Speaker 1: Good afternoon.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Gambling with an Edge.
Speaker 3: Now Here are your hosts, Bob Dancer and Richard Munchkin.
Speaker 1: Good afternoon, Welcome to Gambling with an Edge.
Speaker 2: I'm Bob Dancer and I'm Richard Munchman.
Speaker 3: Today we're having one of our irregularly scheduled podcasts. This
time is celebrating the twenty twenty four Black Jock Ball.
Everyone other than me on this podcast is a Blackjack
Hall of Fame member. Along with Richard and me is
Blackjack Ball originator, good guy and all around curmudgeon Max.
Speaker 1: Rubin, Thank you very much, winner.
Speaker 3: Of the skills competitions, former MiG Blackjack Team manager John Chang,
Hi you doing, guys, and the newest inductee to the
Blackjack Hall of.
Speaker 1: Fame, Rick Night Train Blaine.
Speaker 4: Hey, Hello everybody.
Speaker 3: All right, welcome all the gentle Gambling with an Edge.
First questions for Max. This year's ball had several differences
from events in prior years, including the dress codes. How
is it decided to change things up?
Speaker 5: Oh, there's quite a few reasons. One, I got sick
of the belly aching and people saying the test was
too long, and we were the Calcutter took too long,
and I think they were right and it needed a change.
We need to pressure that up. A lot of people
don't mind wearing decent clothes, but they really don't like
wearing penguin suits, and they were complaining about that somewhat,
and I said, that's okay too. We're in a very
nice location, so you really can't overdress. But more importantly,
Betmash was going on this weekend and it's hot outside,
and we started at six o'clock and nobody should have
shown up and waited outside like we do normally. We
wait out and when we're in October late September it's
really nice outside, it's horrible right now. So we just
said summer themed. It's going to be tropical. Come in,
no registration, know anything, just come in and take place,
take part in what's happening, and they did. We changed
the way we fed the people. Instead of sit down dining,
we had dining stations and that was a start. And
then we had a World Championship of well, the world's
fastest card counter competition, and that turned out really well.
I expected about twenty twenty four people to get into it,
and we had over forty and that went off during
the night. That was really good. We also gave tickets
we changed and we made the calfetta a little bit
of a pair of mutual and we gave everybody that
walked in the door a free five dollars entry into
who was going to win the World Championship, and that
included the employees. And the great thing about the employees.
I went back yesterday to pick up something that we
left there, and as I walked in, all of the
managers were gathered around boxes. I said, what are you
guys doing? And it was really funny looking. It was
the direct hector of sales and the personnel and the
catering people and they're all digging through these boxes and
I said, what are you doing? And they handed me
something that was some kind of mechanical thing and said
this is yours, and I said, no thanks. They took
their tickets that we gave them. We gave every employee
one of those free five dollars tickets, and they bet
across the board. They went one to eleven and they
each put a ticket. They each put that tickets one, two, three, four, five,
sixty seven, and then they pulled the money and of
course they won and they hit some and they took
that money, went out to Nellis's Air Force Base to
the auction and bought maybe a dozen boxes of unknown stuff.
And they were going through at the Rubo Center yesterday.
It was a riot. They had an original Lenyard skinnered
album still in the plast deep. They had all kinds
of just obscure things, but it really turned out well
for them. They said it's we're the favorite party they
ever had.
Speaker 1: Because I just.
Speaker 6: Want to add the original question was, you know, why
was it moved to August? And Max mentioned bet Bash,
But bet Bash goes Tuesday to Friday, and a lot
of people come to town for bet Bash. It's a
convention for sports betters, and so they wouldn't have to
leave and come back. We wanted to put it right
up against bat Bash. But another big factor was the
fact that we really want Thorpe to be able to attend,
and he often travels in September and October, so that
was another key reason to move it to August, so
that we could be sure Ed Thorpe would be there.
Speaker 5: And this was the first one that Ed had been
to in a long while because of health reasons. And
he wouldn't go out during the height of COVID and
finally caught it last year in New Zealand. But he's
not afraid of it anymore. He did wear a mask,
but so he came he's ninety two and got a
standing o when he came up to speak, and you know,
he's just such a legend in the game, and he's
such a wonderful guy and a great speaker, and he
accommodates every it was. That was probably the real highlight
of the night was still having Thorpe there for many
many people.
Speaker 3: Okay, we mentioned this card counting contest. What was the
format and how did you said, there's forty people in it?
Speaker 1: How did that work? Well?
