BJA How I Went From Waiting Tables To Professional Blackjack

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2009 www.blackjackapprenticeship.com
Layout by Jason Dooley
Special Thanks:
Mom and Dad. Ryan S. Jeff Verde. Andy B. Joe G. Eklesia Team.
JP. Mark & H. Chuck K (for teaching me that Money Magazine
doesnt care if you get rich. Jon C. Arnold S. Murphy. Stanford
W. Max R. Ian S. Stephen M. Rainbow R. Jason Dooley. And All
the Investors who believed in us. Thanks.
This story is dedicated to:
Colin who has made me successful in ways no one else has.....
and who has kept me from ever having to look at a spreadsheet
And
To Kami who trusted me with our last $800.
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
It all began in a restaurant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Bike Trip...and car accident (Accident #1) . . . . . . . . . 21
Looking for a partner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Accident #3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Along with money comes friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Getting Recruited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
All Good things must come to an end . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Going Corporate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Life After Blackjack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
The End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Table of Contents
7
blackjackapprenti ceshi p.com
This is my story. Its not a how-to manual, just a story. My
story is about how I went from waiting tables to becoming
one of the most famous blackjack players and educators in the
world....on accident. Well, so maybe its not just a story. Be-
cause hopefully at the end youll be forced to make a decision.
If you havent already, youll have to decide if youre just going
to take the boring options that life has to ofer or if youre go-
ing to tell The Man that you want MORE.
You see, although I am not going to fudge one fact or exag-
gerate one tale (which, if you ask me, is a very unnatural way
to tell stories), my story may as well be ction to you, at least
compared to your own autobiography. But to the degree that
you are able to celebrate in my joys, mourn with my
failures, and, especially, to learn from my victories and many
mistakes, I invite you to come along and make my story a
part of yours. After all, if you are reading this, your story is not
done yet. And the best part is, that theres a really good chance
8
that the most exciting part of your story is yet to come. So use
my story for inspiration or entertainment. But above all, it is
a call to action.
This goes way beyond playing blackjack. Accidents happen.
You can commiserate, or you can capitalize on the opportuni-
ties they provide. Some day you may write your own story
about your own accidents and you should want to be writing
a story that you are proud about. A story that will inspire and
entertain. A story that is awesome. But Im going to stick with
what I know. Heres my story. It all began in a restaurant...
10
Well, not really. I was born and stuf. I got married at a
pretty early age to the girl that I had a crush on since junior
high. She was the only girl that ever told me that she would
never marry me. Im glad that she was wrong and most
days she is too.
Within three months of being married we were expecting our
rst child. This was a little crazy considering the fact that my
wife was two years away from completing her nursing degree,
we were determined to graduate without one cent of debt, and
I was making minimum wage. I dont have much to say about
the restaurant except two things. The rst is that for the year
that I worked there I mostly sustained myself on the unlimited
fries that they ofered, since we were so broke. And the second
thing is that although singing Happy Birthday to teenagers
was getting old, the restaurant seemed like a paradise com-
pared to my previous job of lugging trash back and forth at a
construction site.
11
At the restaurant people said hi and many of them even had
high school degrees. Which was about as much as I could
say for myself. You see, I actually did pretty well in school. In
the 5th grade I was in a program for gifted students with all
sorts of other kids doing advanced math but who had trouble
tying their shoes. High school was pretty easy for me. I was in
all honors classes and even managed to graduate six months
early. To me it was just a matter of how late I would stay up
each night. I may not have been the smartest kid but I did de-
cide at a very early age that I would turn in every assignment
on time. And I did.
Now this seemed like the all time slam dunk to the American
Dream. Both mine and my wifes parents seemed pretty ex-
cited about my goals to nish college and take on a 9-5 as a
doctor, lawyer, or the spiritual equivalent...a pastor. So, I start-
ed going to school in Portland, OR. I had an amazing year,
living on my own and learning from some amazing professors.
But thats when the trouble started. I started asking some
12
questions. At rst it started out small. What happens when
education gets in the way of learning? What if I dont want
my life and marriage plans to be based upon my education,
but vice versa? What if I wont want to start working at 9 and
clock out at 5? Ok, Im getting of track here a bit. This chapter
title is about a restaurant so I should probably get back to that.
So, I was waiting tables. The problem is, remember the ques-
tions that I mentioned earlier? Well, they never went away.
