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Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and Welcome to Life is a Gamble. It's

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been a while since I dropped one of these episodes,

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but I am back. And before we jump into today's guest,

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I just want to say you can always reach me

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at Life is a gamblepod at gmail dot com and

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you can find me on Twitter at RWM twenty one.

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My guest today is Andrew Wimhurst and he has a

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new book out called Thieving Bastards Through Confessions of the

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World's Greatest Cheats. So Andrew, Welcome to Life is a Gamble.

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Speaker 2: Hey, Richard, thanks very much for having me on the show.

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I appreciate it.

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Speaker 1: So as I understand it, this book was thirty years

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in the making. Is that correct.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I've been working on for thirty years.

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I've been recording interviews with people for thirty years that've

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been sitting in boxes and in my study in all

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that time, traveling to America to meet people, sit down

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with people and have conversations. But yeah, the idea for

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this book started in the eighties.

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Speaker 1: So it really you were planning to make it as

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a book as opposed to just interviewing these guys for

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your own edification.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So I'm a big fan of books

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that are about interviews with people. I just find that

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books of interviews are like an unfiltered experience. You can

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really understand the way a person thinks and what's happened

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in their life, and what the psychology is behind you know,

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what motivates them. I think it's just fascinating. In fact,

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I'm a big fan of all of these books. I've

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really enjoyed your book Gambling Wizards, which I've had a

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chance to read lately. I haven't had a chance to

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read a lot of books in the last few years

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because I've been focusing on this book. But I've been

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reading your book and really really enjoyed it.

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Speaker 1: So thank you.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I read a book. I read a book in

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the eighties called Cops Their Lives in their Own Words

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by a guy called Mark Baker. It's published in about

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eighty five, and I just found it really fascinating. That

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was when I really started to get interested. This is

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as a teenager, and then I sort of drifted into

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an interest in card magic, which quickly became an interest

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in cheating at cards, which has been a strong passion

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for many years. And I was in the National Library

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in Australia, and I found a book in the stacks

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there called Road Hustler by Robert Pruce, and it's a

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sociological study of professional card cheats in North America and

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Canada and up in the sort of the Eastern States.

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And the book originated with he had a student who

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was a former cheat in one of his classes and

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let slip that this was his background, and so in

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writing this book, he includes a bunch of anecdotes from

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that sheet, some short paragraphs about what it's like to

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be a cheat and so on. And as I was

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reading those, I just found them absolutely fascinating, really really fascinating,

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And I thought to myself back then, wouldn't it be

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great to have a book that was like Mark Baker's Cops,

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but was about professional cheats. And that's where it started.

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And I never stopped thinking about that, and I wasn't

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sure I'd be able to make it work. But over

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time I got lucky and with some hard work, I

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actually was able to put together enough information and contacts

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to actually put the book together.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I would assume it was very difficult to get

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these guys to talk to you.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, it's a long, long process to do that,

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and I started with early contacts and I built from

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one contact into multiple contacts, and I built over the years.

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So when I was young, I was into card magic

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and I was into cheating stuff, and I started working

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doing shows demonstrated in cheating techniques here in Australia, and

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in doing that and looking around at the different people

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who were doing that sort of work, I came across

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a guy called Darwin Ortiz, who was a card magician

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passed away a couple of years ago, and as a

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young kid, I wrote to him. A letter came back

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from him and we started a friendship and we became

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very very good friends over the year. So he became

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one of my closest friends. I knew him for thirty years,

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and you know, he's the first person that I spoke

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to about this. And I know that Darwin had written

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a book called Gambling Scams, which was published in the eighties,

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and that book includes a couple of anecdotes from the

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contacts that he had. Because he grew up in the Bronx,

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he hung around with people involved in cheating. He was

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connected to an underground supply house in New York city,

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which was one of the big, biggest ones in the country.

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He had close friends in there, and he was the

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person who gave me my first couple of contacts. But

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I told him about the book idea. He thought it

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was a great idea, and you know, he just knew

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I had a passion for it and he trusted me.

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So he actually trusted me with his contacts and set

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me up with a couple of guys and had started

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from there. Now, none of those guys are in the book,

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but the original no, no, no, no no. In fact,

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in fact, one of those guys was my first major rejection.

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This is the guy that hung up in my ear.

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He said he wasn't a snitch. This is the guy that, yeah,

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you know, and I'm okay with that. I perfectly understand that.

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You know, I've always been very upfront with the people

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that I interview that I want to build a trust

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relationship where they can trust that I'm not going to

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put anything in any of these books that they don't

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want to have a peer in the books. So anyway,

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that guy that sort of closed off to me that

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one relationship. But that guy was long retired. He ran

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a big underground cheating supply house. When I spoke to him,

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He's in Florida, and he said, I'm not a snitch,

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and and I kind of get it because there are

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some people that I've interviewed. All of the people I've

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interviewed have strong connections to criminal activity, but a couple

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of people that I've spoken to had connections to you know,

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the mob, for example, and those people really aren't interested

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in having their stuff appear in the book. It becomes

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quite sensitive for those people. And so I totally get that.

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And he was heavily involved in supplying equipment to underground

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clubs on the East Coast for decades. And the company

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goes back one hundred year is it's not one of

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it's not Casey Card company, it's not one of those companies,

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but it's another company in New York City that was

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in the garment district. And in fact, he was the

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first person that I met. I remember, I traveled to

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the States to visit Darwin and to go to Vegas

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and some other places and go and set me up

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with a meeting with this guy. And it was one

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really hot summer's day and I went to the garment

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district and knocked on this door, and this huge bear

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of a man greeted me at the door, and he

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looked like Danny A. Lo the actor, you know, this

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big Jewish dude, and yeah, he had this underground supply company.

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He took me in, showed me what was happening in

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the room. At the front, they had all of these

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are Hispanic ladies who were marking playing cards and cutting

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playing cards and repackaging them in the boxes so that

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the boxes looked perfect, and then they would resell them

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and so that people across the country could order any

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style of card they wanted marked in a system that

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they preferred or shaved so that they could be stripped

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for gin or whatever the game was, and they would

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mail them out to all their customers across you know,

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New York State and across the country. And then at

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the back there are a bunch of guys who were

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all out there working on loading dice and you know,

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flattening dice, six ass flats and magnetic dice, and they

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had read tables they were building and all sorts of stuff.

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So it was quite in my opening experience, Wow, are

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they still in business? That company's not in business as

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far as I'm aware. Yeah, you know a lot of

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these companies were shut down in the early sixties to yep,

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going no, no.

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Speaker 1: I I was just going to say that. I when

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I was trying to get people to do interviews for

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my book, I told them, you know, I would try

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transcribe our conversation and edit it, and then before I

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showed it to anybody, I would give it back to

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them and they could go through it, and anything they

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wanted cut would be cut, you know. And fortunately that

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was enough to get people to talk to me. And

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usually if I didn't already know them personally, at least

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I had some you know, goal between friend that knew

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both of us pretty well.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, so that's exactly my experience, the same thing.

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And in fact, it's funny that your book and my

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book are kind of the poll or opposites, you know,

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gambling wizards, thieving bastards. It's like the two hinds of

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the spectrum.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: It's interesting. Yeah, I find that quite amusing. But yeah,

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I when I interview people, and I'm still interviewing people.

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I did a big interviewer a couple of weeks ago

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with a guy who was a pool hustler in the seventies,

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and there's some really interesting stories about pull hustling in

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Los Angeles at the time and up and down the

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West Coast. So looking forward to actually working on that.

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But every person that I've spoken to, that's been my

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system that I take the material, I do an audio recording,

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I transcribe it. I don't you know, all of this

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done with all of this stuff was unmandrolically by hand.

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He knews Ai. AI didn't exist when I was doing

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this sort of stuff, listening to the stuff and just

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doing that laborious process of transcribing it, cleaning it up

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and then so what I would do is, you know,

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some of the guys that I spoke to were actually

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quite elderly people who'd been cheating in the forties and fifties.

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And there's a guy who's in volume two, for example,

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who was a crew hustler on the West Coast out

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of New York but moved to the West Coast. A

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lot of these guys are older. They're very hard to

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understand when you speak to them. You know, their voices

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are all broken free age and everything, and they ramble,

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and they sometimes they'll come and tell a story four

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or five different ways. And some of these interviews that

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I've done are multiple interview sessions. So I've got hours

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and hours of interviews with these guys, and I've transcribed

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all of those interviews, and then I've gone back and

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if they tell a really interesting story, but they might

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come back to it, because you know, being of a

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certain age, you'd forget you've told a story. I'll come

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back to it and they might have a fresh spin

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on it, or they have a very funny way of

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expressing it in one story that they don't do it

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in the first iteration. So I'll go back and I'll

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just take the best bit and just cram it together,

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you know, so I'll connect it so that it reads

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as well as it can. And then and then, just

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as you do, I would email it to the guy

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and we go through it and they say, look, I'm

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not happy about this or whatever, I'm happy about that.