Speaker 5: I didn't know how many were going to be in it,
so I put in a I put together a board,
had it printed, and the first thirty two people who
showed up they picked up cards and it was ran
through as through eight and that would put you in
your position on the board, and then they just had
a playoff starting at six o'clock all the way through
about seven point thirty. It was just Manolomano and you
just went down the brackets and see where you get
but we started filling up and we oversold, so we
had a backup set of brackets, so we put those
guys in. The guys that had to come through that
bracket had to win seven rounds. Were the guys that
came through the initial bracket only had to win five rounds,
so the late rivals had to play more or but
one of the later rivals wound up being in the finals.
That was pretty good. Yep, so were you late?
Speaker 1: John's not sure. I was on the second board, and uh.
Speaker 5: Yes, they are just trying to okay, all right, okay, yeah,
I don't remember how many I went through some first
serve So next year we'll have a bigger board. But
it worked out really well. I think it was really hectic.
Some people had some really bizarre counts. One guy had
an account and he had a wrong halves doubled an eight. Yeah,
what was the time?
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 2: What was the fastest time?
Speaker 5: Nobody broke ten seconds?
Speaker 6: I didn't Yeah, okay, Actually I think I was told John,
your your final time was like thirteen point three or something.
Speaker 2: Was that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's what I saw on the board, thirteen thirty five.
Speaker 8: But you know, they took out five cards, so it's
really closer to well, if you add ten percent, it's
like fourteen point seven.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it should be faster if they take out
more cards.
Speaker 2: That's what he's said.
Speaker 3: Thirty years ago, John, presumably you were a much faster
counter than you are now.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised that you ended up winning this contest?
Speaker 8: I was totally surprised. I was not expecting at all
to win. You know, like a couple of years ago,
when I was in the skills competition, there was a
countdown and Cody just destroyed me. He smoked me like twice.
So I thought, forget it. There's no way I'm gonna
be able to win. There's other people out there who
are also just fast, I figured, And you know, yeah,
I was also as you said twenty or.
Speaker 1: Thirty years ago, I was faster.
Speaker 8: I remember thinking I could do it in ten if
I got lucky, because he.
Speaker 1: Used to do a lot faster than ten.
Speaker 5: If you'll recall at the original few original few black
jack balls, you can crack ten easy.
Speaker 1: You I had you.
Speaker 5: You were my secondeseat after well the field was number two.
Daryl was number one. He'd been practicing. He was going
to get you and then you were third. You were
third ranked if you saw the board I had up
there and what the future's line was. So I expected
you to be at the finals. I expected Daryl and
he got COVID the day before, and he is not
happy by the way that you want you. I'm sure
the man and step up and give him a chance
to beat you.
Speaker 8: I messaged him, and I, you know, I just conceded
before he even started. You know, he said, yeah, I
couldn't break fifteen seconds, but then again I hadn't counted
in forty years or whatever, and I'm like, yeah, okay,
I understand. He said, well, I just practiced, and I
got down to eleven. I'm like, well, you know, Munchkin
told me when I RSVP, he said you should practice.
I thought, yeah, you know, there's going to be you know,
Cody kicking and so I thought, yeah, there's no chance.
Speaker 1: All right, That's what I thought.
Speaker 8: And then the night of the Hall of Fame dinner
that you've been practicing, John, I thought, well no, and.
Speaker 1: Well you should. I'm like, all right, I go home,
you know, it felt like and I went to.
Speaker 7: You know, I talked with Jelko for like three hours afterward.
Speaker 1: I didn't get home till I don't know, after midnight.
Finally practiced for half.
Speaker 7: An hour or something, maybe twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't really.
Speaker 8: I didn't tie myself, but it wasn't very long. I
was like getting tired, I'm going to go to sleep.
But I did improve by about a second, Like, well, okay,
you know, I didn't. I didn't break through anything, but yeah,
you know it did improve.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 5: It was so funny because as this was evolving, some
of the young kids were coming up and said, we're
figuring out a new way, and you just count the
tens and if you have more time then it's going
to be big. We're gonna we're gonna be win this
next year, they're going to come up with speed down.
Henry thought he had the past was the fastest counter,
but he hadn't practiced, and Henry's eighty years old.
Speaker 1: That would have been that would have been embarrassing. Huh.
Speaker 3: So, in addition to the car speed counting event, there's
a competition for the gross Cheam Cup. Now, there's usually
twenty one questions for that, this time there were eleven.
Speaker 1: Munchkin, you want to talk about.
Speaker 2: This yeah, well, yeah.
Speaker 6: One of the complaints over the years was that U
two things. One it took way too long, and two, uh,
you know, it was really kind of random because there
were so many questions that had that were just you know,
kind of random trivia, and and so the luck factor
was way too high and it didn't really refract reflect
people who were good at blackjack.