Most of the people that I knew who had the most money and
the best jobs were the most busy and had the least amount of
time for their families. Around this time I had started to get
bored with waiting tables. The code seemed too easy to crack.
Be organized, be nice, and tell the customers if they need AN-
Ything to let you know--and then do it. I remember once there
was this promotion running at the restaurant where they were
selling some bufalo burger and they had a contest to see who
could sell the most. Well, I decided to win it. So, I told every
13
table that I had about it. I explained to them that the bufalo
burger was pretty good and if they didnt like it, I would buy it
for them.
As it turned out, I sold more than anyone at my restaurant,
more than anyone in the region, and more than anyone in the
world. Now, I tell this story for a couple of reasons. The rst is
that I think its funny. The second is because I think that it is
an important reection of why I am where I am now. But like
every good tale, well save the moral of the story for the end.
15
After my one year anniversary of working for the restaurant I
was convinced that it was time for an adventure. My wife and
I had a child and we wanted to see the country, so we decided
to bike across it. Actually, to tell you the truth, it was way more
me than her, but either way we were in it together. Me, her,
and our 11 month-old daughter. The plan was simple. A little
ridiculous considering neither of us owned bikes nor really
enjoyed biking, but still simple. Pack up our bags, rent out our
apartment, y to the Atlantic Ocean and bike to our home on
the Pacic Ocean. As long as we got back by September she
wouldnt miss a day of school and although I was denitely
absent, I certainly wouldnt miss a day of work, although the
fries had started to become a regular part of my diet. When
my request for a three-month vacation was denied, I told my
work that if they were interested in hiring me when I got back
I would be willing. After all, if their goal was to sell bufalo
burgers, this seemed to be in their best interest. As it turned
out, that day I clocked out at the restaurant would be the last
16
day that I had a normal job. Since then I have not had a boss,
clocked in, or requested vacation. Now, I dont want to give
the impression that Ive spent every day since then rolling
in the dough. In fact many days, weeks, and months have been
the exact opposite. Our bike trip was a good example of
this. We landed in the very strange and far away state of
Virginia, picked up our bikes from the Fed Ex Station, and
started biking.
A couple of things about our trip: the route spanned 13 states
and was more than 4,000 miles long. With an infant in tow, I
calculated that we should be able to complete the trip in just
around three months. Remember, my wife was in nursing
school, we had just had a child 11 months earlier, and were de-
termined to stay out of debt. That meant no credit cards and
no student loans. That also meant that our food budget was
$10/day--for three people. So while we werent living in luxury
by most peoples standards, we had discovered a new luxury.
We woke up when we wanted to. We ate when we wanted to.
17
And we saw some of the most amazing scenery and met some
of the most amazing people to date. No one was telling us
what to do and I was spending time with the people I cared
about the most.
But, all good things must come to an end and our trip came to
an end two and a half months earlier than it was supposed to
when all three of us got hit by a car. There were a lot of details
involving ambulance rides, an 88 year-old man charged with
negligent driving, and being stuck in the middle of the Appa-
lachian mountains with no money, identication, transporta-
tion, or belongings (they were all left in the middle of the road
when the ambulance picked us up) but I dont want to get to
get too far of topic. The bottom line is that we ended up back
home without jobs, without a place to live, and no ambitions to
try and spend the rest of the summer working. [This is where
the part about blackjack begins].
18
About three months earlier I had bought a book called how to
make $100,000.00 a year gambling. It was written by a famous
poker author and I bought it to ne tune my strategy for poker
tournaments. You see, back in my restaurant days, we had a
pretty regular Friday night $5 buy-in poker night. I remember
after our rst two nights of losing having some serious talks
with my wife about whether or not we could aford to play. Af-
ter all, at this time $5 represented a night of eating out for us.
So losing was not an option nancially or emotionally.
Very quickly my goal became to learn the optimal strategy of
beating the game. Now this book in particular had a chapter
on how to win at blackjack. Had I not come across this chapter
I doubt that the thought of playing blackjack would have ever
crossed my mind. I never gambled and had never really been
in a casino. I think the chapter on blackjack was no more than
ve pages long. I was instantly captivated by the simplicity of
it all. Poker was complicated and involved. Psychology, tons
of variables, and really complicated math. From what I could
gather, beating blackjack involved memorizing a chart and
19
adding and subtracting the number 1 a bunch of times. All I
remember was that my rst response was, I could do that. So,
I did. And the rest is history.
