, for insurance. I could bet through all their big red chips in five minutes and have regular chips I could cash in for dollars and get my room and meals comped, or do the same thing but slower with blackjack or craps. So the hustler would be plus or minus a hundred, but he'd have the trip paid for. I don't fool around with that kind of scam. What I do is try to show at least $7000 or $8000 in markers, so when I check out, I write them a check for more than my credit. Sometimes I lose a few thousand--on paper. Sometimes I win a few thousand. Sometimes I make them tear up a few markers every day when I cash in. Sometimes I let the markers accumulate. I cash my profits every hour. I usually don't play more than one hour, at the most two, if I'm on a streak. Usually, I have friends cash in for me. You want to cash in small amounts--no more than $300, $400 at a time. More than that, they want to know your name and room number. The important thing is you want to show a big loss or a big gain. A big loss, of course, means they keep you on their junket lists.

"Of course, most people are losers. I don't know why it is that the average hacker knows he can never play like Tony Trabert or Jimmy Connors, but he is sure he can win big at 21 if he studies a book or takes a mail-order course. Of course, sometimes a potzer wins big and he thinks it is due to his genius. It is just a coincidence."

"Do you believe in luck, Victor?"

He reflected. He set down his coffee cup. He steepled his fingers. "I believe," he replied, "that there are certain factors lumped together under the heading of luck and these include personality traits. That is, it is not so much how thecards are running as that I'm having lapses of attention. The fact that I'm running bad makes me play worse. So the unlucky run is really a bad element in my personality. The reverse is also true. In a so-called lucky streak, I'm playing well and things are working out well and I'm making the best choices."

"Is probability an important factor?"

"Probability is of little consequence in most gambling situations," he replied. "The work has already been done for you. It's just memorizing it. I could teach you the probabilities in poker or craps in an hour. The rest of it is the experience of playing thousands of hours so you do the right thing at the right time quickly. As I get older"--Victor is now 34--"I've come to believe that some men and women, a small percentage, are born with the ability to win at games, about as many as can learn to become golf pros. Let's say five percent are born good at games--and maybe of this only one percent or fewer are great."

"Do you consider yourself great?"

He smiled. "Well, I lose--often. But when I lose, I don't lose as much as I win when I win. Anybody who can learn the simple basic blackjack strategy can limit his losses. Did you study that Revere book?"

I had read Playing Blackjack as a Business twice. I could not grasp Lawrence Revere's counting systems. But I had tried to learn basic strategy. Morrison said that blackjack probabilities had been worked out by IBM's Julian Braun back in 1960. Braun has written a monograph: "The Development and Analysis of Winning Strategies for the Casino Game of Blackjack." The now legendary Edward O. Thorp, a math professor at MIT, had done his own computer calculations, out of which had arisen his famous Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One, the first book to spread blackjack secrets to the general public. Prior to Thorp, a number of intellectual gamblers who knew computer languages had already made blackjack programs and devised variouscard-counting systems. They learned to keep track of the unplayed 10s and picture cards in the deck, (continued on page 272) Blackjack (continued from page 210) raising their bets when a one-deck or four-deck layout got rich in 10s and lowering bets when the deck as poor. All counting systems more or less involve counting a low card (2 to 9) as a plus when exposed and a 10 (picture cards equal 10) as a minus when exposed. When the remainder becomes a high plus--that is, many small cards have already been played, leaving an unusual number of high ones--the player has an advantage over the house. This is the reason. A player has the option of standing even when his hand is as low as 12. The dealer must draw if he has 16 or less. Consequently, whenthere isa plethora of 10s in the last 50 cards of a four-deck shoe, the probabilities increase that the dealer will draw a 10 and bust. Blackjack expert Ken Uston has claimed that "his expertise gives him a two percent advantage over the house." Morrison believes that you don't even have to keep count of the deck to make out. Even the non-mnemonic player whohas the discipline to play the strategy based on Braun's computerized calculations will have a slightly better than even chance against the house. And with "card sense," you should do even better. If you count, however, your chances increase. Victor told me Uston's percentage is conservative. He thinks the counter has as much as a five percent advantage over the house in certain situations. However, if one is prone tobet erratically and let emotions determine one's play, he will inevitably lose, no matter how well he learns the theory of blackjack or keeps a plus-minus count of the cards.

Since Victor was active in both corporate life and casino life, I asked him: "Is there a difference between a gamesman and a gambler?"

He mulled over my question and replied, "In my book, there are no gamesmen and no gamblers. Those are meaningless words to me. There are winners and losers."

"Could you make me a blackjack winner?" I asked finally.

He sized me up. He grinned. "Yes and no. On the one hand, you have a winner personality. On the other hand, you get bored by games after a while. You'd rather read a book or talk or go to a movie. You have to be obsessed to be a success at black jack."