Speaker 2: So we cut it down to eleven.
Speaker 6: Questions and all of the questions were blackjack related, and
we really sped up the grading of the test. You know,
in the past, we would go through all the questions
and then count up how many people had right and wrong.
This time, we just did it as sudden death. So
everybody in the room held their card up. We asked
the first we gave the first answer, anybody who missed
it put their card down, and then we went to
the second question, and anybody who missed it put their
card down, and by the third question we were down
to the final table.
Speaker 5: We had seven questions. When we got to four, then
we had to back up to get our finals. But
when we got down to after three questions, we had
one hundred and fifty people in the room and we
got down.
Speaker 1: To seven people yeah.
Speaker 6: But the one that's the one that really eliminated the
vast majority of people was question two was if if
the dealer has a six up, what is your edge?
Regardless of what your hand is, you don't see your hand,
the dealer has a six up, what is your edge?
And it was multiple choice, and that eliminated almost everybody
in the room, and.
Speaker 1: Even the ones who made it guessed.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but the question, and it didn't
matter what the rules would be. The possible answers were
thirteen dollars, nineteen, twenty four, twenty nine, and thirty five. Well,
the only one that fell in the middle there between
twenty three and twenty five twenty six dollars is the.
Speaker 1: Six and but some real players got it.
Speaker 5: But I was astounded that Mike Shackelford missed the second
question book all the way through to the finals on
us and you know, he literally wrote the book on
a lot of this stuff. But a lot of people
went down fast. It was interesting. Well we'll learn next year.
But to be fair, each question did have four parts.
For example, on the old third one here, which one
of these was not one of Don Schlessinger's illustrious eighteen.
We had that one come up, and yeah, we had
a quite a few different things, but not knowing one
of the illustrious eighteen that just cleared out the room
just emptied it. Yeah, so they didn't know, but they
should have because we'd posted it during dinner and said
be careful watch this question. It's going to be on
the test. But no one paid attention.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 5: It was I like the way it turned out. We've
got quite a few more questions. It was fun, it
was fast, It was really exciting when they came up
to the table and we had a great tiebreaker and
that was listing the naming and we had the people
line up and they had name one of the twenty
nine hotel casino I was in Las Vegas with two
thousand rooms or more. Ah, that's pretty astounding that there's
twenty nine of them here. Yeah, and two of whom
has just closed.
Speaker 1: And two of them have just closed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Rag Tropic Canna would have been on that list.
Speaker 5: Yep. So it's uh, it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 3: So once we got down to the final table, how
was that competition run?
Speaker 5: Well, the competition went through and that's I'll let Munchkin
tell you about that one munchkin runs the finals, Richard,
you want to tell them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you know it's it's four four three whatever.
The the first one was uh, whole card strategy, so
you know, you were you were dealt a hand and
you get to see the dealer's whole card and make
the right play hit stand double split.
Speaker 2: And you know that.
Speaker 6: Uh that was funny because it was a little bit controversial.
Bobner session, the blackjack attorney made it to the final
table and his hand was fifteen against an ace and uh,
fifteen against eleven and he hit it, and that that
is the incorrect play. And later I had several people
come up and say, you know, uh, according to you know,
Mike Shackelford has a chart online at Wizard of Odds
and it says that that that's the correct play. And
I said, uh, well, you know, would you care to
it is a close it is a close play.
Speaker 1: But uh composition close.
Speaker 6: Uh, I don't know that that's maybe on single deck,
but Mike, Mike Shackleford's chart was for an infinite deck.
Speaker 2: And I but what I said to the you know, the.
Speaker 6: People who came up to me was which number do
you want to trust Mike Shackelford's or James Grosjean's and
you know, and uh, I know where I bet. And
but then once you know, people went looked at his
chart and saw that it said infinite deck, it was like, oh, well,
that's that's where the error. I mean, that's where the
discrepancy comes in.
Speaker 5: But it's still so non intuitive because you're supposed to hit,
you know, with us that all the way up. So
a typical person sitting out there would say, well, of
course you hit right or sitting there, that's a that's
a great question. But they got harder if they went
around the table. How many did you get two questions?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it was the second one, so we went first,
and they got harder.
Speaker 5: The last couple were just impossible, just impossible, but they were.
Speaker 7: Great pretend you know, A yeah, I still don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh that's on the test.
Speaker 6: But he's talking about the final table, like I think
he's talking about the the the whole card place. And
part of the reason for this is there are you know,
uh Internet heroes, you know, who would say things all
the time like, oh, well, you know, if you can
see the dealer's whole card the play is obvious, and
so the whole point of this is it's not obvious,
you know. You know again, I think it's been three years.