Just kidding. I wish it was that simple, but it is not. You see,
back in the day we didnt have any fancy websites to just go to
and from which we could learn how to count. Wikipedia wasnt
even around and the few books that were around cost money
and were saturated with what appeared to be retired math-
ematicians discussing theories using terms that could have
been used to explain the existence of black holes. One thing
you can bet on is there were certainly no websites with free
video. That is why when we started this site it was based upon
that very missing element. We felt like providing the best
video training in the world on how to count cards was our way
to give back to a community that had a very dire need. Im
getting a bit ahead of myself though. Back to 2001. I thought
I had everything I needed to know about blackjack except for
one thing: a partner.
21
Im a bit of an extrovert so every time I get a good idea I
like to share it. Its in my nature. Unfortunately for the people
around me, not all of my good ideas are actually good. Since
this idea involved casinos and gambling there was one person
in particular who came to mind. My friend from the restaurant
who had a gambling problem. I dont entirely recall what I was
thinking but lucky for you it makes for an entertaining story.
I dont want to overstep my bounds as a story teller by giving
you life advice but heres one tip: When you are making life
choices, one that is going to be entertaining to a non-existent
group of future readers may not always be the best course
of action. But in this case it worked out. I remember telling
my friend about this chart called basic strategy that told you
exactly what to do. He seemed skeptical but to a gambler any
excuse to get to the casino is a good excuse. By this time I
had photocopied a basic strategy chart into a credit card sized
piece of paper that I could keep in my wallet. I remember
sitting at a table with my friend staring at a hand and asking
22
Do you remember what the book says to do? and getting a
blank stare back. After the hand was over I would run to the
bathroom and whip out my card to see if I had made the cor-
rect move. Every once in a while I had. One other moment that
comes to mind is when we put our rst bankroll together. We
each put up $200 for a grand total of $400. The rst night we
lost almost all of it. Its a funny thing with gamblers. For how
much they claim they dont like to lose they sure spend a lot
of time doing exactly that. I remember telling my friend that
we needed to re-group and gure out what we were doing next
but he was pretty convinced that a trip to the ATM machine
and another ve hours in the casino was going to x our prob-
lem. In the end I won--but that night taught me that although
card counting is simple it is not easy.
24
I guess I didnt really spell it out, but accident #1 was that I
ended up getting the answer on how to count cards when I
wasnt even asking the question. Accident #2 was quite literal
and involved a moving vehicle. Accident #3 was twice the
accident #1 or #2 was. Before I knew it, the craziest thing that
could possibly happen started to happen: I actually started
to make money playing blackjack. In order to understand
how big of an accident this really was, I need to explain my
mindset throughout this time. When I got back from the bike
trip debacle, I wondered how to spend the rest of my summer.
Ultimately, I decided that I was going to take card counting
seriously and try and learn it by the end of the summer--not
because I thought I could actually make money at it, and
certainly not because I ever planned on doing it as a job, but
more so because I thought that I might be able to have an
enjoyable hobby that might pay for itself.
At the time, I thought this was a best case scenario. After
my friend and I lost our original $400 investment I decided
25
to reach deep and use half of my savings. Not long after, I
hopped into bed after being out at the casino all night, and
had to explain to my wife that I had lost all of it--$800--in one
night. We now had $800 left in our bank account. We knew
we had a decision to make. At least it felt that way, but in my
experience as a card counter and entrepreneur I have realized
a few things about my type. There are a lot of reasons to count
cards or try any number of hair brained business ideas. But
there are an equal number of reasons NOT to try these things.
In fact there must be more reasons to not try them, because
for every card counter you will nd 1000 people in a casino
not counting cards and probably 10,000 people who dont
even go to the casino at all.
I think it boils down to one question. The question is not
Can you do it? The question is Can you not do it? Most
of the people who I have trained are doing it because they
answered no to that question. It doesnt always make sense
nancially or practically. Whether you like it or not, youve
26
already taken a step into the rabbit hole and you need to take
two more steps to see whats around the corner because if you
dont youre always going to wonder what you missed. Hence
I ended up at the casino with our last $800. Not really wanting
to know what was around the next corner, but also not being
able to live with not knowing. As it turns out, its a good thing
that I looked because lying around that next corner was a
bunch of money.