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And some of them are quite surprised, you know. Some

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of them are like, didn't realize I swore so much.

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Because there's a lot of vulgarity in some of these stories,

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and especially the guy Bobby Machines, who was a practicing attorney.

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He was like shocked at the language that had sort

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of come out in the interview because he wouldn't speak

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like that in his professional life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he was really interest.

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Speaker 2: I'm just going to say one I was just going

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to say one more thing is that some of the

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stuff that's like the book is warts and all. There's

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a lot of warts and all stuff in there, and

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you know, some sort of shocking revelations for some people

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who sometimes knew some of these people, not realizing the

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extent of that, for example, their drug dependency and all

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that sort of stuff that they'd been through, or being

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in the life where you're involved in other criminal activity

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that's not necessarily accept behavior and polite society. You know,

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people who were pimping, working miss pimps, as well as

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cheats and that sort of stuff. So a lot of

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that stuff's in the book, but there's sort of a

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line that I drew where I didn't go beyond a

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certain point with detail. You know, with some of this

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stuff gets even worse than that with some of these people,

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and I just sort of left that out. Or some

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of these cheats would come back and they'd look at

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something they said about somebody and if it was a

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negative thing and the person was long dead then that

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you know, they'd say, okay, I'm fine with that. But

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they also would sometimes say negative things about people who

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are still around and we would talk about that and

241
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I'd say, well, maybe we should leave that out. So

242
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there's a bit of that stuff that's removed.

243
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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, the cheating landscape has changed tremendously over

244
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the last fifty sixty years, and a lot of the

245
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cheating that was going on back then. In Guardena, California,

246
00:11:51,000 --> 00:11:54,399
they had these poker clubs. They still have poker clubs there,

247
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but back then the players dealt the cars and the

248
00:11:59,600 --> 00:12:04,519
deal was passed around, So there was just rampant cheating there.

249
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And on the East Coast and in the Midwest, there

250
00:12:08,360 --> 00:12:12,360
were a lot of these games that were in Elks clubs,

251
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moose clubs, or these these picnics where they would set

252
00:12:16,360 --> 00:12:21,720
up these you know, casino nights. And but that landscape

253
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has really changed. Have you been able to inter and

254
00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:28,480
the people in your book really are kind of from

255
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that older era. Are there people that you've interviewed that

256
00:12:33,480 --> 00:12:36,840
are in the modern era? And I would think if

257
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a guy is still out there doing it, he'd be

258
00:12:40,080 --> 00:12:42,440
much less likely to want to talk to you about it.

259
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's that's one hundred percent right. I mean,

260
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I know people who are doing stuff now, and those

261
00:12:48,039 --> 00:12:51,559
people aren't really aren't interested in talking about what they're doing. Now.

262
00:12:52,120 --> 00:12:54,639
A lot of that older stuff has been exposed that

263
00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:58,440
the game procedures have changed to eliminate the opportunities that

264
00:12:58,720 --> 00:13:00,480
used to exist back in the day. As you will know,

265
00:13:00,519 --> 00:13:03,600
there's pass the deck poker is you know, it's long gone,

266
00:13:03,639 --> 00:13:05,879
so a lot of that sort of and draw poker

267
00:13:05,960 --> 00:13:08,879
is not the game anymore. All of those opportunities are

268
00:13:08,879 --> 00:13:11,320
sort of closed off for these people. But things that

269
00:13:11,399 --> 00:13:14,399
apt and people have adapted certain things to suit the

270
00:13:14,440 --> 00:13:16,480
modern age, and of course stuff is still going on.

271
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There's some very sophisticated stuff going on that I'm aware

272
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of that I just I'm not really willing to talk

273
00:13:22,240 --> 00:13:25,320
about because the people that tell me about it would

274
00:13:25,320 --> 00:13:27,159
I'd be persona and on grod. I wouldn't be able

275
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to talk to these people anymore if I did that.

276
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Speaker 1: Well, so much of that is public now because there's

277
00:13:33,440 --> 00:13:36,759
there's a cheating scandal here in the States, like every

278
00:13:36,840 --> 00:13:40,440
other week in poker. I mean, it's just and in

279
00:13:40,919 --> 00:13:43,120
you know, the poker clubs and things.

280
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Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true. And of course

281
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there was that big, big NBA scandal where they use

282
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celebrities to get people to be comfortable with the private

283
00:13:53,919 --> 00:13:57,360
gaming arrangements that they had set up. And I wrote

284
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a couple of blogs related to that on my website

285
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about the sort of lessons to be learned from that.

286
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And it's quite interesting that from my perspective, is that

287
00:14:06,480 --> 00:14:08,720
some of the technology that was used in those scans

288
00:14:08,759 --> 00:14:10,840
is technology that was developed by one of the people

289
00:14:10,960 --> 00:14:12,720
that I interviewed in the first book, a guy called

290
00:14:12,759 --> 00:14:16,519
doctor X. And these are the things that they people

291
00:14:16,519 --> 00:14:19,000
in the media call X ray tables, and they're not

292
00:14:19,080 --> 00:14:21,240
X ray tables at all, but the technology is really

293
00:14:21,240 --> 00:14:27,360
fascinating technology that it originates through experimentation with optical like

294
00:14:27,440 --> 00:14:29,840
laser beams and optics that are involved in like special

295
00:14:29,840 --> 00:14:31,720
Forces night vision goggles and all that sort of stuff.

296
00:14:31,720 --> 00:14:36,039
It's like really interesting adaptations military technology to the sort

297
00:14:36,039 --> 00:14:39,200
of card cheating space. And so, did you want me

298
00:14:39,240 --> 00:14:41,200
to mention what the x X ray table is or

299
00:14:41,240 --> 00:14:41,919
talk about.

300
00:14:41,679 --> 00:14:44,120
Speaker 1: That or sure, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah.

301
00:14:44,240 --> 00:14:47,559
Speaker 2: So when I interviewed doctor X, and I interviewed him

302
00:14:47,559 --> 00:14:49,960
about twenty five years ago, so you know a number

303
00:14:49,960 --> 00:14:52,480
of the interviews in this book were old interviews. And

304
00:14:52,799 --> 00:14:55,919
I remember him telling me about the X ray table,

305
00:14:55,960 --> 00:14:57,440
but he didn't call it the X ray table. He

306
00:14:57,480 --> 00:15:00,000
caught it the octopus. And he caught it the octopus

307
00:15:00,039 --> 00:15:02,200
because it had like eight extensions, and so you could

308
00:15:02,240 --> 00:15:04,759
target people around the table. And what it is is

309
00:15:05,279 --> 00:15:10,120
it's a series of optical lasers that shoot photon beams

310
00:15:10,399 --> 00:15:13,120
beneath the table, and the photon beams are pushed up

311
00:15:13,159 --> 00:15:16,879
through translucent plates, plastic white plates that are underneath the table,

312
00:15:17,080 --> 00:15:20,919
underneath the cloth, and these beams are invisible to the

313
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:24,240
human eye. They operate outside the spectrum of visibly for humans,

314
00:15:24,240 --> 00:15:26,200
but they can be captured by a camera that's set

315
00:15:26,240 --> 00:15:31,000
up to see those verbams. And what happens is they

316
00:15:31,200 --> 00:15:33,559
burst up through the tabletop and they burst up through

317
00:15:33,600 --> 00:15:36,039
the plane cards, and the camera can capture the light

318
00:15:36,080 --> 00:15:38,720
traveling through the playing cards plastic or paper cards, it

319
00:15:38,759 --> 00:15:43,679
doesn't matter. And the ink of the pips, it doesn't

320
00:15:43,679 --> 00:15:45,519
actually burst through the ink of the pips, so you

321
00:15:45,519 --> 00:15:47,399
could actually see the pips in reverse on the camera

322
00:15:47,440 --> 00:15:48,960
which is set up in a separate room. So what

323
00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:52,200
it is is it's an example of an elaborate peak,

324
00:15:52,399 --> 00:15:54,600
like the peak that was at the Lambs Club all

325
00:15:54,600 --> 00:15:57,720
those years ago, classic sort of scams, especially cheap gin

326
00:15:58,519 --> 00:16:00,960
rummy and games things like that. So it's like a

327
00:16:01,600 --> 00:16:03,879
high tech peak technology. And I remember him telling me

328
00:16:03,919 --> 00:16:06,480
about this. You know, they're not even my cards. The

329
00:16:06,559 --> 00:16:08,279
light goes up through the table, you know, you can

330
00:16:08,360 --> 00:16:10,080
it's like you're reading the card from the other room.