Speaker 2: In a row.
Speaker 6: We then had a memorizing Sequences of Cards competition, and
again somebody could not remember the first card of the sequence,
and you know why.
Speaker 5: It was Michael Kaplan and he was third. So he
started memorizing at three because he knew he wasn't going
to have to know the first two. That was the
Andy Block move about ten years ago. He did that too.
You've got to memorize them all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean ten years ago. We used to go
in order in the person.
Speaker 6: The first person would name the first card, second person
the second card, et cetera. But we switched that format
to everybody puts down what the first card is, and
then the second, and then the third, and you know,
and I, you know, I was really hoping that we
would get deep because you know, I, you know, I
had the first fifteen of them easily and wanted to see,
you know, how far we could actually go.
Speaker 5: Did did we go this year with no suits? And
it was just value.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, we suiting rank but he had the
he had the rank as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh yeah, no, completely wrong.
Speaker 1: A six in a six of something, you know, six
of clubs. I think I believe that was it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: So then I think the the third was the deck estimation, right,
and I think John was within one card.
Speaker 1: And that was hard. We brought out the cards.
Speaker 5: Our lady presenting, Megan came out and on a little
blackjack table. She brought it out and took this close
off the top and presented the cards, and the last
few beats to the jeopardy song went do do do
Do Do do doo.
Speaker 1: And they put it back.
Speaker 5: So you got about maybe three or four seconds to
look at the deck and estimate how many cards and
how close was it one card away?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, John was one card off.
Speaker 5: That's pretty good. We had seventy three cards, I think
it was. That's pretty good, right, yeah, very good.
Speaker 1: Nice. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I just thought, oh, it's a deck and a half.
It's a little less than dec and a half.
Speaker 7: It's just like all right, yeah yeah, I hardly had
a look at it. It's like it's a good thing.
Out of my glasses on.
Speaker 5: It was a deck of twenty one cards.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So, and then the last test was cutting trying to
cut exactly seventeen.
Speaker 5: Cards twenty two.
Speaker 2: I was seventeen, Yeah, it was seventeen.
Speaker 5: I did start with twenty two or did they tie?
Speaker 2: Now I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 1: I cut.
Speaker 8: I knew it was stick when I cut it, like
or whatever. Then I was off by three. It was
pretty bad. But my opponent, I don't know, like twenty
eight or something, he was way off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think off.
Speaker 3: So, John, you ended up winning both competitions. Don't you
think that's rather greedy?
Speaker 8: You know, I don't think so, because I've never won
the whole thing before. You know, I've been there twenty
well twenty seven balls. I've been there for twenty five,
and it's the first time actually won. I wouldn't call
that hogging the you know, it's not like James who
would or Munchkin who would win time after time. And
the speed competition, well, you know, speed is is nice.
The only reason I think I'm halfway decent at it
is because of.
Speaker 7: Counting down people in their checkouts with MIT.
Speaker 8: So you'd have to, you know, if you had a
disagreement on account, you have to go through a bunch
of cards, and I did that a lot, so you know,
otherwise not really very useful.
Speaker 1: So so all these lone wolves and stuff.
Speaker 8: You know, they kept down a deck in thirty seconds.
It's probably fast enough. And you know the only time
that speed I think, you know, like the fastest thing
you have to do when you're counting typically is when
you walk up to a table and the dealer scooping
up the cards. Can you keep ahead of that? And
you know, like there's never more than about twenty cards
on the table like that, So so you know, people
don't if they're not practicing, and they're not going.
Speaker 1: To get that good. Not that I was that good either.
Speaker 8: I mean I think that running thirt you know, thirteen
plus seconds is like you know, winning the one hundred
meters in thirteen seconds.
Speaker 1: You know, you're like, yeah, you're pretty fast, but there's
a lot of people who can beat that.
Speaker 3: All right, It sort gave a speech and any m
seed an event muchkin, Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: That for me, that was the highlight of the night.
Speaker 6: We and agreed to call a bingo game, and you know, everybody,
all the tables, every player had a Bingo card, and
you know, we we promised a fantastic surprise to the winner,
and he called the bingo game, and when he got
to the last number, everybody in the room jumped up
and yelled bingo, because you know, we had we had
rigged the game so that everybody.
Speaker 2: In the room would win. And it was hilarious.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was great.
Speaker 5: All of these cool guys that cant ten thousand and
a hand and never under pressure.
Speaker 1: We told him the first person.
