Frank Scoblete - I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack!

For my teammate and wife, the beautiful AP

Contents

Introduction: Yes, I Am a Card Counter

I have a dual personality for this book and for my next one, I Am a Dice Controller. Originally I was going to combine these two games and my experiences playing them into one book. As the first draft of that book progressed, I realized that the length would have been equivalent of the entirety of Wikipedia. My publisher (unfortunately) does not pay me by the word, and I also didnt think the publisher would want to pay for all that binding material and the herd of elephants needed to cart the books from bookstore to bookstore, country to country, across the Alps, and to the mysterious underground warehouses the Internet sellers maintain wherever they maintain them.

So I decided to split that massive book into two different onesone focusing on my playing career in blackjack and one focusing on my playing career in craps. You might say these two books take place in parallel universes. If you have the ability to take each universe and press them together, you get it all. I hate to say this, but even I cant do that. Although it will look as if I lived two advantage-playing lives, it was just onea fun one, an interesting one, sometimes a harrowing one.

While I was going great guns at blackjack with my wife and partner, the beautiful AP, during the 1990s and early 2000s, I was learning to become a competent, then good, then (no humility here) great dice controller. The path to being a great dice controller (or even a decent one) requires hard work and a significant investment of time. It took me quite a bit of time.

I was at the top of my skills in blackjack as we went into the 21 st century, but my skill at dice control was competent but marginal. As the 21 st century began, I found my way in dice control, and my skill soared just in time to see the slow decline of excellent blackjack games. One door opened while another almost closed.

Although this book will focus on blackjack, I was playing craps during this time as well. I might refer to the craps play where I think it will be necessary for readers comprehension or easier to digest it all. It is certainly going to be easier for me to write about all of it.

Of course, this book is not just about mea topic I love and of which I cant seem to get enoughit is also about some of the greatest blackjack players in the world, living and deceased. Blackjack advantage play has a long history, from the mid-1950s through today. It is a history filled with interesting characters, great players, and wild storiesmany of them actually true.

I know many readers are looking for tales about the millionaire advantage players, and some of those players are in this book. But winning millions is not always the sign that a player is great. Ted Williams, in a 23-year baseball career, played in only one World Series, and he was arguably the greatest hitter who ever lived. His teams just didnt have what it took to go all the way. Some blackjack players, while great, also dont have what it takes to bet large sums of money. Movies wont be made about them. Nor will they be the subjects of books. They will remain unknown to all but the few who know just how great they are.

The best blackjack player I ever met was a small-stakes player. Youll find out why. This guy taught me more about blackjack than any book I ever read. He was the greatest in my estimation, and in the estimation of many terrific players who knew him. Most other playerseven those who have won millionscannot match this mans skill, or even come close. The man had everythingexcept enough money to play big and the permission of the Las Vegas casinos to play at all. Being allowed to play is just as important as how well you play.

I have some connection to most of the players I write about in this book. Ive seen them play firsthandwhich, to me, is importantand Ive developed friendships with some of them. Some of these players are in some way connected to me through others Ive written about. Some are simply my standard of what it means to beat the casinos. Some are simply great writers who have given me strategies and insights.

Why arent all great players (who are allowed to play) million-dollar winners? Some cant bring themselves to see money as merely chips. At a certain point they just cant put a $500 or $1,000 or higher bet out there. That type of money makes them blanch. They have an absolute sense of the value of a dollar and the value of thousands of dollars, and the emotional cost of losing such sums is just too high. It rattles them. Other advantage players have no such hesitation. To them chips are just chips.

Chips are just chips is the best philosophy to have as an advantage player, but for most players it is extremely hard to think of money in non-absolute terms. If you bet $10, and that $10 is 10 percent of your $100 bankroll, that amount will not usually cause you to sweat uncontrollably or feel your heart pound in your chest. But make that a $10,000 bet against a $100,000 bankroll, and it seems to be a far bigger percentage, even though it obviously isnt.

Some of the advantage players in this book are examples of what can be done if one really tries to beat the house. They might not actually enter the realm of the greatest, but they are still inspiring people. There are card counters all over America, and they are playing right now as you read this book. There are even some players who can follow cards in a shoe, figure out when those cards should come into play, and then bet accordingly. There are players who can catch the dealers hole card and take advantage of that knowledge. Despite the fact that blackjack games have deteriorated throughout the country, there are still opportunities to take it to the house.

In addition to discussing some of the best blackjack players ever to play the game, I Am a Card Counter is also a highly personal book for me, as it relates the adventures I had with the beautiful AP, and with many of my friends and teammates. I Am a Card Counter is about players I knew and enjoyed knowingand players I knew but didnt enjoy knowing. Some of these players are just like your average man or woman next door, just as AP and I appear to be your typical suburban couple; some of these players are characters of a different stripe, meaning they are really, really characters. Some have passed away, and others are still out there playing the game. For all you know, the next time you sit down at a blackjack table, you may be sitting next to one of them.

Blackjack represented a way of life for my wife and me; we played as a team for more than a decade. Even after my wife retired from the game and the casino life, I continued to play the gameand have done so for more than a quarter century.

I have lived those 25-plus years in a world remarkably different from the world most of my non-advantage-play contemporaries lived inboth those who played casino games and those who never set foot inside a casino. It was a world of adventure and skullduggery, bright sunshine and horrible rains, fear and laughing and loathing. It was a world where I learned what the casino industry was really all about and a world where my one goal was to extract the golden tooth from the casino dragons slobbering mouth and take the damn thing back home with me.

I hope you enjoy this book, because I enjoyed the quarter century of adventures that created it. Its been some ride!

1. In the Beginning

I was part owner in a theater company on Long Island, New York, from 1979 to 1990. It was called the Other Vic Theatre Company, in honor of the Old Vic Theatre in England. By the way, you never say I live in Long Island the way you would say in New York or in Cleveland or in Las Vegas. For some reason you live on Long Island. And Long Island is exactly what it sounds likea long island, going from Brooklyn and Queens, which are two boroughs of New York City, all the way to Montauk Point, which is at the very eastern tip. Usually when folks refer to the Island, they forget about anything to do with New York City and just consider it two counties, Nassau and Suffolk. I live in Nassau.