331
00:16:10,080 --> 00:16:13,080
You can see everything. And I remember him telling me

332
00:16:13,120 --> 00:16:15,240
this and thinking, man, no one's going to believe this.

333
00:16:15,679 --> 00:16:18,480
No one's going to believe this, right, And then late

334
00:16:18,600 --> 00:16:21,559
late last year, the NBA scam broke, and I'm like,

335
00:16:21,639 --> 00:16:24,960
thank god, you know, And so so I called the

336
00:16:24,960 --> 00:16:28,279
the US Justice that the office in New York, and

337
00:16:28,320 --> 00:16:30,120
I spoke to the press people there and I got

338
00:16:30,120 --> 00:16:31,559
some photos for the book, and I was able to

339
00:16:31,639 --> 00:16:32,360
blue that in the book.

340
00:16:32,399 --> 00:16:36,159
Speaker 1: So I tried to get Doctor X to come on

341
00:16:36,200 --> 00:16:42,000
this show because he's quite a character, and but he

342
00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:45,080
he wasn't really willing to talk about the stuff that

343
00:16:45,279 --> 00:16:48,600
I wanted to talk about, Like he likes to talk,

344
00:16:49,080 --> 00:16:53,600
you know, he's yeah, but yeah, but but I haven't

345
00:16:53,639 --> 00:16:55,840
been able to make that one work. And by the way,

346
00:16:55,960 --> 00:16:58,519
just as an aside, I think you'll find, after all

347
00:16:58,559 --> 00:17:02,480
of the hundreds of hours you were put into writing

348
00:17:02,559 --> 00:17:06,000
this book, that the way to go is to just

349
00:17:06,079 --> 00:17:09,279
have a podcast instead, because then you get to.

350
00:17:09,240 --> 00:17:11,400
Speaker 2: Do the energey when you don't have to do all.

351
00:17:11,440 --> 00:17:13,960
Speaker 1: The grunt work of transcription, et cetera.

352
00:17:16,039 --> 00:17:18,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally get that, but but I you know,

353
00:17:18,640 --> 00:17:20,839
I'm kind of old school and I love books, you know,

354
00:17:20,880 --> 00:17:23,960
and I feel that putting something in a book is

355
00:17:24,039 --> 00:17:27,480
just a really fantastic way of capturing information and people

356
00:17:27,480 --> 00:17:31,559
when people engage with it, you know, their imagination as

357
00:17:31,599 --> 00:17:33,599
they interpret what they're reading is what really sort of

358
00:17:34,359 --> 00:17:36,720
holds for them, and you know, creates these lasting memories

359
00:17:36,720 --> 00:17:38,559
of the information and everything else. So I kind of

360
00:17:38,559 --> 00:17:41,799
I prefer book. So my plan is to actually produce

361
00:17:41,839 --> 00:17:44,000
a few more series if I can. We'll see.

362
00:17:45,720 --> 00:17:48,839
Speaker 1: Sequels to this one about Cheeks or the other.

363
00:17:49,160 --> 00:17:51,640
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm hoping to Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got some

364
00:17:51,680 --> 00:17:55,000
other ideas as well, but definitely I've got When I

365
00:17:55,039 --> 00:17:57,839
decided to print this book, I actually had a book

366
00:17:57,839 --> 00:17:59,799
that was twice as long, and I realized it was

367
00:17:59,799 --> 00:18:02,039
way too long. It's going to be like a doorstop,

368
00:18:02,359 --> 00:18:04,759
like a giant bible or something, and so I thought

369
00:18:05,319 --> 00:18:06,920
I'll cut it in half. And so I had to

370
00:18:06,920 --> 00:18:09,720
make some decisions in doing that. A number of the

371
00:18:09,720 --> 00:18:11,839
people in the book have passed away, and they didn't

372
00:18:11,839 --> 00:18:14,559
have a chance to see the book in its final form,

373
00:18:14,599 --> 00:18:16,559
although they all got to read their interviews, you know,

374
00:18:17,759 --> 00:18:20,960
So I basically I sort of chose some of these

375
00:18:20,960 --> 00:18:22,599
things to make sure that people in there would get

376
00:18:22,599 --> 00:18:24,440
to read them, you know, because some of those people

377
00:18:24,440 --> 00:18:26,759
are still alive, and some of them I held over,

378
00:18:26,920 --> 00:18:28,400
you know, people had long passed. I thought, well, I'll

379
00:18:28,440 --> 00:18:31,039
move this to the second volume. And getting back to

380
00:18:31,079 --> 00:18:32,799
what you said, there is somebody in the second volume

381
00:18:32,799 --> 00:18:36,200
who's working today. So there is some quite interesting stuff

382
00:18:36,240 --> 00:18:39,400
on some current activity that will appear in the second volume.

383
00:18:39,960 --> 00:18:41,440
And there might be a few more people who are

384
00:18:41,440 --> 00:18:43,359
working today in the second volume. But we'll just see

385
00:18:43,359 --> 00:18:45,920
how it goes. Just you mentioning doctor X. He's an

386
00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:48,799
interesting interview in so many different ways. But he was

387
00:18:48,839 --> 00:18:51,559
one where I really had to change names and place

388
00:18:51,680 --> 00:18:53,920
names and stuff like that, because when we spoke about it,

389
00:18:53,920 --> 00:18:56,240
he was still heavily involved in it all those years ago,

390
00:18:56,279 --> 00:18:59,440
and he said, look, let's change this. So I came up,

391
00:18:59,440 --> 00:19:01,440
I changed with the names and they to protect people.

392
00:19:01,880 --> 00:19:04,640
And then he got to read it, read it again

393
00:19:05,680 --> 00:19:08,319
last year of the year before, and he's like, oh

394
00:19:08,400 --> 00:19:10,119
my god, you changed all these names. Because his life

395
00:19:10,160 --> 00:19:12,160
had changed a little bit, he wasn't quite so concerned

396
00:19:12,160 --> 00:19:14,920
about it. I said, well, yeah, so that's that's where

397
00:19:14,920 --> 00:19:17,319
we are with doctor X. But I'm actually going to

398
00:19:17,319 --> 00:19:19,079
be spending some time with him later this year, so

399
00:19:19,079 --> 00:19:21,920
I'm hitting out to spend some quality of time with him.

400
00:19:21,960 --> 00:19:23,160
He's a very interesting character.

401
00:19:23,839 --> 00:19:26,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd like to go visit him. He seems to

402
00:19:26,279 --> 00:19:30,039
have like a museum there in his home of all

403
00:19:30,160 --> 00:19:35,000
kinds of interesting, wacky wacky stuff. Oh so I want

404
00:19:35,039 --> 00:19:38,000
to go back to the mechanic because I thought he

405
00:19:38,119 --> 00:19:43,319
was a really interesting case. Because once you feel the power,

406
00:19:43,799 --> 00:19:47,240
once you know you can do this and pretty much

407
00:19:47,279 --> 00:19:50,119
go out and make money, it will. It was very

408
00:19:50,160 --> 00:19:52,839
interesting that he that he was doing this to put

409
00:19:52,880 --> 00:19:56,720
himself through law school and then basically stopped.

410
00:19:57,440 --> 00:19:59,519
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he is a really interesting guy. And in

411
00:19:59,519 --> 00:20:02,799
the book we call him Bobby Machines. Obviously that's not

412
00:20:02,880 --> 00:20:04,480
his name, but to spoake to him and I said,

413
00:20:04,480 --> 00:20:05,720
we've got to give you a name because he was

414
00:20:05,759 --> 00:20:09,119
still he's still quite a public figure. He's passed away

415
00:20:09,480 --> 00:20:13,079
since since we interviewed the guy. Yeah, really so, but

416
00:20:13,319 --> 00:20:17,960
eight of you. Yeah, I thought mutual prison Burroughs visited

417
00:20:18,079 --> 00:20:22,440
him recently. I don't know, that's no, no, that's actually

418
00:20:22,519 --> 00:20:27,240
you're probably thinking of Bobby asil So Bobby.

419
00:20:28,720 --> 00:20:29,119
Speaker 1: Recently.

420
00:20:29,279 --> 00:20:31,160
Speaker 2: But that's right, that's what I was going to say.

421
00:20:31,160 --> 00:20:35,039
He only passed away about a month ago. Yeah, but

422
00:20:35,160 --> 00:20:38,279
Bobby Machines. You know, when I interviewed Rod Rod the

423
00:20:38,279 --> 00:20:41,119
hot Rod d Rod d was the first person I interviewed.

424
00:20:41,160 --> 00:20:44,440
I think pretty much Rod perhaps, and maybe Bill Zender

425
00:20:44,480 --> 00:20:47,839
and Ron Connolly, but I think Rod was the first person.