Speaker 5: To stand up and yell bingo got a seat at
the final table and we got it on Phil in
the entire room jumped up at the same time. It
was the big tip of the hat to Mark Billings
for pulling all that together. That was it really worked.
It was good. So everybody had a bingo called it.
Ed Thorpe called a winner for everybody in the room,
which was nice. Another thing ed Thorpe did is we
had in honor of the Olympics, we had a gold
of silver and a bronze medal for the world's fastest
counter and he put those around the ribbons medals around
their neck and did all the rest. He thought that
was great. He just loves his party, which yeah, and
he looks great.
Speaker 4: It was himself really into the anti aging tech methods
and everything really impressive.
Speaker 8: I asked him a little bit about that, and you know,
he it's kind of basically, he does stuff that you know,
is sort of proven and well acknowledge. It's not like, oh,
he's taking some exotic treatments. He pays a ton for
anything like that. I think it's very similar to the
way he approached blackjack. You know, it's uh, you figured
out counting, but he didn't really to go for the
whole cards. He didn't really go for you know, other
other techniques. So but it certainly worked.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he said, he said at dinner, you know, I
believe in exercise, you know, yeah, yeah, nothing exotic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and eating right and all that kind of silly stuff.
I mean, who wants to live like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So he had so good it's crazy. He really does.
Speaker 5: And Muskin can tell you years ago, when COVID first
came out, Ed wouldn't come out because he had calculated
the mathematical chances of him dying if he got it
and it was too high, so he wouldn't go out
in public for a couple of years. And then Pax
Slovan came along and all the rest. So he decided
to take a chance, and then he got it. He's
doing fine. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: So part of the Black Tech Ball is a.
Speaker 3: Election for the newest inductee to the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Year, Rick Knight train Blaine one in a close competition,
beating out Colin Jones.
Speaker 1: Rick has a book, Blackjack Blueprint.
Speaker 3: He's a former Gross Team Cup winner and he's been
playing forever. So, Rick, You've been nominated several times in
the past and finally you got selected.
Speaker 1: How does it feel.
Speaker 4: It's It was really a close one this year, I
mean very too.
Speaker 5: By two votes.
Speaker 4: That's pretty doesn't get much closer.
Speaker 1: Than that out of one hundred and twenty votes.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's pretty pretty amazing. It could have gone either way.
It was very tough competition. All the nominees really impressive individuals,
done a lot over the years, and I'm just wow, fortunate,
privilege to be part of the group. It's an honor.
Speaker 3: Last year's winner, Maria wasn't at the ball, so she
gave her acceptance speech this year. For those people who
don't know Maria, Rick.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about her?
Speaker 4: Maria very impressive. First off, she was the only woman
to win the It wasn't named the Gross Team Cup
at a time, but to win the competition at the
Blackjack Ball some twenty odd years ago. So she talks
to talk and walks the walk. She pulled it together
in the nineteen nineties along with her brother, the Greek
High Powered Team. She had some very stringent training, very
excellent strategy on how to attack the games, and they
made themselves a nice bundle of money while they were operating,
and I could speak, you know, personally, I've had puck.
Actually two or three players that were trained by Maria
play on a subsequent team that I ran, and they
were just amazing. You could just see that they were
really it was a well oiled machine that they came from.
Speaker 5: What was really astounding about Maria's she would come into
Las Vegas with forty people and manage all those people how.
I don't I can't begin to understand how you do this.
It's hard enough when there's four or five guys on
a team. I don't know how you do it.
Speaker 1: But she did.
Speaker 5: And I told her, I marlvered at that, marveled at that,
and she said, oh, we had a lot more than that.
Sometimes I don't know how they kept tracking, how they
kept from skimming, and how they kept everybody under control.
She had a lot of college kids that were pretty
fun at the parties. It's pretty lazy, but I said,
I don't know how you're hurting these people. But she
did a great job. They made a load of money
in the day back in the nineties. She did very well.
Speaker 4: Her organizational and managerial skills were just phenomenal. She had
co captains I believe that managed subgroups that went out there,
and it was a chain of command really just very businesslike.
Speaker 5: Well, she's quite smart. She had to agree with Meal
and then Stanford Law and then Totra parents. She was
going to go to the dark side and play cards,
and her dad said go for it. She had nick,
So that's great.
Speaker 1: One of the.
Speaker 3: Original black Jack Hall of Fame members in two thousand
and three passed recently, Al Francesco. There was a eulogy
to him at the ball read by Blair Hull.
Speaker 1: Max. Can you tell us a little bit about Al Francesco?
Speaker 5: Sure, I was a serial entrepreneur. He started frozen pieces
back in the sixties, early their late fifties and sixties.
