Hey, everybuddy, and welcome to Life is a Gamble. This is episode
number nine, Sheriff AP. Sheriff AP has an origin story like no other
I've heard, and must have amazing intestinal fortitude because what he went through in
the beginning of his career as a professional gambler I think would have left many
people in the dust quitting and not coming back. I'm also kind of astounded
that his wife didn't protest vehemently and try to get him to stop as well.
So he has a pretty crazy story and we will get to it right
now. Sheriff AP, Welcome to life is a gamble. Great, thanks
for having me. It's great to finally talk to you. I've always listened
to You're Gambling with an Edge stuff in the past, and it's a huge
honor. I can't believe I'm talking to you because a lot of my past
five years of my career has been inspired by a lot of your content.
Oh well, thank you. That's always nice to hear. But you had
quite an unusual story, and that's what I want to jump into, So
let's start with you. At some point decided to take up counting cards for
a living, right, that's right. Yeah, six years ago. Yeah,
and in the beginning, how did that go for you? In the
beginning, it was a very rocky It was a lot of training and unexpected
ups and downs. And after I met the right people who were able to
test me out, it kind of excelled me into my career and where I
realized I could keep doing this for quite some time more than just a hobby.
At some point, you had this incident that I want to get into
involving your car, So can we can we just go to that and maybe
you can set the scene with us You were with your whole family, right,
sure. Yeah. I've had a lot of incidents with cars, so
I trying to make sure I know which specific one you're talking about, because
the nature of the businesses, you're always on the road, and I've had
a lot of car situations. This one was a big disaster. Okay.
Yeah, that was in twenty twenty. You were in the process of moving
across the country, my wife and my two kids, and we were in
the middle of a long road trip. I'd stopped at three casinos in northern
California and we were driving all the way to southern California. Stopped at one
place there and then we were headed for Vegas was our final destination, and
Barstow, the little town right before you hit that long desert drive before Vegas.
It was like ten thirty pm. We got blindsided by a guy who
was out of the influence and rolled the car. It terrified. The airbags
deployed, and the longest two or three seconds of my life, it felt
like forever, was when I was turning around to check the back seat to
see if the kids were okay, and they were shaking up. One was
crying, but they were fine. How many how many kids do you have?
Just too? I have seven year old and a ten year old?
Okay, So so literally you get smashed and the car flips over with your
kids and your wife in it or sorry, it didn't completely flip over,
it did like a seven twenty on the road. It clipped back right passenger
side and the car spun way out of control. Super shocking. I've never
been in a car accident before that one. It totaled the car and so
then what happened. So we got out of the car, waited for the
police. We spoke with the other driver. The gas station attendant nearby came
out and said, hey, if there's anything I can do, I would
love to help. And she took the two kids into the gas station and
let them pick out any snacks they wanted, and they love that. They've
never been able to just pick out anything, and we're always very strict when
we go shopping, and so they just loaded up these bags of all these
snacks and that was a very nice thing that they did, that we remember.
But I got a record to come and take the car to a collision
center, and thankfully my father in law was in Las Vegas. He was
able to take his rental car out to Barstow and pick us up. But
it was a very late, hard evening that night. I was just very
grateful everyone was. Okay. Now, if I'm remembering correctly, weren't you
in kind of the middle of a big losing streak at this point? That's
correct, Yeah, And it was so devastating that I had to zoom out
and look at the big picture of like where my life was going at that
point, beyond the financial aspect. I was at my lowest, longest losing
streak. At how many hours had you been losing? It was one hundred
and fifty hours of going down. If you're looking at a line graph,
it was still in the downtrend. And it was also around two hundred hours
of a break even if you know what I mean by break even stretch.
Yeah. Yeah, so you went down this big slide down and then for
another two hundred hours you just sat there. Yeah, break treading water.
I couldn't get to a new all time high, that's right. Yeah,
And okay, so now you have this accident, your car gets towed,
and your father in law comes and picks you guys up. That's right.