Well, at least it seemed like a bunch. From getting paid six
dollars an hour and making one hundred dollars from tips (on
the best of nights), I will never forget the amazement that I
experienced the rst time I made $1,000 in one hour. I didnt
really know what was going on but I did know that I had never
seen money move this quickly. As is the nature of things, I
got accustomed to winning and losing $1,000 on any given
night. And, before I knew it, $5,000 became the new $1,000. Be-
fore I start sounding all cocky, I want to explain what I mean
and what I dont mean. Just because you lose or win money in
27
the thousands of dollars on a daily basis shouldnt mean that
you dont care about the wins and losses. To this day, it doesnt
matter how much I bet, I enjoy winning and hate losing at any
game, but especially at the blackjack table.
One thousand dollars represents a lot of things: a vacation,
presents for the kids, a piece of a new house, but ultimately,
the beginning of nancial freedom. But there are two main
changes that occurs for every professional gambler. One
of these changes is that you start to see the value of money
expand beyond just what you can buy. The money takes on a
strange utilitarian structure as a card counter. Money becomes
a tool you use for your trade similar to the way a carpenter
owns and uses a hammer. As an example, when I went to the
casino with that last eight-hundred dollars, I turned it into
$2,000 pretty quickly. The thought never occurred to me to go
and spend the $1,200 prot. My only thought was re-investing
it to have less risk and more prot potential. Pretty boring, but
Im sure if there are any professional card-counters reading
28
this, they can relate. Another one of these changes that takes
place with professional gamblers, is that each win and loss
becomes slightly less surprising. There are certain losses that
I will never forget, but there are many more that I will never re-
member. The same thing goes for the wins. While the money
has remained very real to me in one sense, there has also been
a major emotional disconnection from what I categorize as my
blackjack money. Its funny, there have been times where Ive
freaked out from winning or losing less than $100 and other
times I experience virtually zero emotion for wins and losses
in the six-gure range.
30
By now I was having trouble classifying myself. Its so easy
when you are enrolled in a school, because if some old family
friend or your aunt or grandma ask you can just say, Im go-
ing to school. You sound responsible and professional. Well,
I was at a place where it was hard to sound like either. Either I
was spending way to much time on my hobby to be a normal
person or I needed to start calling what I was doing a job. It
sure didnt feel like a job. At least not like any job I had ever
heard about. It didnt feel like work, thats for sure. I was out
late every night, learning tons, and loving every minute of it.
Im not quite sure at what point I started calling myself pro-
fessional but it was probably about a year after I had quit my
job at the restaurant and I realized that I had no other source
of income. Calling yourself a professional can be an emotion-
ally risky proposition. Before, I could say that I was just check-
ing it out and if I lost money at it, big deal, it was just a hobby.
Now it was my profession. I had to make money at it. And I
was making money at it. I think right around the time I
31
realized that, some of my friends came to the same realiza-
tion. Of course there were skeptics. Heck, if my friend came
to me and told me he was going to be making money playing
blackjack I would have thought he was crazy. But a year into it
some other people and myself started to realize that this was
no joke. It was not a scam. It was not a get rich quick scheme,
although it seemed to have all of the benets of one. So, of
course the question was, could they get in on it too? Seriously,
if you saw one of your friends playing a game ten hours a
week and making a living at it, wouldnt you want in? It wasnt
simply a one way street, however. Since I had rst partnered
with my friend the gambling addict, I had always wanted
companionship. Card counting is a very lonely endeavor. In
a casino, you are surrounded by a lot of people, but there are
few you can relate too. There are the gamblers who are there
for fun, and the employees who are usually trying to chase you
out. Having some friends for the long car rides, and to share
stories with was a dream come true. This is before we even
32
knew about the benets of being on a team. My friend Colin
was one of these rst few people. Although every bone in his
body was adverse to risk and the excitement that came along
with gambling, the stories that I was bringing back about us-
ing math to stick it to the casino machine and having a proven
track record was more than he could resist. Lucky for both of
us, he was living in my living room, trying to save money for
his upcoming wedding. Thus began the training. I taught him
everything I knew. It took about 10 minutes.