He started a business doing that, getting in on shelves
and he was doing other things, and he came up
with this idea that one person who call the plays,
and they called him Guerrilla BPS, and that means the
big player would sit there and take their instructions so
if they got caught, he could live to play another day.
And he'd turned that into a huge money making machine.
But he turned out Bill RB who was there talking
about he's a candidate for the Blackjack Hall of Fame,
and Blair Hole, who went on to have a tremendous
success in the markets and options markets and commodities and whatnot,
and I mean one of the best in the world.
He's really done well with that. But Frank did some
things nobody else has done. One is he went off
to this was in seventy four, I believe, to France,
and they blew about thirty thousand on this game over there,
and some really smart guy who was a consultant told
these casinos over in France that if you dealt a
six dep shoe and you didn't take a whole card,
you could cut off a half a deck and you
could keep dealing and card counters couldn't beat you.
Speaker 1: Well, Frank and his Frank and Bill.
Speaker 5: Went over there and started playing in this casino, and
before the smoke cleared, they'd won three hundred and some thousand,
and the guy couldn't pay him and he didn't have
the money anymore, and essentially walked out and said, here's
the keys. And they said, we don't want a casino
in France. What are we gonna do with it? And
this is back in the day, with three hundred thousand,
with a whole lot of money, and they didn't take it,
and they negotiated with the guy. They wound up getting
two hundred thousand over time back out of that deal.
But they really had some fun adventuress. They traveled all
over the world way before anybody else was doing that,
and they made lots and lots of money. But Frank
was a tremendous innovator too, with a lot of things
he did, and one of the nicest guys that ever lived,
so he deserved it. He was one of the original
seven inductees into the Black Tech Hall of Fame. And
that's saying some because you were just a player. He
wasn't a writer, he wasn't a contribute to the craft.
He was just a great, great player.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So in about the year two thousand, Frank came out
of retirement and decided that he wanted to put together
an ACE sequencing team, and he asked me at the
time to join, which I did very happily. And so yeah,
we went out and were sequencing aces and I remember,
you know, at that time, Frank was I think sixty eight,
and I was so impressed like that he could memorize
sixteen sequences in a shoe and you know, and at
sixty eight years old, and I was just like, man,
that's amazing. Course now I'm sixty eight and I'm like, oh, well, yes,
of course anybody can do that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, he was quite an impressive guy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, great guy to work with, although he did turn
out Ken Houston. He's the guy who hired Ken Houston,
and I think everybody involved with that regrets it.
Speaker 5: He He never had bad words to say about anybody
but Ken Houston. He hated Ken Houston. Yeah, Kim took
everything he had and took it on to TV with
I don't know, Mike Reasoner or somebody and showed them
the actual signals they were using. And a very good
friend of Monskin of mine was living with him down
on the beach in Newport when he did it, and
he saw it on TV and they're living together and
he outed everybody at the same time on sixty minutes. Yeah,
he wasn't very popular, but he did write a great
book and he did a lot. But yeah, he stole
a lot of stuff too. Anyway, everybody comes with the story.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Currently, the Blackjack Ball is a five oh one Sea
charity and so the mission price has gone up yep.
And every year proceeds are given to some worthy charity
in the gambling area.
Speaker 1: This year it.
Speaker 3: Was to the National Council on Problem Gambling, and a
representative from that organization spoke at the Blackjack Ball. And
do you remember any part of that speech, Richard.
Speaker 6: You know, just that it was mercifully short. I mean,
you know we were and I mean so the guy
who came from the Council, his name is Keith White.
Speaker 2: He's a great guy and he could tell, right, I mean.
Speaker 6: He could see things were kind of taking a while,
so he realized he should make his speech short. But
he did come up with some interesting, you know, facts
about problem gambling.
Speaker 2: Macks you want to address that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 5: Because this problem gambling has been a problem in America
for a long time and everywhere there's gambling, and they
can argue two to four percent. But today they've got
the online gambling and the barriers of entry are much smaller,
and there are a few things going on out there.
And the one they have found in a study in
New Jersey is that ten percent of the people are
responsible for seventy percent of the revenue that's coming in.
And if that ten percent, a majority of them are
white males between twenty one and twenty five to twenty
six years old. They're what college students basically, and they
are the big problem pod of problem gamblers coming through
right now. And the kids, and we talked a little
bit about what happens when the kids steal their dad's
credit card and start using it.
Speaker 1: Well, how do you tell.