426
00:20:47,880 --> 00:20:49,920
And because he's one of the He was a friend

427
00:20:49,960 --> 00:20:52,240
of mine, a good friend, and we used to chat

428
00:20:52,240 --> 00:20:54,200
a lot, and so I really wanted him to be

429
00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:55,799
in the book. He never got to see the book,

430
00:20:55,799 --> 00:20:58,799
which is unfortunate. But when we were talking, he mentioned

431
00:20:58,799 --> 00:21:00,960
this guy, Bobby Machines. He said that when he was

432
00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:03,039
a young cheat and he got turned out, and you know,

433
00:21:03,079 --> 00:21:05,799
he was almost going to get himself killed hanging around

434
00:21:06,359 --> 00:21:08,880
a card room in San Diego and doing a couple

435
00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:11,079
of basic moves. He got turned out by a couple

436
00:21:11,119 --> 00:21:14,000
of guys. There's Black John and Bobby Machines with the

437
00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:16,359
two guys that turn him. But he said to me,

438
00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:19,319
this guy, man, this guy was fantastic. He's one of

439
00:21:19,319 --> 00:21:21,640
the best mechanics I've ever seen. And I don't know

440
00:21:21,640 --> 00:21:24,200
if you probably would have met Rod, but I think

441
00:21:24,279 --> 00:21:26,119
Rod was one of the best card mechanics I've ever

442
00:21:26,119 --> 00:21:27,799
met in my life. I would put him up there

443
00:21:27,880 --> 00:21:31,440
is probably the best at poker. I don't think there's

444
00:21:31,440 --> 00:21:33,880
anybody who can touch him or could touch him. And

445
00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:36,880
some of the shuffle stuff that he did was just

446
00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:39,680
out of this world really. But anyway, he said, look,

447
00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:41,400
there's this guy that turned me out. And I used

448
00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:43,200
to sleep on his couch and he showed me moves

449
00:21:43,200 --> 00:21:46,200
and he said he played a machine hold out machine.

450
00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:49,400
So you know the old Blinger holdout machine, which is

451
00:21:49,400 --> 00:21:52,400
an elaborate body worn device that's hidden inside the jacket

452
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:54,799
up the sleeve and you have to get specially tailored

453
00:21:54,799 --> 00:21:56,799
cuffs so that there's no catch on the thief as

454
00:21:56,799 --> 00:21:59,799
it comes in and out of the arm that takes

455
00:21:59,839 --> 00:22:02,119
the card. And he said This guy was unbelievable. He

456
00:22:02,160 --> 00:22:05,000
could work the machine like you wouldn't believe. But he

457
00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:07,119
could also do like a double gypsy, you know, steal

458
00:22:07,160 --> 00:22:09,319
two cards and put two cards back, which is a

459
00:22:09,319 --> 00:22:11,960
super hard move with a machine. And I was like, man,

460
00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:14,119
this is great. And then I thought, jes it would

461
00:22:14,119 --> 00:22:15,759
be so great to speak to this guy, you know.

462
00:22:15,799 --> 00:22:18,599
And then Rod passed away and I thought, well, that's it.

463
00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:20,000
I'm not going to be able to find this guy.

464
00:22:20,039 --> 00:22:22,599
And then I spoke to a guy and who's a

465
00:22:22,599 --> 00:22:25,519
crossroader and we were talking about it, and he said,

466
00:22:25,519 --> 00:22:27,720
I think I think I might know who this guy is.

467
00:22:27,720 --> 00:22:29,920
Like there's a name that Rod mentioned and it sounds

468
00:22:29,920 --> 00:22:32,799
like this might be the guy. So basically, the two

469
00:22:32,799 --> 00:22:34,960
of us did a little bit of a detective work

470
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:37,480
and we found found a guy. And I reached out

471
00:22:37,480 --> 00:22:40,839
to the guy and left a message on his answering machine,

472
00:22:40,839 --> 00:22:43,599
which is you can imagine being a lawyer and attorney. Yeah,

473
00:22:44,599 --> 00:22:48,759
it's respectable. And you get this phone call from this

474
00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:51,519
from this dude and this random dude in Australia who

475
00:22:51,599 --> 00:22:53,440
rings up it as get a mate, you know, and

476
00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:55,319
I just said on the phone, I said, hey, listen,

477
00:22:55,359 --> 00:22:57,680
you know, I think we had a mutual friend who's

478
00:22:57,720 --> 00:22:59,400
a dear friend of mine, a guy called Rod d.

479
00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:03,720
Rod's obviously passed away long time ago, but Right and

480
00:23:03,759 --> 00:23:06,240
I had been speaking, and I've been working on a book,

481
00:23:06,279 --> 00:23:08,559
and part of the book is talking about Rhyd's life

482
00:23:08,599 --> 00:23:11,440
and the life of people who knew Right I worked

483
00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:14,720
with Ryde. I was wondering whether maybe we could have

484
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:17,400
a chat about the project, you know, and so on,

485
00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:20,160
and so I remember I was, I was getting some takeout,

486
00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:21,680
and I'm in the car with my daughters and the

487
00:23:21,720 --> 00:23:23,359
phone rings, and I put, you know, comes on the

488
00:23:23,359 --> 00:23:25,680
speakerphone and here's this rough as he just sounded so

489
00:23:25,839 --> 00:23:29,160
rough for an attorney. And he goes blah blah, blah,

490
00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:31,039
blah blah, and then he said, you know, I don't

491
00:23:31,079 --> 00:23:32,720
know if I can swear, but he said, effort. Let's

492
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:34,119
do it, you know, like I say, he said, yeah,

493
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:36,200
let's do it. So the next day we recorded this

494
00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:39,200
this first of us a series of interviews, and they

495
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:41,799
were fantastic, really interesting. That guy was a bit of

496
00:23:41,799 --> 00:23:42,240
a beast.

497
00:23:42,599 --> 00:23:45,960
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And as I say it, just it's it's

498
00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:50,359
pretty rare for people to get out of that life.

499
00:23:50,039 --> 00:23:55,240
Speaker 2: But super rare. Yeah, yeah, super rare. So so there's

500
00:23:55,279 --> 00:23:58,000
sort of three people in the book who got out

501
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:02,279
of the life. So Ron Connolly was involved in some

502
00:24:02,319 --> 00:24:04,200
stuff as a young man, and then he became a

503
00:24:04,279 --> 00:24:07,920
peak in clubs and became a senior surveillance expert in clubs.

504
00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:11,079
So that's an example of somebody who transitioned or what

505
00:24:11,319 --> 00:24:14,680
frustraders say. The expression they use is he turned his

506
00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:17,200
collar around, you know, so he went and batted for

507
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:19,640
the wrong team kind of thing, which is a huge

508
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:23,000
no no like. And you see that in the book

509
00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:24,880
with some of the comments from people like Black John

510
00:24:24,920 --> 00:24:27,200
when he talks about a guy called Toak who was

511
00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:30,279
a cheat like a machine man who actually became a

512
00:24:30,319 --> 00:24:32,599
peak and worked with Ron Connley and other people, where

513
00:24:32,799 --> 00:24:36,599
they actually hate these guys and they're quite quite aggressive

514
00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:38,000
about what they would like to do to some of

515
00:24:38,039 --> 00:24:40,319
these people. And I believe Toke actually did get beaten

516
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:43,039
up a few times. But yeah, Ron turned his collar around.

517
00:24:43,039 --> 00:24:46,640
And Ron had a very successful career and up until

518
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:48,799
the time he retired, he was probably considered the world

519
00:24:48,799 --> 00:24:51,640
expert on cheating at poker. For he's work in the

520
00:24:51,799 --> 00:24:55,200
clubs in California, Robert Assioll moved on and had a

521
00:24:55,559 --> 00:24:57,720
I think he was pretty well established financially. He was

522
00:24:57,759 --> 00:25:00,319
one of the smart guy though. He he had a

523
00:25:00,319 --> 00:25:02,839
long retirement as far as I understand, and he moved

524
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:05,759
to Colorado so he could be close to his family.