One of the funniest things about the good ol days was how
little we all knew about blackjack. Im not sure at what point
I really mastered basic strategy but it was way after I should
have ever put my rst dollar on the table. The only way we
could learn anything was one book at a time. There was no
one to ask questions to, no one to discuss theory with, no one
to train or test. I remember once I was so starved for card-
counting camaraderie that I posted a note on a popular black-
jack website. I got a response. I arranged to meet the guy at a
33
local casino. I was so crushed when I found out that he bent
basic strategy on a soft 18 based upon his gut. Just another
sucker. I focused all of my energy on buying every book I
could get my hands on. It wasnt much but it was all I had, and
somehow, reading about people who had done the same
thing or at least thought the same way made me feel like I
wasnt alone.
By this time, two friends of mine had completed all the train-
ing that I had to ofer and together we were hitting the casino
circuit. I dont remember much of the details, but I do remem-
ber lots of free food and setting my alarm to wake up at 2pm. I
think my favorite thoughts were about how exciting it was that
I was running a quarter-million dollar business with my best
friends, doing my dream job, and I was still only 23. We broke
a million dollars. Nothing compared to the excitement of the
unknown and freedom that I felt. With the changes came new
levels of responsibility and appreciation. I love the industry
and job as much as ever, but for many diferent and, in some
ways deeper, reasons.
35
Probably the single most monumental event in my card
counting career came on a night when I ran into a legitimate
professional member of a very prominent team. I could tell
from across the casino that he was a card counter by the way
he was shufing his chips. Evidently he spotted me too, be-
cause he found me in the parking lot as I was walking out and
started asking me all kinds of questions. What size bet unit
do you use? Whats your risk of ruin? Do you use full kelly or
half kelly betting? All of a sudden I felt like a complete out-
sider to this whole card counting thing. We exchanged phone
numbers and he told me his name was John. I remember go-
ing back to the other two guys I was playing with and telling
them how I had actually met a real professional. A guy on a
team like we had read about in all the books. It was probably
more exciting than a basketball fan meeting Michael Jordan
because card counters are so secretive and dont exactly ad-
vertise. When I left the parking lot I was 50% convinced that
he had given me an actual phone number and 25% convinced
that he had given me his real name.
36
By the next day we had set up a meet and greet. This was
probably the closest thing to a job interview that Ive had in
the last eight years. There were a lot of strange questions and
every other statement was qualied with a privacy clause. It
seemed like every question I asked was met with an answer
like I cant tell you that or Im not allowed to say. But, in the
end, there existed a hope that I may be able to join this elite
group of heroes who I had never met. To this day, Im not ex-
actly sure why John reached out to me in that casino parking
lot. After you are in the advantaged play industry, you gain
a general distrust of casinos and anyone and anything that
you may come across inside of one. He told me at the time,
and I believe him, that his team had never considered anyone
they had met in a casino for a position on the team. Maybe
he thought I was awesome. Maybe he was lonely and bored.
Maybe he wanted to show of a bit. My guess is that there is
some combination of the latter two. Me being awesome is
pretty easy to rule out, especially considering my rst experi-
ence with a test out.
38
If you combine the nightmares of being involved in a train-
wreck and being caught naked in public, you will have a pretty
good idea of my test-out. I was completely out of my element.
It would be like if you grew up playing ping pong in your
grandparents basement and thought you were good, then
show up to some Olympic training facility and were thrown
into a game with people who all brought their own paddles
in padded cases, played by real rules, and wore ping-pong
brand name dry-wik shirts. Standing there in your baggy jeans
you may start to re-think the expertise you thought you had
ve minutes earlier. By the way, this whole ping pong
scenario happened to me as well.
When I had learned to play there was no test. When I trained
my friends there was no test. We all just looked at the chart
and went out. It was casual. It was easy. A little too easy, I
found out. These guys on the team had methods. They had
equipment. They had codes, signals, and a language. Come to
nd out, I had been playing basement level blackjack all this
39
time. This was frustrating. Among my peers I was the author-
ity on card counting. With these guys I was a nobody. There
was no respect, no admiration, and none of the status that I
was used to. I felt like I had been treating this as a hobby the
whole time, which wasnt entirely false. On the other hand,
having my eyes opened to a whole new world of experts and
proven methods was the most valuable thing I had ever expe-
rienced. There were no books written about the types of things
these guys were doing. This was the legit stuf from the under-
ground. To this day the training that I use and the standards
we employ were heavily inuenced by what I learned in my
time with this team. Unfortunately, or fortunately (depending
on how you look at it) the majority of my time with the team
was training. My entire play with the team amounted to one
long weekend trip.
