Learning Black Jack
What I Learned from Playing Black Jack
In the mid-I 970s, my gambling interest was backgammon. I bought every backgammon book I could find—and most of them were very bad (Not so today, Some very bright and competent players are writing about that game) Winning at gambling was the goal. So I wanted to learn everything about the game that I could. The same black jack stores that sold books on backgammon also sold books on black jack. And many of my backgammon buddies also played black jack and talked of their successful forays to Vegas, so I got the book Playing Black Jack as a Business by Lawrence Revere.
Revere’s book promised that I could be a winner if I did things his way. I heard stories of guys with little success with women at home (i.e., me) who would learn to play Black Jack Tables and have these romantic all-expenses-paid-by-the-casino trips to Vegas with a different gorgeous lady each time. Sign me up!
After I learned basic strategy reasonably well, I came across a magazine ad for a place called Vegas World. It promised free room and board if I would bring in $2,500 and play $25 a hand for so many hours. This casino, run by Bob Stupak and located on a small part of the site of the current Stratosphere, didn’t have very good black jack rules. But I really didn’t know how to get good deals at any casinos that did.
las Vegas
So I took on Stupak Thanksgiving weekend 1978. It was my first trip ever to Las Vegas. I played the whole weekend and won $2,000. (Actually I won $1,500 and received the extra money from a casino mistake. More on that later.) I was hooked. On that particular trip, most of the time when I drew a card to a 15 or 16, I ended up pulling a 4 or 5. Not bad! Other players would stand on these “stiff” hands and I’d win while they’d lose. I felt quite superior. I knew how to play and was on my way!
Since that Vegas trip had ended up positive and the books all said that I could Double Exposure win, everything seemed natural. I figured that most of my trips would turn out that way. They didn’t. Years later, I came to realize that the game at Vegas World had almost a 1% house edge and that for 400 hands or so on a weekend, luck is more predominant than rules or even skill. My return trips to Vegas World were negative. Each weekend at a time, I chalked it up to bad luck. But I now know that with Bob Stupak’s rules and Bob Dancer’s skills, I had no chance.
Before I chronicle the rest of what I learned from black jack, let me tell you a fascinating story from my first trip. I ended up being mentioned in the Las Vegas Review-Journal that weekend as a “high-roller gambler.” I saved the article for years, but lost it somewhere along the way.
Unbeknownst to me, a sting was about to go down Black Jack - Read Backgammon History at Vegas World. A group of cheating players had approached a dealer and told him he would earn a great deal of money if he’d let them substitute a fake shoe (called a “cooler”) with the cards stacked in a particular way. Once the shoe was in place, the team would play out the stacked shoe and take the casino for big bucks. After the shoe had been played, the cards would be shuffled and the evidence destroyed—everyone would be home free. The dealer told the gang it sounded like a good idea, then went straight to his bosses with the story. The plan was to send the dealer to the table with the best cameras located near it (including one feeding to Stupak’s second-floor suite), and cram the place with undercover Metros (the Vegas police), who would be playing at nearby black jack tables.
At the appointed time, everything was in place and would have gone down as Play Black Jack planned, except for one thing. At just that moment, I walked up to the black jack table that was being staked out, asked for a $500 marker, and started to play. And play. And since I was winning, I kept playing! The place was filled with very nervous team players waiting for me to leave, and Metro officers playing black jack and losing far more than they had budgeted because they thought they would be playing for only a few minutes for cover purposes.
The dealer mentioned several times how nice the gourmet room was and that if I wanted to go, the service was best before 7 p.m. Different pit people, all in a friendly manner, told me that the key to winning in the long run was to quit while I was ahead.
“It would be a shame to give that all back.”
Stupak must have been fuming! When a sting is about to go down, everyone’s adrenaline is flowing because there’s no telling what’s about to happen. If the bad guys made the cops and decided that the dealer had double-crossed them, things could get ugly fast. The police all had guns. Did the players? Who knew? If they did, would they be arrested quietly or would this be the “Shootout at Vegas World”? I played blithely on. I was totally unaware that anything was going on other than the fact that this was my first trip to Vegas and I was winning. Just like I was supposed to.
