Josh Axelrad - Repeat Until Rich: A Professional Card Counters Chronicle of the Blackjack Wars
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Repeat Until Rich: A Professional Card Counters Chronicle of the Blackjack Wars: summary, description and annotation
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A deliciously wry, edge-of-the-seat memoir of making a fortune with card counters across a wide swath of blackjack in America.
At twenty-four, Josh Axelrad held down a respectable and ominously dull job on Wall Street. Adventure was a tuna fish sandwich instead of the usual turkey for lunch. Then one night, a stranger at a cocktail party persuaded him to leave the nine-to-five behind and pursue an unlikely dream: the jackpot. The stranger was a blackjack card counter, and he sold Axelrad on the vision of Vegas with all its intrigue, adventure- and cash.
Repeat Until Rich is Axelrads taut, atmospheric, and darkly hilarious account of ditching the mundane and entering the alternative universe of professional blackjack. Axelrad has one thing in common with his team: Jon Roth, the leader and a former options trader; Neal Matcha, a recovering lawyer; Aldous Kaufman, a retired math Ph.D. candidate. They all thrived in the straight world, found success boring, and vowed to make life more exotic. Axelrad adopts Roths philosophy-repeat until rich-and from his strategy and skill spring hasty retreats across casino floors, high-speed car chases, arrests on dubious grounds, and the massive cash paydays that make it all worthwhile.
Along the way, he unveils the tactics and debunks the myths of professional card counters. In team play, hes either the big player, who bets the big money, or the controller, who subtly coordinates the teams betting while wagering only the minimum himself. Counting is not illegal, and its less intellectually daunting than its MIT-level mystique suggests. With clarity and wit, Repeat Until Rich proves the old gamblers maxim that if you can tip a waiter, you can count cards. But it also proves how zealous, even forceful, casino bosses can be in backing off counters-seeing past their undercover methods and banning them from the tables. Josh soon grows to love all this trouble, and discovers, more than the money, what he needs most of all is the rush.
Filled with actual bad guys, chase scenes, and high stakes, Repeat Until Rich offers an intoxicating, unprecedented view of the dangerous allure of living off the cards and ones wits.
At twenty-four, Josh Axelrad held down a respectable and ominously dull job on Wall Street. Adventure was a tuna fish sandwich instead of the usual turkey for lunch. Then one night, a stranger at a cocktail party persuaded him to leave the nine-to-five behind and pursue an unlikely dream: the jackpot. The stranger was a blackjack card counter, and he sold Axelrad on the vision of Vegas with all its intrigue, adventure- and cash.
Repeat Until Rich is Axelrads taut, atmospheric, and darkly hilarious account of ditching the mundane and entering the alternative universe of professional blackjack. Axelrad has one thing in common with his team: Jon Roth, the leader and a former options trader; Neal Matcha, a recovering lawyer; Aldous Kaufman, a retired math Ph.D. candidate. They all thrived in the straight world, found success boring, and vowed to make life more exotic. Axelrad adopts Roths philosophy-repeat until rich-and from his strategy and skill spring hasty retreats across casino floors, high-speed car chases, arrests on dubious grounds, and the massive cash paydays that make it all worthwhile.
Along the way, he unveils the tactics and debunks the myths of professional card counters. In team play, hes either the big player, who bets the big money, or the controller, who subtly coordinates the teams betting while wagering only the minimum himself. Counting is not illegal, and its less intellectually daunting than its MIT-level mystique suggests. With clarity and wit, Repeat Until Rich proves the old gamblers maxim that if you can tip a waiter, you can count cards. But it also proves how zealous, even forceful, casino bosses can be in backing off counters-seeing past their undercover methods and banning them from the tables. Josh soon grows to love all this trouble, and discovers, more than the money, what he needs most of all is the rush.
Filled with actual bad guys, chase scenes, and high stakes, Repeat Until Rich offers an intoxicating, unprecedented view of the dangerous allure of living off the cards and ones wits.
Josh Axelrad: author's other books
Who wrote Repeat Until Rich: A Professional Card Counters Chronicle of the Blackjack Wars? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Ellen F. Feld
Blackwood
Rick Night Train Blaine
Avery Cardoza
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Table of Contents
This is for Paul. Its also for Harriet, Ralph, Ray Kroc, and Jay Sarno. And for the Ballers of Blackjack: you know who you are. And for my mom, dad, and stepmother. And finally (not least!) for the Internal Revenue Service, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center Billing Department, Chase MasterCard, American Express, Discover Financial Services, and everyone else who believed.
NOTE ON VERACITY
Whats true is I won. Mostly. From 2000 to 2004, I supported myself playing blackjack professionally as a card counter. I won around $700,000 on behalf of myself and my teammates, and I collaborated in sessions that won much more. I was 86d, 172d (86d twice, from the same place), 258d, or otherwise discouraged from enjoying gambling opportunities at all the finest toilets in Las Vegaswith the exception of the newest Wynn toiletas well as at casinos nationwide. I was detained in back rooms against my will in a casino in Kansas and another down in Southern Californiaacts, one could argue, of unlawful detention on the part of these casinos: criminal acts, I believe. (Personally, Ive never been convicted of a thing. Card counting isnt a crime anywhere in the States. Its the right thing to do, in most cases.) Casinos seem to think Im a threatening guy.