He picked us up and took us to our hotel that night, and yeah,
we didn't know exactly how the trip was going to go. After that,
we stayed in Vegas an extra five days, just trying to get a
new car and recover some of what was lost. But yeah, that was
a very tough time in my life. Well, now, maybe I'm remembering
this wrong, But wasn't your money in the car? No, some of
our bankroll was, yes, that's correct, but not the majority. But
we did have another incident a week after that where we were robbed. Okay,
this is what I'm thinking, This is what I was thinking of.
Okay, so now your car is totaled, and now a week later you
get robbed, and how did that? Where did that happen? Out?
What happened there? It was at the Tuscany in Las Vegas. I had
played the night before. I didn't get backed off. It was just a
short session. I was mostly just cashing out my free play chips and doing
a short session. And then we went out to eat that night at Fremont
Street and we came back to our room and everything had been completely ransacked,
and my wife's stuff was all over the bedding, and I realized that my
backpack was gone, and it had twelve thousand dollars in it. It had
two laptops, a bunch of hard drives, and it was just disappeared.
And was that the majority of your bank roll at that point? It was
a big portion. It was about twenty five percent of the bank roll.
And so I'm sure the police were called, right We filed the police report.
It was around four thirty am by the time we finished everything. But
yeah, I talked to the detectives the next day and we got to work
on trying to track the bag and the whereabouts of everything. There were credit
cards in the bag and they were getting peemed at the Miracle Mile shops down
the road, And yeah, we actually did have the identity of the individuals,
but the cops didn't want to pursue going straight to their addresses because they
needed more proof, and so, yeah, it was it was a long
process and even today we're still kind of pursuing this case. It's been two
and a half years, almost three years. But this is crazy. So
the police knew who did it, but wouldn't go right because it was twenty
twenty that all of their detectives were out on leave except for a few and
they were so overtaken with a lot of homicide and other bigger cases that grand
larceny was not even on their priority list at the time. And now the
individuals have moved. They did eventually go to their addresses and try to get
a hold of them, but the people the thieves have moved from their address,
and you're still trying to get the stuff back, get the money back
or the I mean, by now, I'm sure the money's gone, but
right by now we're trying to get damages for the the hotel. I didn't
even mention the way that thieves got into our room is the hotel casino let
them into the room. They checked them in as if we had checked out
or something, and they forgot So it was negligence on the casino's part.
Oh wow, so you're suing them? Yes, oh yeah, well no
wonder it's taking years because those lawsuits take forever. Right But but okay,
so now your car's been total You've been on this three hundred and fifty hour
losing streak. Right now your money gets stolen, and how did you decide
to keep going? I feel like I didn't have any choice at that point
because I was thousands of hours into my career. I knew that blackjack works,
and I knew that there were still some good double deck games that I
was attacking and I was being able to play. So I didn't give up.
I was extremely persistent and I played for hundreds of hours more and finally
broke through an all time high. If you want to hear the end of
the story, but at that low point in my life, I had so
many things happen, a sequence of events that were so bad that I just
felt like, if I make it out of this, I will be able
to make it through anything. Yeah, I agree, but did we miss
any of the low points or was there something else? Pier there was something
else. About two weeks after the robbery. I think I've told the story
once on Stephen Bridge's video. It's one of his bonus videos. I was
assaulted by a cop and off duty cop at Northern California casino and everybody's like,
why didn't you pursue that case? That was an obvious lawsuit on your
hands. Wait, so what did the cop do? What happened? I
went into play for about an hour at a Double Dead game and it was
on a Saturday night. It was very busy, and I get approached by
a guy in a suit who calls me by the wrong name. He says,
we know what you're doing and you can't be here. You're going to
be arrested. He said, I was. He said, I've been caught
for counting cars before. I shouldn't be there, and I'm going to be
arrested. That's the first thing he tells me. And before I could even
push my chips and I'm still surrounded by guys, I just grabbed my seven
hundred dollars and chips or whatever it was, put in my pocket start walking
for the exit and they all follow me through this crowd of people. There
was a raffle going on, and so there's a big crowd now. As
I just remember, all of the securities seemed to be focused on me,
and I was like, this is really weird. I'm just leaving and while
I walk out of the casino, they block me from exiting the valet.
More security guards with earpieces and they're just like forming this wall and kind of
shuffling me off to the side of the valet, and I'm just like,
I just want to leave. I want to get to my wife. My
wife is in the car. And I realized that there's a police officer right
there, and he also has an earpiece just like all the security guards.
