Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and Welcome to Life is a Gamble. It's
Speaker 1: been a while since I dropped one of these episodes,
Speaker 1: but I am back. And before we jump into today's guest,
Speaker 1: I just want to say you can always reach me
Speaker 1: at Life is a gamblepod at gmail dot com and
Speaker 1: you can find me on Twitter at RWM twenty one.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Andrew Wimhurst and he has a
Speaker 1: new book out called Thieving Bastards Through Confessions of the
Speaker 1: World's Greatest Cheats. So Andrew, Welcome to Life is a Gamble.
Speaker 2: Hey, Richard, thanks very much for having me on the show.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So as I understand it, this book was thirty years
Speaker 1: in the making. Is that correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I've been working on for thirty years.
Speaker 2: I've been recording interviews with people for thirty years that've
Speaker 2: been sitting in boxes and in my study in all
Speaker 2: that time, traveling to America to meet people, sit down
Speaker 2: with people and have conversations. But yeah, the idea for
Speaker 2: this book started in the eighties.
Speaker 1: So it really you were planning to make it as
Speaker 1: a book as opposed to just interviewing these guys for
Speaker 1: your own edification.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So I'm a big fan of books
Speaker 2: that are about interviews with people. I just find that
Speaker 2: books of interviews are like an unfiltered experience. You can
Speaker 2: really understand the way a person thinks and what's happened
Speaker 2: in their life, and what the psychology is behind you know,
Speaker 2: what motivates them. I think it's just fascinating. In fact,
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of all of these books. I've
Speaker 2: really enjoyed your book Gambling Wizards, which I've had a
Speaker 2: chance to read lately. I haven't had a chance to
Speaker 2: read a lot of books in the last few years
Speaker 2: because I've been focusing on this book. But I've been
Speaker 2: reading your book and really really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: So thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read a book. I read a book in
Speaker 2: the eighties called Cops Their Lives in their Own Words
Speaker 2: by a guy called Mark Baker. It's published in about
Speaker 2: eighty five, and I just found it really fascinating. That
Speaker 2: was when I really started to get interested. This is
Speaker 2: as a teenager, and then I sort of drifted into
Speaker 2: an interest in card magic, which quickly became an interest
Speaker 2: in cheating at cards, which has been a strong passion
Speaker 2: for many years. And I was in the National Library
Speaker 2: in Australia, and I found a book in the stacks
Speaker 2: there called Road Hustler by Robert Pruce, and it's a
Speaker 2: sociological study of professional card cheats in North America and
Speaker 2: Canada and up in the sort of the Eastern States.
Speaker 2: And the book originated with he had a student who
Speaker 2: was a former cheat in one of his classes and
Speaker 2: let slip that this was his background, and so in
Speaker 2: writing this book, he includes a bunch of anecdotes from
Speaker 2: that sheet, some short paragraphs about what it's like to
Speaker 2: be a cheat and so on. And as I was
Speaker 2: reading those, I just found them absolutely fascinating, really really fascinating,
Speaker 2: And I thought to myself back then, wouldn't it be
Speaker 2: great to have a book that was like Mark Baker's Cops,
Speaker 2: but was about professional cheats. And that's where it started.
Speaker 2: And I never stopped thinking about that, and I wasn't
Speaker 2: sure I'd be able to make it work. But over
Speaker 2: time I got lucky and with some hard work, I
Speaker 2: actually was able to put together enough information and contacts
Speaker 2: to actually put the book together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would assume it was very difficult to get
Speaker 1: these guys to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, it's a long, long process to do that,
Speaker 2: and I started with early contacts and I built from
Speaker 2: one contact into multiple contacts, and I built over the years.
Speaker 2: So when I was young, I was into card magic
Speaker 2: and I was into cheating stuff, and I started working
Speaker 2: doing shows demonstrated in cheating techniques here in Australia, and
Speaker 2: in doing that and looking around at the different people
Speaker 2: who were doing that sort of work, I came across
Speaker 2: a guy called Darwin Ortiz, who was a card magician
Speaker 2: passed away a couple of years ago, and as a
Speaker 2: young kid, I wrote to him. A letter came back
Speaker 2: from him and we started a friendship and we became
Speaker 2: very very good friends over the year. So he became
Speaker 2: one of my closest friends. I knew him for thirty years,
Speaker 2: and you know, he's the first person that I spoke
Speaker 2: to about this. And I know that Darwin had written
Speaker 2: a book called Gambling Scams, which was published in the eighties,
Speaker 2: and that book includes a couple of anecdotes from the
Speaker 2: contacts that he had. Because he grew up in the Bronx,
Speaker 2: he hung around with people involved in cheating. He was
Speaker 2: connected to an underground supply house in New York city,
Speaker 2: which was one of the big, biggest ones in the country.
Speaker 2: He had close friends in there, and he was the
Speaker 2: person who gave me my first couple of contacts. But
Speaker 2: I told him about the book idea. He thought it
Speaker 2: was a great idea, and you know, he just knew
Speaker 2: I had a passion for it and he trusted me.