Speaker 5: If that's your father or not. I don't know how
you do it. But what these sites have done and
the states are doing is telling you if your kid
uses your credit card and gambles and loses the money, yes,
the credit card company has to give you your money back,
but you have to file a police report because they
stole your money against your own kid. So basically the
joints are getting paid anyway if the kids are out
there again on the dad's money on a credit card.
And so there's some things happening like that that are
creating some problems and starting to create some news. But
Hey believes and I kind of believe the same thing
that these colleagues kids. We're going to see some bad
stories come out in the next couple of years if
they don't get a handle on where this is going,
because it's just too damn easy to play now and
next year this football scene, you're gonna be able to
bet on every damn play. Every kid out there is
going to invent the Martingale I did when I moved
to town. They just do you say, well, you can't
lose ten in a row?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Do that thousand times. Yeah, you can lose ten in
a row. That's easy. I did it. So anyway, that's
he talked about those things, and I think they're germane
to the business and particularly the gamblers the sports guys
that were there, because they have to make sure that
this industry stays healthy, and these bad stories aren't going
to be healthy, and keeping these kids away from it
is not going to be good if we can't figure
out a way to do that, So what's some sort
of other sort of authentication or something. But anyway, he
talked about those things, and gambling is growing. Casino revenues
are sliding in regional casinos just about everywhere, but it's
almost in a direct correlation with the number of dollars
that are being wagered online. So the overall gambling spend
in America, the gambling economy, if you will, is growing,
but the land based regional casinos are slipping because those
people can put their money somewhere else. So some of
that kind of stuff is happening right now. Trying to
get a handle on it.
Speaker 1: All.
Speaker 3: Right, So Max would for next year's Blackjack ball, well,
what do you guess it is going to be similar
to this year's minus the Bengo.
Speaker 1: Of course, yes, I do.
Speaker 5: This year, everything we were doing was invent reinventing the wheel,
so it was chaos. It was just nuts because a
lot of things were new, but we made we broke
a lot of things. We made a lot of mistakes.
But I think we've learned from all those mistakes and
we can really streamline it better next year.
Speaker 1: Timing who's doing what.
Speaker 5: But I think from all the things we put on,
I think it went very well. I have heard from
just about everybody that it was the best ball we
ever had.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I certainly felt that way.
Speaker 6: And and you know, I really liked the fact that
we did it sort of right after bet Bash and
we're able to invite a lot of you know, the
big sports betters, and you know, I'd like to see
more big gamblers of all sorts, advantage gamblers, you know,
be able to attend.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: A lot of fun. It was.
Speaker 4: It was by far the most creative ball that I've
been to. H I love this how you guys did it,
And to me, the high right of the night, we're
seeing Max Ruben in a pink suit.
Speaker 5: Unfair. I had to tell everybody I was I have
changed sizes a little bit, and I'm a couple of
order than when I used to wear suits. I couldn't
fit in any clothes, so I went in to buy
a new suit and I'm getting tried on a summer
suit I wanted for the ball, and I was gonna
post it. And my wife comes over while I'm being
tried on for this Italian suit and being fitted and
she says, look at this, it's eighty five percent off.
And it was pink and I said, it's pink and
she said, but it's eighty five percent off. And we
went around and around it. I said, if you accuse
of me of coming out, she said, no, it's eighty
five percent off.
Speaker 1: Well, any of you guys that are married, you understand.
Speaker 5: She said, they five. I wound up with a pink suit.
But it was fun to wear. I'm not gonna wear
it a lot of other places.
Speaker 1: It was fun.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I liked it. It might be my official black
jack ballsuit from now on.
Speaker 1: He pulls it off.
Speaker 7: Well that was fun.
Speaker 1: Ye.
Speaker 5: Overall I thought it was more fun. There were more
laughs and a lot more drama.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good everybody.
Speaker 5: Everybody was cared about who won at the end, and
it said so an amazing thing. And Anthony Curtis said
this long ago to me because I told him, and
this was during World Cup soccer, maybe eight ten, fifteen
years ago, and I said, god, socker's boring. He said,
put a bet on it. Huh, just bet twenty bucks, okay, maybet.
Within about three days I knew what off size was.
I knew what tackling was rolled through the front line.
Who they should be passing to. It's gambling, just as
Larry Merchant said it best is gambling excites the caring
glens and it just does so if you've got a
chance to win something. I knew that with my wife. Now,
I'll make a ten dollars bet on a football game
I want to watch all day and tell her she's
got ten on it. She loves the game and screamed
with the TV all day for ten bucks, and if
I handed her a hundred bucks, you wouldn't know the difference.
But if she can win ten bucks, it means something.
So that's what we did. We got everybody involved, but
it really it really turned out well, I think, so
we'll do more of that in the future.