"We have five days. Try to make me a winner."

"OK," he said, shrugging. "Let's run down basic strategy. Ready?"

He turned to his copy of Revere and read some questions. (Among them are: When do you double down on 10? When dealer has 2 to 9 up. When do you stand on 15? When dealer has 2 to 6 up. When do you split 8-8? Always. When do you split 5-5? Never. When do you double down on 11? Always double down on 11.) He shot them to me one at a time. Some I knew right away, such as never split 5s and always split aces. Others I fumbled on or drew blanks on or gave wrong answers for. Victor said I had to know the answers pat. He advised me to review the basic blackjack strategy and memorize the data. He said I had to know the recurring blackjack situations and make my plays automatically and never change my strategy--at least not until I had become a counter and had been playing for a solid year. He said that even he, an old hand, always reviewed basic strategy for 30 minutes prior to a session. He warned me never to give in to sudden hunches or to panic. Nor was I to make my plays on whims. (I am, for instance, unable to stand on 12 or 13 with the dealer showing a low card.) Vic said my decisionshad been made for me by computers that had run billions of blackjack problems. Revere tells us that Braun ran more than nine billion blackjack hands through the computer to arrive at the fact that I must always stand holding a 9 and a 4, if the dealer is showing a 5.

Victor tested me again. I flunked again. He shook his head. "You need a minimum of 30 hours of study and 100 hours of casino play to learn correct blackjack. Forget counting. Especially advanced systems. I don't believe one person in 10,000 has the self-discipline and brains to master a counting system. Don't clutter up your mind with advanced point count. You'll never learn it, anyway, and if you learned it, you wouldn't be able to use it. At this stage, you don't even know basic strategy. I have eidetic memory, the ability to re member images and groups of images without trying. I can make my mind register the 10s automatically, but it isn't as accurate as a point count. You advanced point count. You'll never learn it anyway, and if you might try opening yourself up and seeing if you feel the picture cards as they flash across the table. Besides counting and eidetic memory, I have card sense. It's a feel for how cards are going. You can't learn it. You have it or you don't. My suggestion is, after you learn basic strategy, just try getting a feel for the table and--say a dealer has dealt 50 percent of the shoe--see if you feel that few picture cards have been played and that the remainder may be rich in 10s. If so, you double your bets for the rest of the shoe. You might try that."

"Do I have to worry about the laws of probability?"

"That just isn't a meaningful phrase in this context. There is a law of large numbers that says the more times you do something, the closer you get to what the real outcome should be. Example: Flip a quarter enough times and you should get 50 percent heads and 50 percent tails. Yet while you may get closer and closer to the percentage, you get farther away in absolute numbers.

"If you flip the coin ten times, let's say you get six heads and four tails. You have 60 percent and 40 percent, but you are off by only one unit, since you would expect the coin to come up five times on each side. Now you flip it 100 times, you might have 55 heads and 45 tails, so now you are closer to that ideal average with 55 percent instead of 60 percent, but--and pay close attention--you are off by five units instead of one unit. And now let's say you flip it 1000 times and heads might come up 523 times, so now you are off the average by a mere 2.3 percent--and, atthe same time, in absolute units, you are off by 23. As the percentage approaches closer to 50, the absolute-number variance becomes greater. So if you were betting dollars, you would theoretically lose one dollar when you had ten percent against you and $23 at the smaller 2.3 percent against you."

Once, as we were driving from the hotel to a downtown casino, we passed a club whose billboard invited us to enter and partake of its dollar slot machines, which paid off at the rate of 96.5 percent, compared with the casino average of 80 percent.

Victor reminded me to think in absolute numbers, rather than percentages. In absolute numbers, I'd be paying the house $3.50 for each 100 wagers.

Finally, he said I should play blackjack. I should study for an hour and play for an hour. He also made some changes in my Revere charts with a view to simplifying them. He decided I should never double on 8; Revere says double down on 8 if dealer shows 5 or 6 up. I would not double on A-2, A-3, A-4 or A-5 (Revere suggests doubling with those in some situations). I would always stand on A-8 (Revere says double if dealer shows 6 only).

I returned to my room and pored over the charts and the lessons. Over and over. Then, my heart pumping hard, I entered the casino. Man and boy, I've fooled around with blackjack since my adolescence in Brooklyn. I played by guess and by God. Now, for the first time, I was going to really play blackjack. As I shuffled through the crowds, questions and answers throbbed in my head. When do I split 5s? Never. When do I split A's and 8s? Always. Stand with 13, 14, 15, 16 when dealer shows 2 through 6 and with 12 when dealer shows 4, 5 or 6. Be cool. Be calm. Remember what the man who founded the company that makes Hal, the Giant Computer, used to say. Think. The slogan of IBM. International Blackjack Machines. Concentrate.