525
00:25:06,319 --> 00:25:08,319
But he I think he lived well in retirement. A

526
00:25:08,359 --> 00:25:11,039
lot of these guys don't live well in retirement. A

527
00:25:11,079 --> 00:25:14,440
lot of these guys live in penury. Basically, it's like

528
00:25:14,519 --> 00:25:17,640
a it's you know, the psychology of a lot of

529
00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:20,119
these guys is, as they say, easy come, easy go,

530
00:25:20,319 --> 00:25:22,359
And the money they make is pretty money. It's money

531
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:24,480
that would just flow through the hands, and they don't

532
00:25:24,519 --> 00:25:28,039
care because if they go and they burn money one day,

533
00:25:28,079 --> 00:25:29,680
the next day, they can just make it back. They

534
00:25:29,759 --> 00:25:32,240
just sort of it's to them, it's like, you know,

535
00:25:32,319 --> 00:25:33,799
you just walk around and you just pick it just

536
00:25:33,839 --> 00:25:36,279
grows on trees effectively, because suckers are suckers and they're

537
00:25:36,279 --> 00:25:38,799
always going to throw their money at you. So that's

538
00:25:38,839 --> 00:25:41,039
the way these guys operated, and that's why you hear

539
00:25:41,079 --> 00:25:44,200
these stories like you know the story of the old

540
00:25:44,279 --> 00:25:47,279
cheat Wilbur Kelsey, who was a machine man in a

541
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:50,599
California who was still working machine in his eighties and

542
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:52,200
got caught and got beaten up and ended up in

543
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:54,799
the hospital. So you know, these guys will beat up

544
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:57,720
an eighty year old man for cheating. It's a risky

545
00:25:57,759 --> 00:26:00,319
business and a lot of these guys have busted up us,

546
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:03,680
you know, as they say, we say in Australia. Rod,

547
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:08,079
for example, Rod was complicated. Rod was super talented, super skills,

548
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:10,559
super smart, all that sort of stuff. He had a

549
00:26:10,559 --> 00:26:11,960
bit of a gift of the gab as well. He

550
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:14,559
had was a bit of a silver dung cavalier as

551
00:26:14,559 --> 00:26:19,200
they say. But he was also heavily involved in drugged

552
00:26:19,319 --> 00:26:21,119
you know, he was involved in the drug trade and

553
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:25,599
got trouble in that sense, and so then had a habit.

554
00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:27,720
You know, he was put on He got onto heroin

555
00:26:27,799 --> 00:26:29,920
through a woman that he was dating who was a

556
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:33,160
prostitute and drug addict, and yeah, it was it just

557
00:26:33,279 --> 00:26:35,680
it just ruined him essentially, and you know, ruined his

558
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:37,839
judgment and everything else. And towards the end of his

559
00:26:37,880 --> 00:26:40,559
life he was still working private games as a muster mechanic,

560
00:26:41,079 --> 00:26:43,480
but the kind of cut he was getting was nothing

561
00:26:43,519 --> 00:26:45,400
compared to what was being made in the game. So

562
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:47,839
a game might you know, they might take off some

563
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:50,039
sucker for two hundred thousand dollars in a private game,

564
00:26:50,079 --> 00:26:53,039
and Rod would get nine thousand dollars. You know. You

565
00:26:53,079 --> 00:26:55,680
know that's the sort of money that was trickling down

566
00:26:55,839 --> 00:26:58,799
his way because he wasn't in a position to negotiate,

567
00:26:58,839 --> 00:27:01,160
because they knew how desperate he was. And I was

568
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:04,480
speaking to somebody just yesterday who spoken to a partner

569
00:27:04,519 --> 00:27:07,720
of Rod's and said that, you know, Rod's habit never

570
00:27:07,759 --> 00:27:09,599
gotten the way of his work when he was working

571
00:27:09,599 --> 00:27:12,480
with partners, but everyone just sort of knew that. You know,

572
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:14,400
at a certain time of the week, like on a

573
00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:16,640
Thursday or something, Rod would disappear and you wouldn't see

574
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:18,640
him for four days. You know. They said that he

575
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:20,759
was never he's never high when he worked, but he

576
00:27:20,799 --> 00:27:25,720
was thinking about it, I think, getting back to Bobby Machines, Yeah.

577
00:27:25,519 --> 00:27:28,039
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, go ahead, I was.

578
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:30,759
Speaker 2: Just going to say that, Yeah, he was very successful,

579
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:33,680
but he was he had he was super smart. Obviously

580
00:27:33,759 --> 00:27:37,160
he was super smart. He was a guy who got drafted,

581
00:27:37,319 --> 00:27:40,559
went to Vietnam, fought in Vietnam, came back and used

582
00:27:40,559 --> 00:27:44,160
the GI bill to study. He had some kids, and

583
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:47,160
obviously he was separated from whoever the mother was, and

584
00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:49,680
he was left with a couple of kids, and so

585
00:27:49,839 --> 00:27:53,680
he would look around for ways to make money, and

586
00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:55,400
for him, he found the easiest way to make money

587
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:57,640
was the steel at every weekend, so he would get

588
00:27:57,640 --> 00:27:59,480
in the car and he would go to the clubs

589
00:27:59,519 --> 00:28:04,240
and Sandy and Sacramento and Gadina and he would steal

590
00:28:04,559 --> 00:28:06,640
you know, a thousand or a couple of thousand dollars

591
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:11,599
in the early seventies, and he lived just fine as

592
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:14,920
a student, you know, studying to become a lawyer. And

593
00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:16,880
then he tells the story in the book that he

594
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:19,359
was always just a means to an end. He just

595
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:21,839
had discipline. I guess, which is that's the sort of

596
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:24,839
thing that separates the true master sort of cheats from

597
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:27,759
the guys who are in the life for their whole life.

598
00:28:27,799 --> 00:28:30,880
And as you know, scuffling at the bottom is that

599
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,240
he was smart, and he had discipline. He had a plan,

600
00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:35,599
and he stuck to the plan. And the day that

601
00:28:36,079 --> 00:28:38,079
he found out that he'd passed the bar exam was

602
00:28:38,119 --> 00:28:39,519
the day he stopped cheating forever.

603
00:28:40,279 --> 00:28:44,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing, you know. I moved to Las Vegas in

604
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:49,279
nineteen seventy seven and started work as a blackjack dealer,

605
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:52,160
and I worked with a lot of these old guys

606
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:56,880
who had been in Hot Springs, Arkansas and Newport, Kentucky,

607
00:28:57,079 --> 00:29:02,079
and a lot of them had been cryders. And you know,

608
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:04,920
my big regret is that I didn't spend more time

609
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:08,000
talking to those guys and getting more of their stories,

610
00:29:08,079 --> 00:29:12,559
because it was just amazing to hear the kind of

611
00:29:12,599 --> 00:29:16,000
stories they had and the people they knew, and.

612
00:29:16,440 --> 00:29:19,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, look to me, that just sounds like, yeah, that

613
00:29:20,319 --> 00:29:22,039
something that I would love to have been able to

614
00:29:22,079 --> 00:29:24,440
have the opportunity to speak to those guys. Like Volume

615
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:27,359
two has an interview with a guy who bought in

616
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:30,920
World War Two, learnt to gamble as a soldier in

617
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:33,880
the Pacific, got a purple heart, was blown up by

618
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:36,279
a hand grenade, ended up in the hospital, and then

619
00:29:36,279 --> 00:29:38,440
he came back to New York and got turned out

620
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:40,400
by a bunch of road hustlers, went on the road,

621
00:29:40,799 --> 00:29:43,119
and he was cheating for the forties until the day

622
00:29:43,119 --> 00:29:45,759
he died. I interviewed him in the early two thousands,

623
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:48,880
and so he was one of the classic old road hustlers.

624
00:29:49,319 --> 00:29:51,000
And he's the only guy that I've got that's of

625
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:54,319
that sort of that sort of vintage. I met other

626
00:29:54,359 --> 00:29:57,359
partners that he worked with, and I know people who

627
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:00,680
knew those partners, like Ron conleeknew and of those partners,

628
00:30:00,799 --> 00:30:03,920
guys like Frenchie the Hawk, who was a guy who

629
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:07,079
was around Farmer's Market and worked in the clubs in

630
00:30:07,079 --> 00:30:10,960
Gardena and these guys are all in Cruise. And another

631
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:13,559
guy who is a name that might be known to people,

632
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:18,160
Tony Georgio, who was an actor in Hollywood. Tony Georgio,

633
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:21,599
like magicians know that Tony Georgio claimed to have been

634
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:24,519
a cheat, and he wrote some articles for a magic

635
00:30:24,559 --> 00:30:27,480
journal called the Georgio Letters, where he talked about all

636
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:29,039
the cheats he knew and all that sort of stuff.

637
00:30:29,079 --> 00:30:32,319
And some magicians have asked me in recent years, you know,

638
00:30:32,440 --> 00:30:35,039
was Georgia really a cheat? One hundred percent? Georgia was

639
00:30:35,079 --> 00:30:37,440
a cheat, and he cheated for twenty years. He was

640
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:40,160
a professional chick for twenty years up until the early

641
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:43,519
sixties when he became a professional actor. And he was

642
00:30:43,519 --> 00:30:45,359
a good actor too, by the way, but he was

643
00:30:46,039 --> 00:30:48,039
he was a very scary kind of guy who was

644
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:51,480
this big man, big Italian dude, and he had like

645
00:30:51,519 --> 00:30:55,799
a pretty scary, rough looking face, like a pugilist, bit

646
00:30:55,839 --> 00:30:59,319
of a gargoyle, and in fact was he was lined

647
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:02,680
up to play Cobrassi and The Godfather, and then at

648
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:05,400
the last minute Capolo said, no, We'll go with this

649
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:07,240
other guy, and the guy who ended up playing Luca

650
00:31:07,279 --> 00:31:10,079
Brassi replaced Georgio in the role. And the person that

651
00:31:10,119 --> 00:31:13,200
told me this story said that Capola said he wanted

652
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,720
somebody who was scarier than Georgio, and he said to me,

653
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:20,240
which is crazy, because I've never met anybody scarier than Georgia.