Team members ew in from all parts of the country and con-
verged on Atlantic City, New Jersey. This was my rst time
to Atlantic City and my rst time meeting any of these team
40
members, besides John. It ended up being a pretty crazy
weekend. How casually these players talked about circumvent-
ing surveillance, sessions with tens of thousands of dollars in
wins or losses and meeting card counters who were lawyers,
students, programmers, male and female. I ended up not
making any money for the trip because I couldnt even pass
their basic test in the hotel room before the sessions. But I
did walk away with two things. The rst is that you dont learn
blackjack on accident. I had never even had the possibility of
having someone mentor, train, or apprentice me, so its hard to
say that I underestimated it, but I had no idea how valuable it
was to see what other people had spent years developing and
learning. To apply the proverbial phrase, my blackjack world
had expanded. 2 months ago I was an expert. Now I viewed
myself as a beginner. This made me an incredible asset to my
original partners back home who were waiting to hear where
my blackjack loyalties lied.
41
This leads me to the second lesson I took away. I care about
my friends. In fact, I care about my friends so much that I
would much rather take a friend who has never been in a ca-
sino and train them over the course of six months than team
up with some random card counter from Vegas at the top of
his eld. Although, it was a valuable experience in Atlantic
City something never felt 100 percent to me. Blackjack is a
tough sport. You are being challenged mentally, emotionally
and nancially. Putting your life savings on the line everyday
and getting chased out of casinos by law enforcement can
take a toll on a person. This can all be accelerated when you
have spent 72 hours in a casino-infested town. I decided that if
I was going to play blackjack with people, I want to have more
than blackjack in common with them.
Since that time I have found partners in the most unlikely
of places. Friends, family, friends of friends, even churches.
Our criteria for partners has changed throughout the years,
save one thing. I have never played blackjack with someone
42
who I did not trust* 100 percent. As a result, I have had some
of the most amazing experiences. Six years ago I remember
thinking, Who gets to travel around the world with their best
friends taking money from casinos? I graduated from a fairly
prestigious and competitive high school, from a class that
mostly went on to high-level legal and medical elds. I do not
envy them. I dont like to brag about this, but my guess is that
I make as much an hour as any of them. This hasnt made me
rich but it does mean that I have been able to work as few as
ve days a month and spend the rest of the time with my fam-
ily.
* Although we have always trusted our teammates and
partners 100 percent, my denition of what it means to trust
someone has changed dramatically. In the last eight years I
have become a much more shrewd businessman as well as a
more accurate and conservative judge of character.
44
Tolerance and adaptation are amazing human traits. Its amaz-
ing how you can be living the most exciting job to everyone
around you and even to yourself but by simply adding the
variable of time it is a guarantee that it will cease to be excit-
ing. While it took longer, this did eventually happen. One
thing that I have learned about myself is that when I hit the
ceiling of growth, perceived or real, my motivation will cease
to exist. This means that if I am not being challenged, if I am
not creating and exploring, if I am not risking the possibilities
of growth and failure, I am no longer happy. About ve years
ago I arrived to that point in my blackjack career. It started to
feel like work. My wife had graduated from nursing school and
we were expecting our third child (by the way, Im not really
sure how she did it, but she graduated with honors, on time,
having birthed and raised two children). We had bought two
homes and I had saved up enough money from playing black-
jack that paying bills wasnt a problem. And now it was time to
decide what to do with my time and money. From some very
45
rudimentary research I concluded that property investment
would probably be my best option. I decided that for two
main reasons. It seemed somewhat formulaic. If we could
crack the code, we could make money, similar to blackjack.
And most importantly, there was no ceiling. Unlike blackjack
where you could run out of casinos and bet only as much as
the table limit allowed, with real estate the game was not
over until you owned the entire world. Kind of like RISK. And
I liked playing RISK. So I announced to the other three guys
that I had been playing with for the last two years that I
was retiring from blackjack. I invited one of the three guys,
Colin, who had moved out from my living room by this time,
to join me on my real estate experiential. He said yes and
within two weeks we had registered Maverick Property as
an investment company.
47
Being an entrepreneur is tough. I read somewhere that 95
percent of businesses fail within their rst year. For those of
you who have tried starting a business, the size of how high
this percentage is, should not be a mystery. There are a lot of
things working against starting a business. You can have the
greatest of ideas but not understand how taxes work and there
goes your plan, your investment, and your future. Maverick
became one of these types of businesses very quickly. Educa-
tional and exciting? Yes. Protable? No. Very quickly, Colin
and I realized that if we were going to be able to buy more
property we needed more money. There was only one honest
and dependable way we know how to do that. Take it from
the casinos. Since we werent the Oceans 11 types, it meant
more card counting.