The moment was upon me. I felt the tension rising. I was breathing hard. I finally slid onto a chair at a two-dollar table. I chose a dealer who looked humble and sad. He looked like Joel Grey in Cabaret. Three punters were already there. A woman, about 45, in an elegant beige pants suit, and a younger lady, about 20 or 21, in jeans and man's shirt, and thena fat man in a sport shirt who was sipping a highball and had many chips by him. I sat in what is known as third base--that is, the last of the seven places, closest to the dealer's right hand. Third base is the last one to choose. I figured while the others were making up their minds, I would have time to gather my wits and make my moves. I placed a $20 bill on the green-felt table. I lit a cigarette. My fingers were trembling. I tried to give it my finest Jack Nicholson sauve qui pent nonchalance, but I knew I wasn't fooling anyone there and they all knew how embarrassed and scared I was. Joel gave me 20 silver dollars. I didn't dare look at anybody's face. We were playing with a four-deck shoe. Joel started sliding out cards around the table. I got a jack and a 9. Thank God, I wouldn't have to make a decision. The dealer was showing a 5 up. My two-dollar bet was not nicely stacked, so I reached out my left hand to straighten the coins and Joel looked at me sharply and said, "Do not touch your bet." I had read Thorp, Revere, Ian Anderson, Ed Reid/Ovid Demaris and their Green Felt Jungle and even Hunter Thompson and John Gregory Dunne, explorers of the madness and lonesomeness of Vegas--and not a soul, guiding me through these jungles, had informed me that if you lay a hand on a bet once itis made in blackjack, you are acting suspicious and probably cheating. (Victor subsequently explained to me that hustlers sometimes palm a $25 chip and add it to a stack after the dealer has busted.) I never again straightened a pile of chip sin the betting rectangle. But I knew Joel no longer respected me.

He had 15.Dealer must draw to 16 and stand on all 17s, it said right there on the table. He drew an ... 8. Thank God. He busted. He paid me, squaring two silver dollars against my original bet. I drew off my profits and let the original bet stand. On the next deal, I gotblackjack--A and Q. He paid me three dollars. Then I drew an A and a 7. I panicked. I forgot everything. I knew there was a multiple choice in this situation. What was the dealer showing? He had a 9 up. (With A-7, you stand when dealer shows A, 2, 7 or 8; you double with 3, 4, 5 or 6 up; and you hit with 9 or 10 showing. But I plumb forgot that when I needed it.) In my anxiety, I clutched my two cards in both of my palms as if I were scrutinizing a poker hand. Do I hit, stand or double? Suddenly, Joel was whining at me again.

"Only one hand on the cards," he said severely.

"Oh, I'm sorry, excuse me, I didn't know that." I was stuttering. I was sweating. I knew overhead there were secret one-way mirrors behind which eagle-eyed killers looked down on the players. Maybe they thought I was a cheater. That guy down there, yeah, him with the glasses, he handles chips, he holds cards in two hands, he's a scam artist, let's break his legs. I started getting apologetic.

"I'm just a ... a ... b-b-beginner," I said.

"Do you want a card?"

"No, I'll stay, I mean stand, I mean...."

He said to slide the cards under the bet if I was standing, which I attempted, but I couldn't slip them under the silver dollars and pushed the two dollars cock-sided and I felt like a real oaf. I started to stack up the bet and remembered I mustn't touch it. I was blushing with the humiliation of it all. The dealer hit 20. He collected all the bets. The fat man ordered another drink. I ordered a club soda. More players came to the table. Soon we had a full crew--seven players. There were no bantering remarks. All of us picked up cards, bet, collected, stood or hit, in a sullen silence. I won. I lost. I forgot Victor's advice and rules. I was in the grip of a fit of great failure and alienation. My paranoia came out like hives. When I was asked to insert a card for the cut before a reshuffle, I couldn't even stick a card into the pile. What an idiot I was. Now I was really losing. If I had 18, Joel hit 20. If I hit 20, he blackjacked me. If I stood with 13, he made 17. If I drew to 13, I went bust. I was down to two dollars out of the original 20. I said to myself, if only I can get back my original stake, I'll quit and never play blackjack again. I'll just be a writer. I'll study humanity and its naked greed in the faces of the casino throngs. I'll be the detached, observing reporter. Then I won two hands and thought: Well, maybe when Victor gives me another lesson.... I'm not so bad, after all ... anybody can have a hard-luck run....

Actually, I already had been taught one of the most significant lessons one can learn; namely, that he has to be willing to surrender his self-absorption and play the game and not wallow in his emotions. By now, I had won back my original $20 stake, but I didn't quit. Now I had to double my money. Then I would quit. Now I was winning. I was six dollars ahead.

Somebody or something touched my shoulder.