654
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:25,920
And so George actually does appear in the movie. And

655
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:29,440
so in the scene where Luca Brassi gets garrotted, one

656
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:31,200
of the guys behind the bars stabs him in the hand.

657
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:32,680
I don't know if you remember the scene. So they

658
00:31:32,759 --> 00:31:35,279
pin him at the bar while they strangle him. But

659
00:31:35,359 --> 00:31:39,000
the guy cleaning the glass who lights his cigarette is

660
00:31:39,039 --> 00:31:41,559
Tony Georgio. That's the guy, and if you see him

661
00:31:41,559 --> 00:31:43,400
in that short scene you can see what a menacing

662
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:46,680
kind of person he was in real life. And it

663
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:48,720
was actually him that suggested to the director that they

664
00:31:48,759 --> 00:31:50,440
stabbed him in the hand when they do the scene,

665
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:53,599
So the director incorporated that into the film, but he

666
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:55,839
was in a bunch of movies. Escape from Which Mountain.

667
00:31:56,079 --> 00:31:58,079
He was in Magnum Force. He's the guy with a

668
00:31:58,079 --> 00:31:59,920
shotgun in one of the scenes, the leader of a

669
00:32:00,079 --> 00:32:04,039
gang that gets killed by Benisewood. And and he's an

670
00:32:04,079 --> 00:32:07,720
amazing guy. And he was a master mechanic, very good

671
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:10,119
with dice and cards, and you know, I got to

672
00:32:10,119 --> 00:32:12,400
meet him a few times in Los Angeles, and we

673
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:14,960
spoke a lot on the phone, and we also chatted

674
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:16,720
online a lot in the early days of the internet.

675
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:18,880
And i'd spoke to spoken to him and said, look,

676
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:20,319
I'd really like to interview you, and he said this,

677
00:32:20,559 --> 00:32:23,039
you know, in his rough ways, like there's no way,

678
00:32:23,319 --> 00:32:25,640
you know, he had this this very scary kind of voice.

679
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:28,000
And I was like, okay, that's fine, that's fair enough.

680
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:31,079
But I interviewed one of his partners, a guy called

681
00:32:31,279 --> 00:32:35,160
called Phil h Phil Hertzog, and that's a fantastic interview

682
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:37,599
being volume too. But the whole time that I was

683
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:40,519
interviewing him, he's saying to me, you know, he had

684
00:32:40,559 --> 00:32:43,279
this whole old man voice. He's like, whatever you do,

685
00:32:43,279 --> 00:32:45,799
don't tell Tony I'm talking to you. Don't say a

686
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:51,279
word to Tony. They're all scared of Tony, right, So,

687
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:54,920
but Hertzog was the real master mechanic like in that

688
00:32:55,119 --> 00:32:57,400
in that group, he was the guy that probably had

689
00:32:57,119 --> 00:33:00,599
the best chops. And that's that's just a great interview.

690
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:02,920
I really enjoyed that one. There's sort of sort of

691
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:05,319
a code to this story. You know. I worked as

692
00:33:05,359 --> 00:33:08,599
a diplomat overseas for a number of years, and I

693
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:11,000
remember I was on a Friday, I was at the

694
00:33:11,039 --> 00:33:14,000
mall shopping when I lived in Saudi Arabia, and I

695
00:33:14,079 --> 00:33:16,519
got a phone call from somebody who was very close

696
00:33:16,519 --> 00:33:19,960
to Tony Georgio and he said to Tony was dying

697
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:21,599
of cancer, and he said, Tony's ready to talk to you.

698
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:23,240
He wants to do the interview. And I said, I

699
00:33:23,319 --> 00:33:25,880
just can't do it. Like I'm in Saudi Arabia, it's

700
00:33:25,920 --> 00:33:28,440
just not something I can do. And so that's one

701
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:30,359
of my big regrets. Like you were talking about those

702
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:33,200
guys from Arkansas and other places, and that's my big

703
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:35,559
regret is that I didn't actually get to record Tony

704
00:33:35,599 --> 00:33:37,799
for that interview, because that would have been a But

705
00:33:38,599 --> 00:33:41,039
I did speak to somebody who knew Tony very well

706
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:43,440
and There's an interview in the second book with Darwin

707
00:33:43,519 --> 00:33:47,000
or Tears, who knew him very well, and Darwin recounts

708
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:49,319
a bunch of stories that Tony had told him about

709
00:33:49,319 --> 00:33:52,960
his work. And Tony worked with a partner in Cuba

710
00:33:53,119 --> 00:33:56,920
before the Castro period, and they ran razzle for the

711
00:33:56,920 --> 00:34:00,359
mob in the casino there, and razzle's the old carnival game.

712
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:03,440
And they made lots of lots of money running razzle

713
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:05,519
as a casino game, right, which.

714
00:34:05,359 --> 00:34:07,880
Speaker 1: I did not see. That's the first I've ever heard

715
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:09,719
of razzle being dealt in the casino.

716
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it was huge. And Tony told this

717
00:34:15,039 --> 00:34:17,079
story to Dah and he said, me and my partner,

718
00:34:17,199 --> 00:34:19,079
you know, we had this deal with the mob. It

719
00:34:19,119 --> 00:34:21,440
was fifty to fifty and we were just making money

720
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:23,760
hand over fist, you know, just making tons and tons

721
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:26,039
of money. And then of course the mob came back

722
00:34:26,039 --> 00:34:28,519
and they said, okay, listen, things are changing. Now it's

723
00:34:28,559 --> 00:34:30,920
sixty forty, and then it was now it's you know,

724
00:34:31,079 --> 00:34:33,639
seventy thirty. It was a classic kind of you know,

725
00:34:33,840 --> 00:34:36,920
like a buyout, like a forced buyout kind of thing.

726
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:39,320
And so Tony just said screw it, and he said,

727
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:40,960
I'm going back to the States and he left his

728
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:44,639
partner and his partner stayed on working this scam. And

729
00:34:45,119 --> 00:34:48,039
Darlin said to me, you know, everything that Tony told him,

730
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:50,719
he spoke to other cheats and they all backed up.

731
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:52,880
It was all validated, like people said, oh, yeah he

732
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:55,719
did this or yeah he did that, So he legitimately

733
00:34:55,840 --> 00:34:59,840
was a hardcore cheeter. And there's a book called Havana

734
00:35:00,159 --> 00:35:03,000
Turn by TJ. English, and there's a whole chapter that

735
00:35:03,079 --> 00:35:06,239
talks about the mob's casino activities in Cuba, and it

736
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:07,880
actually talks about Rezzle in that book.

737
00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 1: So that's a huh, yeah, I will check that out. Yeah,

738
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:15,960
I lean more toward I'm much more interested in the

739
00:35:16,079 --> 00:35:20,559
people who were cheating in casinos than you know, the

740
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:24,760
card rooms and things like that. And you know one

741
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:26,880
of the guys who was an old cheat that I

742
00:35:27,079 --> 00:35:30,760
talked to back you know, I met this guy back

743
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:34,719
in about nineteen seventy nine or something, and you know,

744
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:39,159
his move was to play what they called switches, which

745
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:43,239
is to literally have two guys. It's kind of like

746
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:48,320
the move that Bobby Azel claims to have invented. I

747
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:51,360
had always heard it called the muck switch, where the

748
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:54,360
switch is happening under the table. But these guys would

749
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:57,639
switch on the table and one of the moves was

750
00:35:57,679 --> 00:36:01,400
to just basically throw the to the other guy and

751
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:05,880
the two cards would pass and into each's hand. But

752
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:08,880
back then, there were really no cameras, there was no video,

753
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:13,199
there wasn't any of that. So but he said, you know,

754
00:36:13,519 --> 00:36:17,440
every once in a while, like the guy would miss

755
00:36:17,480 --> 00:36:20,360
and the card would just go sailing across the table,

756
00:36:21,039 --> 00:36:24,800
and you know, and the dealer would be like, what

757
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:28,719
the hell just happened? Yeah, but I remember him saying

758
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:30,840
that he ended up giving it up because they just

759
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:34,320
lost their nerves, you know, because if you got caught

760
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:37,519
back then that you know, it was a pretty serious thing.