And I didn't realize at the time, but he was an off duty cop
working security and he just immediately became physical when I thought he was going to
be kind of on my side and help me get out of this situation,
and he grabs me, throws me to the ground on the curb very forcefully,
almost in a way to be like I can physically do this to you,
you have to stay put. And so I tried not to lose my
cool, but I remember I was shouting. I was like, why are
you being physical right now? Why are you throwing me? And I tried
to get up one more time he pushed me down again. I took my
phone out, I called my wife, I called my brother and they came
out to the valet and they started arguing my case. But he seemed like
he only wanted to know my ID, information, where I was from,
and he wanted to like verify things. I guess they had me confused with
somebody. The end of the story is he turned into this different person like
I switch flipped, and he was like, oh, there's been a mistake.
It looks like I'm going to walk into your car and you're free to
go. I'm so sorry, And he just started pretending to be friendly.
And why did you decide not to Oh wait a minute, was that an
Indian consider it was that tribal? Oh yeah, well, although you can't
sue the tribe, but you can sue him as an individual, exactly right.
And I maybe past the statute of limitations at this point. And the
reason I always tell people I didn't pursue it is because I had to deal
with the insurance company for that car. Accident. I had to deal with
so many other cases going to detectives in Las Vegas with that incident. Yeah,
every day I was on the phone with detectives trying to recover our stuff
that was lost. And it's just too much, but it really has.
It's given me resilience for how to deal with traveling issues that may occur when
you're traveling, and also criminal activity. Yeah and okay, but what was
your wife saying at this point, like time to go get a job?
I mean, yeah, we really should ask her. I can't speak completely
for her, but well she must have, you know, voiced some opinion
about what was going on in your life. I mean, both of you.
Your whole lives were turned upside down. She was wanting me to consider
switching career paths, going back to working at Amazon or being an accountant or
eBay like I used to do. We actually did start up an eBay account
in twenty twenty and try to start selling again. But yeah, it was
right around that time. I expanded my network at the end of twenty twenty,
and I I shot through a new all time high and just kept going.
I kept pushing through and it's still it's still my right number one source
of income as of twenty twenty three. And how much are you playing now?
Not as much. I was doing about a thousand hours a year Now
I'm down to about three or four hundred hours a year. For the past
two years, I've been learned other things too. So I want to get
to one other story which has kind of been in the news a lot lately,
which is about your incident in Colorado. Okay, Yeah, yeah,
that one caught a lot of traction online because of the video. That shows
how ignorant a gaming commission agent can be, and also police can be about
the law. They just don't even know what the law is when it comes
So, yeah, phill Us in what happened? Okay, you can see
the video on Stephen Bridge's YouTube. I'll put a link in it in the
show notes, I'll put a link to the video. Okay. I was
playing in black Hawk, Colorado at a casino because I was in the middle
of a layover on my flight that goes through Denver. I just rented a
car and went to do about a five or six hour session and I lost
about four thousand dollars. Happens all the time as a blackjack player and then
as I go to leave, I'm stopped by a guy in a suit who
wants to see my ID, and I showed him my ID for a quick
second. I didn't give it to him, and I put it back in
my wallet and he asks, I need to take your ID with me to
check something. And I've been through this before. I knew I had a
flight to catch. I didn't want to even get started with handing him my
ID. I was like, I would just like to cash out and leave,
and he immediately says, I'm not going to be able to cash out
because I didn't hand over my ID to him and I haven't even gone to
the cage yet. I just stepped away from the table and so I said,
well, then I'll call gaming Commission. He said, you're welcome to
call Gaming Commission, and I started looking for Colorado Gaming Commission my phone and
I realized this is just going to take too long. I may have to
just catch these out later, and so I walked to my car and I
was like, I'm just going to leave, and as I'm driving out of
the parking garage, a big black SUV pulls up and stops me right at
the exit and basically blocks me in this little area that I can't move,
and some lights start flashing and I was like, oh, it's a police
officer, I guess, even though it doesn't say police on the vehicle.