I leaped. Like I'd been jabbed with an electric prod. It was Victor. He asked me how I was making out and I said I was ahead. He said, "Let's go tothe deli." Most of the Vegas casinos have delicatessens as well as coffee shops. Perhaps casino bosses know that the eating of hot-pastrami sandwiches induces the sort of malaise that makes one vulnerable at the gambling tables. As a matter of fact, Victor told me to eat lightly. He said I should never eat hot pastrami or corned beef or chili while playing blackjack. He also said that the food in Las Vegas is mediocre.

Victor ordered bacon and scrambled eggs, a toasted corn muffin and a glass of milk. He also ordered a keno card. There was an enormous bulletin board that flashed the winning digits in the keno game being played in the casino's keno pit. Victor could not take a respite from risk taking. I started to tell him about my emotional problems during the past hour and then I got my second lesson in gamesmanship. He said what had happened was over and done with and should be forgotten. You don't replay the past games in your memory. Don't look back.

I couldn't forbear telling him my humiliation by the dealer. He said the dealer was trying to help me. One always holds the cards in one hand in blackjack and never touches a bet once it's down. And I shouldn't say, "Hit me." If I wanted to hit, I scratched my cards toward me on the felt. I was never to say, "I stand," or "That's all." Just slipping the cards under the bet would suffice.

"A dealer can be your best friend or worst enemy," Victor said. "Win or lose, I always tip him. Dealing is hard work and he is not that highly paid. A pit boss is your friend, too. Don't believe these gangster stories. I have found that if I act like a gentleman, I am treated like a gentleman."

We lost three games of keno and then ambled into the casino. I was three dollars ahead. Victor settled into a nest of blackjack tables in a corner. He roosted on the first-base seat of a $25-minimum table. The dealer played with one deck, holding the cards in the palm of his left hand. Victor was the only player. First base is the seat on the dealer's left. He is the first player to declare his wishes. Victor asked for $500 in chips. A pit boss scrutinized the VIP card issued to Victor when he registered. The marker was a simple slip that he signed with a flourish. The dealer forked out20 $25 chips. Victor strewed them around. I watched him and saw that he did not arrange his chips in neat stacks nor ever seem to add them up. The dealer burned one card. He began. Victor started betting in units of $50 and $100. I tried to follow the play, but he moved so fast I was unable to find a pattern. His pile of chips got fatter. At one point, he bet a $25 chip for the dealer. He got a 13 (a 9 and a 4). The dealer showed a 5. The dealer had a 10 as his hole card. He drew. He went bust. He smiled and thanked Victor. Victor shrugged. A second player joined him. Then a third. Victor shugged. He was a charming shrugger. The deck was working its way down to the end. With about 15 cards remaining. the dealer shuffled and Victor cut. A new deal started. About midway through, after a series of blackjacks and 20s, Victor abruptly swept up his chips and sauntered away. I followed him. He handed me some chips and told me to cash them. I cashed in $410worth and gave the four $100s and the ten-spot to Vic. He went to a room near the cashier window where he had his safe-deposit box. He was to go there frequently. He still had plenty of chips. I guess he was ahead a few hundred dollars--not counting the $410. He would never tell me how much he had won or lost.

He now adjourned to a poker table and sat down in a ten-dollar-limit game. The table was almost full--nine players and a dealer playing seven-card stud. Victor played for an hour. He lost a few hundred. The casual observer wouldn't have spotted his change of mood, but when you were close to him, you could always feel it when he lost. He could not stand losing. And when he did win, he seemed to bloom. You could feel his rapture.

•

There were four or five bars and cocktail lounges adjacent to the vast casino, one of the biggest in the gambling capital of the U.S.A., though not as impressive and huge as the MGM Grand's casino. Vic told me that was the most gigantic gambling hell in the world--making the notorious Monte Carlo palace seem inadequate. Yet some players. like Vic, feel uneasy amidst the spaciousness of the MGM Grand's casino. During our stay, he wouldn't play 21 there.

"The ceiling is too high," he said, "and you feel like you're in outer space. But they have a really good separate space for poker where the ceiling is just right. It is lower." I had never before heard a discussion of ambience, ceiling height or color scheme by persons who know gambling.

We went to a circular bar for a drink, but I could see Vic was restless. He was there to play cards and not to sit around drinking and being interviewed. As soon as we were outside again, we started trotting. At our next casino, I said I had to take it easy. We sat down and talked some more. I said I saw dealers burn many cards in a four-deck blackjack shoe, and even with a single-deck or a two-deck game, they never dealt all the way down. I had seen Joel Grey, my first blackjack dealer, burn six cards. Later, I saw some dealers burn 10 or 12.

"Do they do that to hurt counters?" I asked.

"Yes, and it does," he said.

"Why don't the blackjack writers stress that fact?"