761
00:36:38,039 --> 00:36:39,559
Speaker 2: Big problems, Yeah, big problems.

762
00:36:39,599 --> 00:36:40,400
Speaker 1: Yeah.

763
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 2: I love those stories. I love hearing that stuff. And

764
00:36:42,639 --> 00:36:45,079
you're right, you know, things have changed in terms of

765
00:36:45,519 --> 00:36:47,280
you know, there were no cameras, there were peaks in

766
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:49,559
the ceilings and things like that. But now with these

767
00:36:49,639 --> 00:36:53,159
camera systems, the resolutions crizy, and there's so many other

768
00:36:53,519 --> 00:36:56,199
things that limit, you know, the ability of cheats to

769
00:36:56,239 --> 00:37:00,000
function in effectively in casinos. And it's all it comes

770
00:37:00,079 --> 00:37:05,039
down at technology, and the same technology that helps governments

771
00:37:05,079 --> 00:37:09,360
to prevent transnational crime, you know, people smuggling, drug smuggling,

772
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:12,280
state and nonstate actors engaged in terrorism, all that sort

773
00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:15,280
of stuff. All of this technology can easily be applied

774
00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:19,360
to cheating stuff. Now, so especially for me, you know,

775
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:22,280
if you look at biometrics is just to killer problem

776
00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:25,280
for people involved in cheating. Once they know, once they

777
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:28,480
have your scan, your biometrics and they identify you and

778
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:32,239
you're confirmed or suspect kod of being a cheat, then

779
00:37:32,519 --> 00:37:34,320
biometrics is going to pick you up everywhere. You just

780
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,599
can't beat it. There's you know a lot of cheats

781
00:37:37,719 --> 00:37:41,400
wear disguises, and they'll still wear disguises, and those disguises

782
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:44,280
are effective up until the time that people have an

783
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:49,159
elevated suspicion of who you are. Those disguises will allow

784
00:37:49,199 --> 00:37:52,039
you to function until you draw attention to your But

785
00:37:52,119 --> 00:37:56,119
once once you draw attention to yourself, biometrics just bypasses

786
00:37:56,159 --> 00:37:58,159
all of that because there are things that even if

787
00:37:58,199 --> 00:38:00,800
you wear disguises, you can't change. You can't change or

788
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:02,960
capital distance, you know, the distance between your eyes, this

789
00:38:03,039 --> 00:38:05,719
points on your face that just can't be modified in

790
00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:08,599
a way that will defeat biometrics and then the other

791
00:38:08,599 --> 00:38:12,159
factor is AI, the ability of AI. I'm not a

792
00:38:12,159 --> 00:38:14,719
big fan of AI in other regards as somebody who's

793
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:17,079
an author, I think AI is terrible in that sense.

794
00:38:17,119 --> 00:38:21,760
But in terms of casino security, AI allows very fast

795
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:26,360
pattern recognition and analysis to be conducted. You know, like

796
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:30,199
all of that really hard work analysis and identifying trends

797
00:38:30,199 --> 00:38:34,639
and tracking of locations and of activities and all of

798
00:38:34,639 --> 00:38:36,800
that sort of stuff can be done in an so

799
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:38,519
that you can you can wag ahead of the game

800
00:38:38,559 --> 00:38:41,719
in terms of your analysis. So there's that sort of stuff.

801
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:44,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the other thing is because of all

802
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:50,400
the financial reporting. You know, forty years ago, fifty years ago,

803
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:54,880
you could walk up to the casino cage and cash

804
00:38:55,039 --> 00:38:58,559
fifty thousand dollars and they would not dream of asking

805
00:38:58,599 --> 00:39:03,280
you your name. Like that was you know, people, it

806
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:06,559
was considered like privacy, a privacy thing, like you wouldn't

807
00:39:06,559 --> 00:39:09,119
ask somebody their name just because they want a bunch

808
00:39:09,159 --> 00:39:11,960
of money. And now you know, you can't cash out

809
00:39:12,039 --> 00:39:14,880
three thousand in most places without having to give ID

810
00:39:15,159 --> 00:39:18,159
and once they know who you are as you say,

811
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:23,400
you know, they have the databases, and so yeah, it

812
00:39:23,519 --> 00:39:28,199
gets more more difficult and you know, the the real

813
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:32,880
killer is going to be within the next ten years,

814
00:39:33,239 --> 00:39:36,320
it's all going to be cashless. You're going to you're

815
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:37,960
going to have to buy in on your phone, and

816
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:39,519
that means they're going to know who you are.

817
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:43,599
Speaker 2: You know, the digital trial. You just can't get away

818
00:39:43,599 --> 00:39:46,159
from that digital trial. So so cheating, I think the

819
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:49,280
cheating and casinos is going to be you know, it's

820
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:51,400
going to be the collusion in it. So that sort

821
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:53,000
of inside of threat is going to be the biggest

822
00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:54,920
deal for cheating and casines. You know, it's still it's

823
00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:57,320
still going to be the case that someone somewhere is

824
00:39:57,360 --> 00:39:59,079
going to try and get some papers and markets in

825
00:39:59,159 --> 00:40:01,840
or casino from the inside so that people from the

826
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:04,920
outside can take it off. And if they're smart, they'll

827
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:07,079
take it off over time. They won't be greedy. And

828
00:40:07,199 --> 00:40:09,360
you know, because you know, one of the lessons from

829
00:40:09,639 --> 00:40:13,159
from these books my book is is that greed is

830
00:40:13,159 --> 00:40:16,360
a killer. Discipline and greed are the two problems that

831
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:16,880
cheets have.

832
00:40:17,519 --> 00:40:21,199
Speaker 1: So we have a mutual friend and I say to him,

833
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:24,480
you know, the problem with you guys is not only

834
00:40:24,519 --> 00:40:27,039
do you guys not want to have a losing session,

835
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:30,039
you don't want to lose a hand, you know. I

836
00:40:30,079 --> 00:40:33,559
mean if they just played a little bit of cover

837
00:40:33,679 --> 00:40:39,000
and settled for only having a fifty percent advantage or something,

838
00:40:39,119 --> 00:40:43,039
you know. But yeah, they do so many stupid things

839
00:40:43,079 --> 00:40:46,039
that just shoot themselves on the foot.

840
00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:48,239
Speaker 2: Yeah. That and that comes through in the book when

841
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:50,719
we talk about people like Santa Rosa Jimmy. You know,

842
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:53,199
he just couldn't leave a nickel on the table. He

843
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:55,719
just had to steal everything. You know. It's like it's

844
00:40:55,719 --> 00:40:58,079
just a lack of discipline. And because those guys had

845
00:40:58,079 --> 00:41:00,679
the mentality of a road hustler, it's like, well, it

846
00:41:00,679 --> 00:41:02,840
doesn't matter if we burn it up here tonight, We're

847
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:05,159
just going to move on to the next place, you know.

848
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:08,440
So they don't care. But then you read somebody like

849
00:41:09,199 --> 00:41:11,480
Bobby A when he talks in the last chapter of

850
00:41:11,519 --> 00:41:13,800
the book, and he's like he's so angry with his

851
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:16,559
partners because he's like, if you guys had had some discipline,

852
00:41:16,599 --> 00:41:19,000
we could have gone forever with this play. We could

853
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:21,400
have just made money. Everybody could have been fine if

854
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:23,760
we've just flown under the radar and not developed a

855
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:26,639
profile of activity. But these guys, they just couldn't do it.

856
00:41:26,679 --> 00:41:30,320
They just lacked discipline. It's just it's not that they're dumb,

857
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:32,320
but they are dumb. I mean, they're not low IQ,

858
00:41:32,519 --> 00:41:35,480
they're just not They just don't have a strategic view,

859
00:41:37,079 --> 00:41:38,400
right right.

860
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:41,440
Speaker 1: So are you are you a I mean, I know

861
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:44,280
your background isn't magic, but do you work as a magician?

862
00:41:45,039 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 2: No, I don't. I don't. I worked as a magician

863
00:41:47,039 --> 00:41:49,440
many years ago, and I very quickly got involved in

864
00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:53,559
a gambling demonstration. So my whole thing was I mean,

865
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:56,800
I like card magic. I've still got good friends who

866
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,480
are a really good card magicians. In fact, one of

867
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:01,960
my closest friends in life is a guy called Jason

868
00:42:02,239 --> 00:42:06,599
Danny who had Jason on the show. Yeah, I saw that,

869
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:10,280
and Jason's kind of like my little brother, you know.

870
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:12,480
We were both very close to Darwin or Tears, and

871
00:42:13,320 --> 00:42:16,559
we both do high end hard techniques and that sort

872
00:42:16,599 --> 00:42:19,480
of stuff. But I don't do as much magic anymore.