So this was the plan: win $250,000. Get in, get out. Now even
us card counters dont win $100k overnight. At least not usual-
ly. Im not sure exactly, (Im sure its written down somewhere)
but I think it took us about four months. But during those four
48
months something interesting happened. A friend of mine
heard that Colin and I had gotten back into blackjack and he
asked if he could play for us. I told him that it was a temporary
gig, but he seemed pretty excited about it. Colin and I couldnt
think of a reason not to take him, so he was on board. Then he
told his friend about it. Soon his friend was on board. $250,000
later we had a decision to make. We could go buy another
property, but the problem was that we were generating so
much capital from our team that it didnt make nancial sense.
We literally could not aford NOT to play. I use the term play
pretty loosely because then another interesting thing started
to happen. Colin and I started to become more valuable as
trainers and managers than we were as players. This was a
very strange but remarkably natural transition into our fourth
and nal accident.
One could argue my denition of the word accident. That is
ne. I will let them win. When I say accident I am merely
referring to the fact that learning blackjack, playing
49
professionally, and running what came to be a pretty sizable
team was always unplanned and unintentional. In fact, I
remember the day that I shared with Colin about a thought
that had crossed my mind the night before. Briey, very briey
the thought occurred that we may be onto a ten-year business
plan. That may be normal for any other business, but keep
in mind we never planned on running a business. I was just
trying to learn a hobby that would pay for itself for the rest of
summer so I didnt have to think about how much we wished
we hadnt of gotten hit by the 88 year-old man in the Pinto.
Of course, there were some things that were not an accident.
For instance, the business partnership that Colin and I had
formed was very intentional. I started to rene my traits of set-
ting a vision for the team while managing all of the interper-
sonal and subjective issues that came along with managing a
group of counters. This left Colin to run many of the everyday
operations, from deciding how much to bet, how much to
pay, and keep track of every minute we spend in a casino and
50
every cent that moved. For a while we would joke about how I
was kind of like CEO and he was like the COO. At some point,
Im not exactly sure when, this stopped being a joke.
The other thing that was not an accident was the network of
relationships that most of this entire blackjack endeavor was
built upon. Investing in relationships has always been one
of my top priorities (this is somewhat of a ridiculous under-
statement) and when it came time to nding people that we
trusted, or when we looked for our rst $500,00 in capital it
was not a coincidence that neither of these thing were more
than a dozen phone calls away. A few other things that I
brought to the business, which increased both my enjoyment
and its value, was the high emphasis on fairness. There are
many things that we didnt have. Some of these things were a
proven business model and track record, any promises for the
future, experience, and certainly a guaranteed product would
all fall into this category. There were also many times when we
left lawyers in the rear view and operated of of a handshake.
51
In the end this has worked because everyone who knew
us knew that we cared about one thing. Being fair. This
value was reinforced by our general management and team
policy of full disclosure.
What this meant was that anyone on the team was allowed
to know anything about the team at any time. There were no
secrets ever and as a result we had trust. Ive gotten a little ex-
cited here and have rambled of on some details. Getting back
to our main story, one of the things that made this season of
my blackjack career great was that the ceiling was lifted. I was
dealing with new issues, new people, and new business model
after new business model. I was constantly being challenged
and life was, once again, anything but boring. Theres a lot of
things that happened during this time that I could write about.
Like the time we had $110,000 conscated by the US govern-
ment while trying to cross an international border. It was
my full time job for two months trying to get it back. There
was the airplane laser tag that we got comped by the casino.
52
There was the time we made $10,000 of of blackjack coupons
found in some casinos swimsuit calendar. There was one of
our favorite players who brought us a new recruit. It was his
mom. There were also much more serious times of having
to hire and re some of my closest friends. It all amounts to
stacks and stack of stories that are all worth telling in their
own regard. So please do not take this here as a record of what
took place but simply as my story. And part of telling my story
is thinking through the things that come to mind when I con-
sider the last ten years. These are a few of them.