"Why should they? They are out to sell their courses and books and if they were to level with you and tell you how hard this is, you would not buy their books."

"Why did you leave the game in the middle of the deck before?"

"There were so many los and picture cards out in the first four deals that the odds were heavily against me, real bad, like ten percent. That kind of vig you don't fight."

I had noticed several times that he bought insurance, a side bet that the dealer has blackjack when he is showing an ace. I asked him, "When do you buy insurance?"

"Never buy insurance. Only a blackjack expert knows when to buy insurance. It's a very tricky play. Most of the time, it is a sucker play. I could give you my reasons, but it would only mix you up "

I brought up the question of surrenders. Several times, he had surrendered. In an Appomattox, the player gives up 50 percent of his stake after he sees his cards but before the dealer has. revealed his hole card. Not all casinos will allow you to surrender. When would Victor suggest a surrender?

"That's your second never. Never surrender. This is also a complex play for the advanced player. Let's see, you have quite a few nevers. Never buy insurance. Never surrender. Never split 10s. Never split 5s. Never hit 17 or more. Never is an important word for a winner. Sometimes doing nothing is the best strategy. Too many players have to keep busy every minute."

We then went out walking again and went to another hotel. He played $25blackjack and I played two-dollar. I was still having trouble sorting out my plays. I finally went back to playing hunches, because the strain was too much for me. Vic came over after an hour. I had lost $22. So now I was down $19. We went outside and walked some more. We entered a small casino, just a gaming place, not part of a hotel. There wasn't the pressure of the big casinos, at least on me. We sat clown. I put down a silver dollar for my bet. Vic cashed a $100 bill. He said he would advise me. We were playing against a two-deck dealer who held the cards in his hand. He dealt all the cards face up except for his own hole card. I asked Vic whether he was allowed to do that--deal my two cards face up--and he said absolutely, since there's no bluffing in blackjack, though most players like the excitement of having a Clark card. The dealer has no choices, so it makes no difference whether he knows your cards or not. We played for two hours. I moved ahead five dollars. So now I was down $14. Vic, as usual, had won a few hundred playing five-dollar limit. During this session, I felt very relaxed for the first time, maybe because Vic and I were the only players at the table and he was helping me out. Our dealer was a dour-looking, ashen-faced man with thin lips. He looked like a mechanic. I did not win until there was a change of dealers. Later, at our next sojourn in a bar, I told Victor of my fears. He said it was paranoia. He said being emotional in a casino is bad and paranoia is the worst of emotions. He said I should bear in mind that dealers were not my enemies, for they would rather I won so they could get a tip. He said the dealer certainly had seemed bitter and sad but that was because he was dealing a small joint and had little chance for tips. Victor had tipped him a five-dollar chip.

Victor played more high-level blackjack at our hotel after dinner and I put in more hours studying. A-7 was my hardest. I stand with dealer showing A, 2, 7 or 8; I hit with him showing 9 or 10; and I double down with a 3,4, 5 or 6 up.

The next morning, I questioned Victor whether his basic thirst was for games and if the money element was secondary. I read him a quotation from Dr. Michael Maccoby's book The Gamesman: "For the gamesman, a high salary is important mainly because this is the way the game is scored, and he doesn't want to fall behind the others."

"Bullshit. Money may be a symbol, but it is also a medium of exchange. The more money you have, the more flexibility it gives you in what games you can play. If you have small change, you might have to play in a game where you think you have a big advantage, but it's for small stakes with bad players and it isn't much fun. When you have more money, either you can play in games where you have an advantage but not so big an advantage or youcan play for higher stakes with better players and the element of chance becomes important, but the game is more interesting because you are going up against good players. Or you might, if you can afford the risks, even play against players who are a damn sight better than you are--hoping you can outsmart them."

I wasn't entirely persuaded. He was constantly trying to inveigle me into a game of pong or pook, for instance. Suppose, I asked him, he were shipwrecked on a remote island. "Would you start betting coconuts on which of two toucans would fly out of a palm tree first? You know, like which of two flies will fly away from the wall first?"

"Sure, I might get suckered into a fly-on-the-wall bet if I were bored. I'll never forget that story of Damon Runyon's. There's a character whose father says, 'Son, as you grow up and go through life, someday a stranger will make a bet with you that the jack of spades will jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. Do not make that bet, son. Because, if you do, as sure as you're standing here, you will get an earful of cider.' "