Speaker 1: You have any thoughts to me?
Speaker 4: You have any thoughts about a theme for next year?
Speaker 5: A fee a theme? Yeah, somebody they said due Cowboy.
I said, yeah, that's that's good. That's Joco and Blair
and at Thorpe. We're all going to show up in
their shafts.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I kind of don't think that one's going to work.
So I don't know what the theme would be. But
this year, I just tried to figure out something for
the summer where people dressing light because it was so
damn hot. Just said tropical. So we'll come up with something. Okay,
not sure what. Yep, So that's probably the working date
for next year. But I'm not sure what.
Speaker 2: Is probably the working date for next year?
Speaker 5: Saturday after Betbash?
Speaker 6: Oh okay, I think that's the sixteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth of
August right.
Speaker 5: Down the state next year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we'll
do that. And one thing I wanted to add is
we've got sponsors that do so much for us. Strangely enough,
people spend three hundred and fifty to get in the door.
It cost us at least two hundred more than that
to put this party on.
Speaker 1: It's expensive, and.
Speaker 5: We rent a place that cost a whole lot of money,
and we use their av system to cost six thousand
for the night and the rentals ten or eleven thousand.
But it's all goes to.
Speaker 1: A great cause.
Speaker 5: It goes to the Rubo Center for Brain Health, and
they did a lot of good things for me, and
they've done a lot of good things for my friends.
So we just put that in. But we couldn't begin
to have this party with this quality without people like Joco,
who's been a sponsor ever since we started in Blair Hole,
and Bill Bnter and Pevin Man Cody and even a
Collar buys a table and he had nine people there
this year and he You just couldn't be any nicer
than that guy. He really really is a great guy.
Speaker 1: Ed Thorpe one of the sponsors.
Speaker 5: No, No, Ed Thorpe. And I told Ed this a
long time ago that Ed is full comp for him
and whoever he wants to bring one person or fifty
Ed umped and everybody agreed with me Ed, Ed shouldn't
have to pay to come to a black jack party. Yeah,
he kind of hands up to do with all this.
So No, Ed doesn't pay and shouldn't all a.
Speaker 8: Few more people. Yeah, there's a few that Jelco invited.
Uh who Well, Harry Harry Zema, for example.
Speaker 1: The guy's made.
Speaker 8: I think he's a billionaire and he started out playing
blackjack when he was eighteen. No, he's never been to
the ball, but I think he expressed interest, so I
think he'll be there next year.
Speaker 2: Oh that's great.
Speaker 8: Also, Jelco's partner, David He's like, how come I have
never been invited? And uh, yeah, so so he's probably
going to come as well.
Speaker 1: Uh. You know, each of.
Speaker 8: These guys is you know, they're more money than they
know what to do with, and uh, you know. Also
regarding the problem gambler idea, you know, I was thinking
that many of these kids are just it's too easy
and they don't look at it at all, and it's
kind of like Billy Walters was when he was a sucker.
I think a lot of them are not really suckers.
You know, if you just educate them a little bit,
they can turn it around.
Speaker 1: So, you know, having some kind of requirements.
Speaker 8: For education, you know, could be very useful in terms
of turning a problem gambler into a winning gambler.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure that that would qualify under the guidelines
of five zho ones see three charitable contributions. If we
took all the money we brought in and use that
to teach another army of card couners to go out.
Speaker 6: More, I don't think that's what he's suggesting, but certainly,
you know, they could change. Instead of teaching trigonometry in
high school, they should be teaching you know, statistics and
data science partly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, how to pick a parley.
Speaker 1: Yeah well if.
Speaker 5: They did that, the kids would pay a lot more
attention in math claffs yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: It would be much more useful in their life.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 8: You know, Harry once told me that he did he
did the Frank Shapani thing where he put a casino
like they couldn't pay him, but instead of saying, well,
I'll just settle, he actually took their receipts for several
weeks until they got paid, so he did a little better.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I suppose Harry is the most successful gamble in the
history of the world.
Speaker 1: Right, I think.
Speaker 8: So, you know, Jalco knows everybody, and he's like, I
think Harry's number one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, Tony Bloom has done pretty well too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tony Blue might be second. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh, Tony's done fabulous.
Speaker 8: No, right, but he got put to sleep by the
twenty one questions literally, and I think he's been back
since then, so maybe Joe can convince him.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, no, Well that's why we're keeping in twenty
one from now on.
Speaker 3: Thank you, gentlemen, Thank you, Richard, Max john Rick and
those not related to blackjack, brought hit lots of royal
flushes everybody day