54
Not so long ago, I once again lost interest and motivation to
count cards and even managing the team was starting to feel
routine. In an efort to reduce my workload I thought about re-
cording an intro to a card counting lecture that I had probably
given a hundred times just so I could hand someone a DVD
instead of explaining basic strategy for the thousandth time. I
started to think that if I was to make that DVD Ill bet it would
sell copies to other people interested in learning how to count.
The net result was Blackjackapprenticeship.com. It really
started of with pretty narrow and pathetic plans. Over time,
though, I started to realize that this has the potential to be
the most valuable resource to card counters that exists. After
all, its taking the books that I read, the lessons that I learned,
the conversations I learned from, and condensing it into one
place all while adding a bunch of professionals that I have met
along the way. Sometimes I feel like an old man when I jok-
ingly tell players from our team that they dont know how easy
they have it. Back when I learned, if I had a question, I didnt
55
have someone I could just call up and ask. Im not trying to
make this a giant advertisement for our site but it is interest-
ing that, for me, life after blackjack, once again, involves more
blackjack. It would take something pretty amazing to keep
me stuck in that world that I am unable to escape, and this
site is it. From micro-managing every element of the design
to recording the videos this site is a project that I believe in
and am excited about. Will it last forever? No. Im sure sooner
or later Ill be ready for another change of pace but until then
Im going to continue to take it on as a challenge of how can I
take the combined card counting experience of me and every
contact that I ever had and condense it into the most awesome
blackjack site on the internet.
This last year I thought about going back to school to get
my college degree. This was the rst time that I had thought
about college in a long time. I think it would make my parents
happy. At times, it has been pretty scary to imagine what life
after blackjack looks like without having anything to fall back
56
on. It makes me wonder if I could end up back at the restau-
rant waiting tables. Its kind of funny, when I was rst getting
into blackjack I remember a friend telling me that I should go
get a college degree so I have something to fall back on. In
most peoples minds this was a positive thing. I remember
thinking 2 things then. I never want to have the type of job
that depended upon a piece of paper to prove your qualica-
tions. And I dont want anything to fall back upon. Sometimes
I think that not having anything to fall back upon is what
makes me, and others like me, succeed. On the ip side, I
have seen many friends with plenty to fall back upon never
succeed because of that.
Being an entrepreneur is a tricky thing. Its almost a job
description in itself and there are many days where I have
wanted to quit. The lure of a steady income, not having your
entire life savings in play on the sequence of four cards, and
the air of legitimacy have all been aspects of the 9-5 that I
57
have missed more than once. But when its all said and done,
I look back, and I wouldnt have done anything diferently.
Thats not to say I didnt make mistakes but I would have
made mistakes either way. The result is that I have spent the
last ten years working with some of the best friends I could
ever ask for. As you can imagine, playing blackjack for a living
attracts a pretty interesting crowd. Many of the people I have
partnered with are some of the brightest minds and most in-
novate thinkers that I have ever known. That has lead to busi-
ness partnerships and idea collaboration of all kinds. Well, all
kinds but one. The 9-5 kind. Sometimes I wonder what I might
put on a resume if I ever needed one. Im not really sure
whats going to impress the masses but on a reective note I
know there are things that I am proud of accomplishing. I am
a better business man than I was ten years ago. I am a better
business partner than I was ten years ago. I know more about
hiring the right people. I have learned how to re people
because they were wrong for the job but still be able to give
58
them dignity and respect as a human and a friend. Ive learned
how to manage my time better. I am more aware of how to
acknowledge and compensate for my weaknesses. I am better
at delivering bad news. None of these things have anything to
do with blackjack and I have the feeling that when I am old it
wont be the blackjack that ever really mattered.
60
There you have it. Thats my story. 8,000 words of it, at least.
Im not quite sure how to wrap this up but one thing I ofer is
this: If you are asking yourself if you could start a business,
travel the world, or learn how to count cards dont just take
into account the cost of doing it. Take into account the cost
of not doing it. There are a few people out there that feel
sorry for me but there are many more that have looked at me
and envy the position I am in. I have been told this by poor
students and executives with six gure earnings. What these
people do not realize is that living my dream life did not begin
when I started making hundreds of thousands of dollars at
the blackjack table. It started when I decided that the cost of
quitting my job and biking across the country did not come
close to the cost of always wondering what would have hap-
pened had I decided not to step out and take a risk. So hope-
fully this story will make you think bigger than the status quo.
Watch out though, because when you start to do that you may
nd yourself accidentally landing in some places you never
thought were possible.

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