•

On the third day, I started winning. We had gone to the Golden Nugget and I was playing without Victor's coaching in a dollar-minimum game. I found myself relaxed. I knew what to do in every situation--when to stand, hit, double, split. I didn't pick up an A-7, but I would have known how to handle it. I could feel that sense the gambler has when he is winning, that there is a tide in his affairs which, taken at the mean high-flood level, will lead to fortune. I was ahead $12 when Victor said it was time to go. So far, I had reduced my losses to two dollars. Victor beamed at my improvement. Back at our hotel, we basked in the sun for a while and then I went back to blackjack. I played at the two-dollar table. I won $18 more. In the evening, I played at various places for several hours and was up to plus $23. But the next morning, I was down to plus five. It was a seesaw affair on the fourth day, up and down and up and down. The best of all was that I was enjoying the play of the cards and I was even trying to form some sort of sense of them, to feel whether or not the remainder of the shoe was rich in 10s. However, I was afraid to double my stake. I was playing in two-dollar units. On the fourth clay, Victor stood behind me for two hours at Binion 's Horseshoe Club, during which I had a splendid run of hits and blackjacks and won $44.

Victor said that with a few hundred more hours of casino play, I should be able to start learning a counting system. He was proud of me, he said.

Saturday afternoon: Vic went to play seven-card stud. I looked for a place at a two-dollar table. The room was teeming with a talkative and emotionally high crowd. I cashed a $20 bill and started playing. I won some. I lost some. Then I won and won and won. I began to win every time. My doubles paid off. My splits came through--each of them. I felt serene, unhurried, supremely confident in my powers and my genius. By the time Victor returned, I was up $48, with a total winnings on the expedition of $97!

I was flushed with triumph. I felt as if I personally had clone this. Imagine, I reflected, if I'd been betting in units of ten dollars, I would have won $970; and if I'd been betting in units of $100, I'd have won $9700; and if I'd had the courage to bet in units of $1000, I'd have----

Stop, I told myself. That way madness lies.

On Sunday morning, Victor and I had the last and longest of our interviews. Being an early riser, I had already jousted with two dealers (one at Caesars Palace and one at the Aladdin) and I was ahead another $14. Total profits by 11 A.M.: $111. I did not dare contemplate the mystical significance of that configuration of 11s. Now that I was more confident, I could take note of matters such as dealers who were inconsistent in their burn cards. Frequently, they burned as many as six cards on a four-deck shoe, and an Aladdin dealer, this morning, had even burned 12!

I went up to Morrison's room.

"Is it normal practice to burn that many cards in blackjack?" was my first question.

"No," he replied. He sat at a large circular table. Out the window, we could see the pool and the tennis courts below.

"Do they ever burn more than 12 cards?" I asked.

"Less, usually. For example, in St. Maarten's, they never burn more than one in a four-deck shoe. In Vegas, on one or two decks, they burn one. In some casinos, they even let you see the burn card, which is damn nice. In most places, they don't show you the burn card."

"If they're so worried about your counters, why don't they all burn six or ten cards?"

"Because players don't like that. They wouldn't play at a casino that did that all the time."

"Do you think my dealer this morning who burned 12 cards on me was suspicious that I was a counter? Because I was the only player at his table."

"There has been a change of management at the Aladdin. They have a new manager in charge there, a very tough character, and he has been tightening up all along the line since last March. The orders are, I've heard, to burn more cards, shuffle up more often, don't deal down to the end. You see, in recent years, the Aladdin has been badly hurt by the counters."

"You spoke of playing to the end--in a four-deck shoe, how far down do they usually play?"

"They leave from a half to a whole deck out of the four decks. If they suspect you're counting, they might shuffle up after 100 cards are played--so they are playing out only two of the four decks."

"So, in effect, they are ruining your end game."

He nodded grimly.

"So what do you counters do now?"

"We will improve our middle game. We will develop more precise methods of counting."

I asked him how much authority a dealer had at his table. Could he shuffle up at any point without consulting a pit boss?

"Sure. He can shuffle up on a four-deck shoe after one deck has been played or even less. In one deck, well, it depends purely on the dealer. He might deal down to the last five, six cards, which would give me an almost perfect count, or he might shuffle up with ten remaining, or, if he is out to kill me, he could shuffle up after 20 cards are played. The pit boss has authority over the dealer. The dealer might be inclined to deal all the way to the end, as they hate to shuffle up, especially with four decks, but they have to do it, if it's orders. What the pit boss says goes.

"The dealer has a divided loyalty. On the one hand, he wants to show a profit for the house during his session. So let's say a high-rolling drunk sits down at his table and is betting wild and crazy; he'll deal down to the end to get in as many hands as possible during his tour of duty, so if I'm sitting in at the same table, I'm in luck, if I'm not too greedy and don't bet too high.

"On the other hand, every dealer is hungry for tips. If you're generous with tips, and they think you're a counter, they'll help you by playing down to the last few cards; but if you're stingy and they think you're counting, they'll shuffle you to death."