Or was, anyhow. There are some complications to the story. My claims to gambling greatness are offset by the fact that Im currently broke. Ill say more on that front when its time. For now I should point out (a) that the story is true, (b) that its told truthfully, and (c) that I did make some changes.
Identities are veiledthats the big one. The team activities described here took place in a context of privacy and of intense secrecy while they were going on. In deference to that spirit, and out of respect for the ongoing privacy of my colleagues and of others involved in the story, most but not all names are changed. Where I changed names, I changed other details, toocities of residence, prior occupations, physical descriptions (sexying everybody up, as a rule, with an eye toward a Hollywood version someday: longer legs, bigger pecs; I went ahead and added a half inch to my own height while I was at it). The exceptions are Robert Jayne, an actor and indomitable card counter who kindly let me use his real name, being perfectly happy to remind the casinos (in particular Mandalay Bay) of the impact he had on their asses, and my roommate, guardian, and best friend, Paul.
I also changed the name of the team. I changed the location of our base in Las Vegas. I changed all the signals we used while we played. Our cornerstone tactic (call-ins) and peripheral tactics (like shuffle tracking) are described as they actually happened. Ive omitted occasional secrets at the request of my friends, but its nothing that goes to the heart of the things we accomplished together.
The incidents are true. The wins and the heartbreak are real. Now and again it gets florid (the prose), and I come off like some kind of pansy. I am, for what its worth, just your standard Semitic American living on the precipice in Brooklyn these days, drinking bourbon and watching the sky fall, and trying to take care of my plants. My only hope here is to cheer you. If its florid, then maybe it should be. I did what I couldGod knows.
PART I
My Ideas Are Tested in Nevada
One
They called themselves Mossad after the Israeli intelligence agency. The key honcho was a guy named Jon Roth. I met him just once, and then everything started. I took the subway one evening to Park Slope in Brooklyn, buzzed at the address my contact had given, and was let in by a tiny brunette who introduced herself as Bridget Gould.
She showed me up the stairs. The building was a brownstone, single-residenceall Roths. He was a retired millionaire from Wall Street. Israeli-born, charismatic, three to six years older than myself. I knew these things from Garry Knowles, my mentor.
At the second floor, I saw a person dealing cards. A dining-room table had been converted into a blackjack table. There was green felt spread over it like a partial tablecloth. Two strangers sat on the player side, chips in the betting squares in front of them. The dealer was Roth, to whom Bridget presented me.
Youre Garrys guy?
Right.
He shrugged in responsenot without warmth, I thought.
I cant say what I expected, but he was certainly a human being: large head, heavy build. Either he was muscular or he used to be. His hair was a few inches long, and his brow was pronounced. He might in a previous life have been some kind of ape king, a silverback.
The others sat watching me quietly.
Roth said to one of them, Chuck, you want to check this guy out?
For spotter?
Roth gave the thumbs-up. The person named Chuck was dark-eyed, perhaps Greek or Latino. He was physically attractive, and it bothered me. My habitual nervousness had been about doubled since I got off the subway, but as I shook Chucks hand, it grew worse. I would never fit in with these people.
He led me to a sofa at the end of the room, where he handed me a shoe to count down. Thats a big deck made of multiple decks mixed together, six in this case. As we sat, he went over the rules. He would remove a dozen cards or so, then time me as I counted the rest. I had to do it ten straight times, pretty fast, with a limited number of errors.
I passed this test. Shortly after that we had a pizza break. Roth ate standing up, as did Chuck and a bearded guy, Aldous. They were discussing an upcoming trip.
No one addressed me again until Roth had finished his pizza and lit a cigarette. Ready for the table test? he asked.
I hope.
This was the final exam. Crusts and paper towels were stuffed into the grease-bruised pizza box. Roth began stacking the deck. The Aldous guy sat on one side of me, Chuck on the other.
I was sitting among strangers in this big brownstone house, playing two handsperfect basic strategyand trying to go plus-one, minus-one in my head the way Id been taught. Theres nothing too unusual about that, I guess. Millions of people take blackjack tests every day, or some kind of test. But I was less talented, at least than most card counters; this set me apart. Math has never been a strong suit, honestlyIm more of a speller. Yet Id had this dream ever since I first met Knowles, when he spilled the beans to me about Thorp, MIT, team play, basic strategy, the High-Low count, and all the rest of it, two years before.... The dream was to go the full distance, all the way to Moscow, as Napoleon might say: turn pro. Steal money from casinos for a living, and gamble full-time. Scamper around tiny back roads in a forty-eight-valve Italian coupe, looking for games. Up and down the Nevada desert, through the bogs of Mississippi, with so much cash in my Levis that I couldnt walk. It had stayed a dream, and it might have stayed that way forever if Knowles hadnt met Roth, or if he hadnt played on a trip with Mossad and come back with the stories he did, or if the year 2000 hadnt been bearing down with the slim but notable off chance God might show upnone too amusedbringing apocalypse, or that the Y2K problem really would turn the computers either off, or against us, with planes dropping out of the sky and self-realized cruise controls carting pleading families to their doom, exactly at midnight on New Years... or if I had been a little steadier, say. But, sensing opportunity with blackjackalong with the slippage of time and my own steady drift toward dullnessat the end of 99 I quit my job. Mossad, Knowles had told me, eventually might take recruits. It was the only lead I had. I lived off savings, wrote my novella. January passed, and the world carried on. February passedGod was late. Then, last night, with exactly no warning, the call Id been hoping for
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