873
00:42:19,599 --> 00:42:21,599
I mean, I still remember like five tricks that I

874
00:42:21,679 --> 00:42:23,599
used to do, and I can. I can dust them

875
00:42:23,599 --> 00:42:26,760
off and do them, but it's really just not my interest.

876
00:42:27,079 --> 00:42:30,280
My interest is the techniques of cheating, and that's always

877
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:32,519
been a passion for me. So if I'm sitting down

878
00:42:32,559 --> 00:42:35,239
with a pack of cards. I'm practicing various card controls,

879
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:38,480
you know that come from the table deals, and especially

880
00:42:38,519 --> 00:42:41,239
dice switches. I just have a I started off doing

881
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:44,159
a lot of card stuff, but now really my focus

882
00:42:44,199 --> 00:42:46,719
is dice moves. I like those traditional dice moves, and

883
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:49,800
I guess I've always liked the challenge. So dice moves

884
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:52,880
for me sit at the very sort of pinnacle of difficulty.

885
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:55,280
The very very good dice moves are very hard to do,

886
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:59,360
and I do all of the hard high end dice switches,

887
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:01,280
the palms which is in the tip switch and the

888
00:43:01,320 --> 00:43:03,800
fly switch, and that sort of stuff I don't do.

889
00:43:05,159 --> 00:43:07,960
I think the next level above that is these dice

890
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:11,719
controls like the air ball that Robert Asil talks about

891
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:14,360
in the book and that I've known three people personally

892
00:43:14,440 --> 00:43:17,599
that have actually worked that in clubs and casinos and

893
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:19,880
have made money doing it. But as you find when

894
00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:23,079
you read the book and from Roberts comments, basically they

895
00:43:23,119 --> 00:43:25,320
were covering their nut. It's just not effective. And what

896
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:27,280
we're talking about for the listener is that you take

897
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:29,119
a pair of dice and you shake them. It looks

898
00:43:29,159 --> 00:43:30,920
like a fair shake and then you throw them and

899
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:34,639
you kill the six on one of those those dice,

900
00:43:35,599 --> 00:43:38,719
and it's an amazing thing. And I don't know, you've

901
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:41,199
probably had a chance to see somebody do it, but

902
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:44,119
when you see it, it's out of sight. It's crazy.

903
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:48,840
Speaker 1: So just to give the listeners a little more detail,

904
00:43:49,719 --> 00:43:54,559
one die spins in the air. This is not a slide,

905
00:43:55,480 --> 00:44:00,800
but the dye goes in the air and but does

906
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:04,480
not bounce off the back wall and it's spinning and

907
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:07,960
so it stays with the top side up and the

908
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:13,079
other die bounces off the wall. Yeah, and the problem is, yeah,

909
00:44:13,239 --> 00:44:17,800
I've gone out and tried to make money at this

910
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:22,760
with somebody who spent many, many, many years working on it.

911
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:27,079
And the problem is that from above, from a camera,

912
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:30,800
it looks like a slide because you don't have the

913
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:36,000
depth perception. And even from you know, a boxman could

914
00:44:36,079 --> 00:44:39,079
think you're trying to slide to die too. So you

915
00:44:39,159 --> 00:44:42,440
can't do it over and over and over. You know,

916
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:44,719
maybe you get to do it once or twice, and

917
00:44:44,719 --> 00:44:46,639
then you've got to try to go to another casino.

918
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:50,000
It's just it's just a very difficult way to make

919
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:51,400
any serious money.

920
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:54,039
Speaker 2: That's right, And you're right, you've got to turn it

921
00:44:54,079 --> 00:44:56,119
from the eye in the sky. It looks bad. It

922
00:44:56,159 --> 00:44:58,800
travels in a flat move across the top of the table,

923
00:44:59,039 --> 00:45:01,920
even though as you've as you well know, because you've

924
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:04,880
seen it, you can put the cane across the table

925
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:06,960
and it's flying over that cane, you know, so you

926
00:45:07,039 --> 00:45:09,360
know it's getting air. But it just doesn't look good

927
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:13,159
from the camera. So yeah, it's just but it's as

928
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:15,039
Robert Assiel caught it, the Impossible Dream.

929
00:45:16,039 --> 00:45:16,679
Speaker 1: Yeah.

930
00:45:17,039 --> 00:45:20,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's different from all these guys who make

931
00:45:20,639 --> 00:45:24,159
money by teaching people how to dice setting all of

932
00:45:24,199 --> 00:45:27,559
these it's just such a sucker thing. And and and

933
00:45:27,559 --> 00:45:30,280
and Bobby A is very very critical of those people

934
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:30,760
in the book.

935
00:45:31,159 --> 00:45:32,840
Speaker 1: Yeahs as well he should be.

936
00:45:34,039 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 2: Yeah.

937
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:37,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, anyway, I want to thank you for doing this.

938
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:41,760
This has been great and for the listeners. Again. The

939
00:45:41,800 --> 00:45:46,159
book is called Thieving Bastards and it is available on Amazon.

940
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:50,519
Is there if are you on any social media? If

941
00:45:50,519 --> 00:45:52,719
people wanted to try to get a hold of you.

942
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:57,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the book is available in hardcover from my website.

943
00:45:57,599 --> 00:46:00,119
I'm in Australia. It ships from Australia, but it's it's

944
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:02,239
it's a big, heavy book, and it's a high quality book.

945
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:04,719
I know you've had a chance to read the book

946
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:07,480
and see it physically. It's a super high quality product.

947
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:11,039
But yeah, it's available from my website which is www

948
00:46:11,159 --> 00:46:14,920
dot Thecolddeckcompany dot com, so you can get it in

949
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:18,239
hardcover there, and it's also available as a kindling. And

950
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:21,519
I'm also I'm on Instagram as the Cold Deck Company.

951
00:46:21,559 --> 00:46:24,159
If you search for Andrewimhurst, you'll find me on.

952
00:46:24,719 --> 00:46:28,639
Speaker 1: And I'll put links to your website and your Instagram

953
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:30,760
and put I'll put links to all of it in

954
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:33,719
the show notes so people can confind you.

955
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:37,079
Speaker 2: Thanks. I really appreciate it. As I said, I've been

956
00:46:37,119 --> 00:46:40,119
reading your book and I really enjoyed the especially the

957
00:46:40,159 --> 00:46:42,199
chapter with Chip Reese. And I was quite interested to

958
00:46:42,199 --> 00:46:44,760
find out that he was the manager of the poker

959
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:47,360
room at The Juice from about seventy nine into the

960
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:50,559
early eighties, which is interesting because Rodd got his start

961
00:46:50,599 --> 00:46:52,159
working as a cheat in the Juice.

962
00:46:52,599 --> 00:46:57,280
Speaker 1: Oh I know, and am I heard like whenever whenever

963
00:46:57,320 --> 00:46:59,639
he was putting in a cooler on the poker table,

964
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:01,880
Chip would like high tail it out of the room.

965
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:04,440
He didn't want to be around when when that kind

966
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:10,400
of stuff was going on. So yeah, he has some

967
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:13,880
great stories about dealing at the dunes. It was too

968
00:47:13,920 --> 00:47:16,119
bad that those those didn't really make an end of

969
00:47:16,159 --> 00:47:16,519
the book.

970
00:47:16,599 --> 00:47:19,719
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, well actually.

971
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:22,480
Speaker 1: I heard, I heard the very first time that he

972
00:47:22,679 --> 00:47:26,519
dealt he he was dealing seven cards, standing, sat down,

973
00:47:26,599 --> 00:47:29,559
shuffled the deck, dealt out the hands, and he dealt

974
00:47:29,639 --> 00:47:34,000
himself in. And because you know, because he was he

975
00:47:34,039 --> 00:47:37,199
was used to guardina where the dealer is, you know, yeah,

976
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:42,360
and the players are like, buddy, you know, you don't.

977
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:46,239
Speaker 2: Need to play. I thought it was interesting that Chip says,

978
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:49,280
he says, you know, a lot of these cheats they

979
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:51,079
learned a cheap before they learned how to play. And

980
00:47:51,119 --> 00:47:53,559
that's exactly what Rodd says. Oh, I said, you know

981
00:47:53,639 --> 00:47:55,159
to me, he said, I learned how to cheat before

982
00:47:55,159 --> 00:47:56,960
I learned how to play. And then once you learn

983
00:47:57,000 --> 00:47:58,760
how to cheat, you never learned how to play because

984
00:47:58,760 --> 00:48:03,719
you don't need to, right right. Well, thank you very much, Richard,

985
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:07,480
I really appreciate the opportunity. I really appreciate it absolutely.

986
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:10,880
Speaker 1: Thank you, and have a good one everybody. I'll see

987
00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:11,480
you next time.

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00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:17,599
Speaker 2: Free audio post production by Alphonic Dot com