Did he think casinos ever hired mechanics to beat the counters? "The big casinos in Las Vegas are honest," he said. "If there is a dealer crooking, he's not working for the casino, he's working for himself. He's dealing winning hands to a confederate. This means he has to hurt the other players more. It takes a smart mechanic to work a blackjack table so he can cheat the casino and still show his expected hourly profit. Every table has to produce so much and if a dealer's profit over a long period of time is consistently low, they figure he's a crook."

Victor and I had recently finished reading Ken Uston's new book, The Big Player: How a Team of Blackjack Players Made a Million Dollars. To gamesmen like Vic, Uston's lawsuits against six Las Vegas casinos are landmarks. Victor is quite serious, when he says he believes he has a constitutional right to count the unplayed cards in a blackjack shoe. In 1976, he had mailed me a page-one story from The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: "has system better an Inalienable right to beat the house?" Uston had filed lawsuits against the companies that operate the MGM Grand, Dunes, Flamingo, Hilton, Marina and Sands casinos, alleging he had been economically discriminated against because he had been barred from those casinos. A judge had dismissed two lawsuits. He is appealing.

However, there is another aspect to the story of Uston vs. Dunes, Sands, MGM Grand, et al. Thomas Thompson, author of Blood and Money, interviewed Uston in 1976 and wrote an article in New York Times Magazine that portrayed a brilliant tactician, a courageous lone wolf battling against the entrenched robber barons of the casinos, an underdog fighting to survive.

Uston portrayed himself as a decent, hard-working American games person trying to get along in a lonely struggle. You couldn't help liking him. Comes May 1977. Comes publication of Uston's long-awaited autobiography, The Big Player: How a Team, etc.

Hello? What is this? A team, did you say? The Wall Street Journal didn't say team. The New York Times didn't say counters and punters were operating as a trained group of commandos working with almost military precision.

It now turns out, there was a mastermind named Al Francesco, who in 1974 recruited Uston, who had been a sort of blackjack dilettante for a decade in the Nevada casinos, winning a mere dozen grand a year. He drilled him in Revere Advanced Point Count. Francesco ran a kind of high-class Mob, made up of counters and players. The counters counted and bet modestly to remain inconspicuous. When a deck got hot in 10s, the counter signaled with a hand on the chin and one of the "big players" sauntered over and laid down a heavy bet. At some point in 1976, Herb Nunaz, the eagle-eyed manager of the Sands, collared five counters and two big players, including Uston. I couldn't help feeling that Francesco and his Merry Men were not in quite the samecategory as blacks who were refused service in restaurants.

"Wouldn't you say," I asked Vic, "that Uston and his confederates were, in a sense, playing crooked blackjack?"

In a rare spurt of emotion, Victor cried, "Hell, no! Crooked? In what sense crooked? The rules of the game don't say that you're not allowed to make a big bet when the deck is hot. Just remember, there is no counter who ever knows exactly what will hit on the next card. I could get a count on a one-deck deal and still lose. The casino is saying I can play here only when the odds are in its favor--never when the odds are in my favor."

"Isn't blackjack an even game?" I asked.

"Only if you play perfect basic strategy. And if you learn even a simple count or keep a rough idea of the 10s as they fall, you can give yourself a little the better of it. I'll say this for Las Vegas, they give the blackjack player the fairest game in the world. I recently played in Puerto Rico. Playing a four-deck shoe only, their restrictions are so terrible, you wouldn't believe it. For instance, they let you double down only with 10 or 11.

"By the way, from what I have heard from my connections who work in casinos, the Nevada hotels are not going to bar counters anymore. Guess they're wary of Uston's taking his case to the Supreme Court and beating them. They figure they might run into a losing streak of Justices who maybe lost a few big ones in Vegas when they were younger.

"My feeling is the casinos are intimidated by Uston's lawsuits. What they are doing now is shuffling up on the counters. Also, a pit boss might say to you in a friendly way, 'We know you're counting. If you play blackjack, we'll shuffle after every three hands. You're welcome to visit with us. We love you. Just go play baccarat. Baccarat is a nice game. Or roulette. You'd love our roulette action. How about chemin de fer?'

"I guess the casinos have a constitutional right to reshuffle all they want."

Wouldn't that mean, realistically, that even the best counters in the world could no longer win the big money?

He nodded, looking very sad.

Were the clays of players like Ian Anderson numbered? Anderson (which is a pseudonym), author of Turning the Tables on Las Vegas, gave an interview to Bert Prelutsky, L.A. Times columnist. He told him how he had taken the casinos for a fortune. In order to deceive them, he has become a master of disguises and has many sets of fake credentials. He say she studied make-up for six weeks. "I can," he boasts, "change my hair, my face shape, my sideburns, the color of my eyes and the shape of my nose. I have eight pairs of glasses, even though I don't need glasses. And I can do a number of voices." Like all the Pied Pipers of the blackjack-system profession, good old Anderson promises you a "total strategy for plundering the Las Vegas casinos."