And a guy gets out of the vehicle who has a thing around his neck
that says police, but he doesn't have a badge. Very confusing, I
don't understand. You can see it in the video. And he walks up
to the window says he's from the Gaming Commission and it demands to see my
ID and he tells me I'm gonna have to go back at art. Yeah,
he says, I have to have to stop what I'm doing, give
them my idea, and they're going to review the tapes to see if I
if I'm going to leave, and I said, I'm not going to give
you my idea. I'm gonna wait till the police get here. So I
called the cops and he's like, I've already called the cops myself, and
so we call the police, wait on them to finally get there. They
arrive and I told the police I'm just trying to leave, that's it.
I just want to get to the airport because I have a flight to catch,
and the officer says, and I'll quote, I can't let you leave.
He has more authority than I do and points at this gaming commission officer
who's telling me that I can't leave because I may have been counting cards,
which is oh he said that. He said, the counting cards. Yeah,
that's if that's a crime or something. That's when I turned my phone
on. I really didn't even want to start recording, because sometimes that can
escalate aggression with casino employees or people they don't like to be yours or whatever.
But I had to turn my phone on because this was just insane.
I had the shift manager telling me I can't cash out. I had a
gaming commission telling me I shouldn't be counting guards. I had the police telling
me that they don't have any authority to let me leave. I was just
like am I in Twilight Zone? Here? What is going on? And
one of them who wasn't that was saying to you that card counting was illegal
in Colorado. That was the Gaming commission agent who has since been relieved of
his duties. From what I've heard, A surprise me. Yeah, maybe
it was his first day on the job. Who knows, So what happened
the video? I posted that evening or the next evening in a forum because
I wanted people to see how in saying it was a casino employees, wait
before you posted the video, how did you get out of the situation.
Yeah, they eventually realized they didn't have time to go over the footage,
and he just said you're free to go. After about an hour and a
half hour and forty five minutes, and they let me go. Oh my
god. It wouldn't let me catch my chips out, but they said I
could go, and I missed my flight. I booked another flight about six
hours later, and I still have the chips today, and I'm pursuing a
lawsuit for damages for that trip. And those lawsuits can take forever, as
we all know, so it's ridiculous how long they take it, even if
you have very clear video evidence and everything that's pretty obvious what the issue was.
They didn't know the law. So where are you now? You're still
playing You're yes, but it sounds like a lot less than you were before.
I'm also pursuing other projects that I work quite a bit on during the
weeks that are not gambling involved, correct, Yeah, And so do you
see yourself still pursuing card counting, you know, down the road five years
from now, you think you'll still be doing it or five years from now?
Probably not, But for the next one to two years, yes,
I mean it kind of depends on how long some of these games last that
I'm attacking. You know, sometimes they'll last a few years, and other
times they just kind of dry up. Well, there are always more games,
right, It's a big country and a big world, But it's true,
it's hard to say I'll probably be playing two to three years from now,
five years that's a long ways off. Well, I guess it also
will depend on how successful the projects that you're working on are. If you
start making you know, twice as much money, it's something else been correct,
Yeah, we'll see. I should also say about the Colorado case.
What adds to the ignorance of all of the city employees and the casino employees
is Colorado had just recently raised the maximum you can bet at the tables about
eight months before that incident, so it's almost like they had never seen any
real action or real issues with blackjack player. Who knows the law or the
basics of the law at least, and so I think that's really it was
just a perfect recipe for for their ignorance to be outed on that evening.
Yeah, what happened there? All right? Well, it's a pretty crazy
story all the way around, and I'm glad you got through that disastrous streak
and came out the other side of it. Yes, thank you, me
too. I'm so glad that's over and I it never happens to anybody else.
Yeah, all right, Well, I really want to thank you for
doing this, and I will include a link to the Crazy Officer and Colorado
in the show notes for everybody who wants to go see it and thank you
again. Sounds great, Yeah, thanks for having me. Well there you
have it. That is all for this episode, and I hope you enjoyed
it. If you did tell a friend, rate it, write a review
if you want, that would be great. I'm always interested to hear from
you, So you can reach me at Life is a Gamble Pod at gmail
dot com, or you can find me on Twitter at our WM twenty one.
So until next time, I'll see Elena. That that about about that about