But read Anderson critically and you find that even he, the man of a thousand faces, sets up almost impossible playing conditions. "Never play with more than one other player at the table" is one of his rules. Can you just see how long you can remain at a table with only one player? If your count is running good and a third player sits down, Anderson tells you to request the new player to wait until the deck is shuffled!

And Revere is equally severe. After all his charts and strategies, he also demands special conditions. On page 103 of his vade mecum, Revere insists on 21 conditions, such as:

You must never play with more than two other players.

Do not play if you do not like the dealer.

Do not play "if there are bad players at the table.

Play late at night when business is slow.

Aha! Now he tells us.

Can you really open a sure-fire business, as he promises, if you learn Revere point count? Can you, as Anderson promises, plunder the casinos? Can you, like Uston, win $1,000,000 (with a little help from your friends)?

I put it to Victor.

He looked unhappy. He looked bleak. I have seen that expression on persons who remember they could have bought Picassos for $1500 a canvas during the Depression or IBM at 28 or Xerox at ten.

"Even before Thorp came out, several casino players, who were into computer science, realized blackjack could be beaten by computer simulations. I'm talking of the years between 1950 and 1962. That was a beautiful time for the counter. Some of those early counters won phenomenal sums of money--hundreds of thousands and more. At that time, I was playing bridge and poker while finishing my undergraduate work in Chicago. Now we have to get better as the casinos get tougher. We have to become less obvious in placing bets. Change our rhythm of betting. We have to use more sophisticated counting systems. In the good old clays, before casinos were smart, the way they used to operate, a player at my level could have won millions--given enough time to play."

"And now?"

"Now? Someone playing at my level might scrape out $50,000 or even $100,000 over a three-year period."

"That's nothing to sneeze at."

"Who's sneezing?" Victor cried. "What I am saying is that the bonanza days are finished. In fact, I'd say the gold rush was over by 1972. And if conditions keep getting tougher, it'll be even harder to make a killing in Las Vegas. Bear in mind, there are better players than me. Uston, Flannery, Trosper, Anderson, Revere. The counting system I'm using is one of the simplest--Revere Plus-Minus. There are more advanced counting systems--some of which aren't on the market--that take into account different values for each individual card."

"Is it hard to learn these advanced systems?"

"It sure is. I know some already middle-level blackjack winners who have been studying over a year to learn one of the new systems and they still haven't got it. The average blackjack player is out of luck."

I shifted my questioning and finally Victor got around to the pathological aspects of compulsive gamblers. "I recently heard a good story about a psychoanalyst. A true story. A friend of mine is a plunger, a real compulsive gambler, a loser. Well, he blew all his bank roll on a Las Vegas junket and he wrote markers for $50,000, until they cut off his credit. The casino was pressuring him for the money. He was afraid if he didn't pay, they'd cut off his credit in every casino in the world. They didn't have to threaten to break his legs. The biggest threat to a gambler is to bad-mouth him with the big bookmakers and the casinos. That's like death to a compulsive gambler. So this loser happened to be from a very rich family. He had an uncle who had some connections, through his banking and mining interests, with Nevada big shots. Through them, he arranged to settle the debt for $25,000, which the casino accepted. As part of the deal, the family made my friend agree to go to a shrink and get cured of his gambling psychosis.

"He had to do it, as he had no alternative. In the course of getting his gambling mania cured, he started explaining poker to the shrink. Then he started playing head-to-head poker with the doctor. The analyst got hooked. They started playing for money. To make a long story short, my friend won $30,000 from the shrink who was supposed to cure him of gambling.

"First he sent a check for $25,000 to that Vegas casino, which cleared up the unpaid balance on the old debt and which they had never expected to collect. Then he asked me to give him some advice on blackjack and I taught him the Plus-Minus count and we practiced basic strategy. He told me he was determined to be a winner. He studied basic strategy for six weeks. He learned Plus-Minus in eight weeks. Then he took the $5000 stake left from his winnings from the shrink. He went to Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Now, you have to realize that my old buddy is known all over as one of the great all-time suckers. So now here he is, a smart player, but nobody expects old him to be a counter, right? He's playing at the $500-limit blackjack table and they play the decks out to the end. And he is counting. And winning. And winning. The pit bosses know it is just crazy luck, as even a perennial loser like him has to win once in a while. He walked out with $150,000 profit his first time out. He has been to Las Vegas once and it's the same story, as the pit bosses know him as a sucker, so nobody takes countermeasures on him, and for him it's like it was for everybody in the Fifties. I know sooner or later they'll realize he has had a personality change, but until they do, it wouldn't surprise me if he took the casinos for $1,000.000."

"Morrison is one of those mysterious creatures who have come to be known as counters."

"If one is prone to bet erratically and let emotions determine one's play, he will inevitably lose."