Speaker 2: So he actually trusted me with his contacts and set
Speaker 2: me up with a couple of guys and had started
Speaker 2: from there. Now, none of those guys are in the book,
Speaker 2: but the original no, no, no, no no. In fact,
Speaker 2: in fact, one of those guys was my first major rejection.
Speaker 2: This is the guy that hung up in my ear.
Speaker 2: He said he wasn't a snitch. This is the guy that, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, and I'm okay with that. I perfectly understand that.
Speaker 2: You know, I've always been very upfront with the people
Speaker 2: that I interview that I want to build a trust
Speaker 2: relationship where they can trust that I'm not going to
Speaker 2: put anything in any of these books that they don't
Speaker 2: want to have a peer in the books. So anyway,
Speaker 2: that guy that sort of closed off to me that
Speaker 2: one relationship. But that guy was long retired. He ran
Speaker 2: a big underground cheating supply house. When I spoke to him,
Speaker 2: He's in Florida, and he said, I'm not a snitch,
Speaker 2: and and I kind of get it because there are
Speaker 2: some people that I've interviewed. All of the people I've
Speaker 2: interviewed have strong connections to criminal activity, but a couple
Speaker 2: of people that I've spoken to had connections to you know,
Speaker 2: the mob, for example, and those people really aren't interested
Speaker 2: in having their stuff appear in the book. It becomes
Speaker 2: quite sensitive for those people. And so I totally get that.
Speaker 2: And he was heavily involved in supplying equipment to underground
Speaker 2: clubs on the East Coast for decades. And the company
Speaker 2: goes back one hundred year is it's not one of
Speaker 2: it's not Casey Card company, it's not one of those companies,
Speaker 2: but it's another company in New York City that was
Speaker 2: in the garment district. And in fact, he was the
Speaker 2: first person that I met. I remember, I traveled to
Speaker 2: the States to visit Darwin and to go to Vegas
Speaker 2: and some other places and go and set me up
Speaker 2: with a meeting with this guy. And it was one
Speaker 2: really hot summer's day and I went to the garment
Speaker 2: district and knocked on this door, and this huge bear
Speaker 2: of a man greeted me at the door, and he
Speaker 2: looked like Danny A. Lo the actor, you know, this
Speaker 2: big Jewish dude, and yeah, he had this underground supply company.
Speaker 2: He took me in, showed me what was happening in
Speaker 2: the room. At the front, they had all of these
Speaker 2: are Hispanic ladies who were marking playing cards and cutting
Speaker 2: playing cards and repackaging them in the boxes so that
Speaker 2: the boxes looked perfect, and then they would resell them
Speaker 2: and so that people across the country could order any
Speaker 2: style of card they wanted marked in a system that
Speaker 2: they preferred or shaved so that they could be stripped
Speaker 2: for gin or whatever the game was, and they would
Speaker 2: mail them out to all their customers across you know,
Speaker 2: New York State and across the country. And then at
Speaker 2: the back there are a bunch of guys who were
Speaker 2: all out there working on loading dice and you know,
Speaker 2: flattening dice, six ass flats and magnetic dice, and they
Speaker 2: had read tables they were building and all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 2: So it was quite in my opening experience, Wow, are
Speaker 2: they still in business? That company's not in business as
Speaker 2: far as I'm aware. Yeah, you know a lot of
Speaker 2: these companies were shut down in the early sixties to yep,
Speaker 2: going no, no.
Speaker 1: I I was just going to say that. I when
Speaker 1: I was trying to get people to do interviews for
Speaker 1: my book, I told them, you know, I would try
Speaker 1: transcribe our conversation and edit it, and then before I
Speaker 1: showed it to anybody, I would give it back to
Speaker 1: them and they could go through it, and anything they
Speaker 1: wanted cut would be cut, you know. And fortunately that
Speaker 1: was enough to get people to talk to me. And
Speaker 1: usually if I didn't already know them personally, at least
Speaker 1: I had some you know, goal between friend that knew
Speaker 1: both of us pretty well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so that's exactly my experience, the same thing.
Speaker 2: And in fact, it's funny that your book and my
Speaker 2: book are kind of the poll or opposites, you know,
Speaker 2: gambling wizards, thieving bastards. It's like the two hinds of
Speaker 2: the spectrum.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. Yeah, I find that quite amusing. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I when I interview people, and I'm still interviewing people.
Speaker 2: I did a big interviewer a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 2: with a guy who was a pool hustler in the seventies,
Speaker 2: and there's some really interesting stories about pull hustling in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles at the time and up and down the
Speaker 2: West Coast. So looking forward to actually working on that.
Speaker 2: But every person that I've spoken to, that's been my
Speaker 2: system that I take the material, I do an audio recording,
Speaker 2: I transcribe it. I don't you know, all of this
Speaker 2: done with all of this stuff was unmandrolically by hand.
Speaker 2: He knews Ai. AI didn't exist when I was doing
Speaker 2: this sort of stuff, listening to the stuff and just
Speaker 2: doing that laborious process of transcribing it, cleaning it up
Speaker 2: and then so what I would do is, you know,
Speaker 2: some of the guys that I spoke to were actually
Speaker 2: quite elderly people who'd been cheating in the forties and fifties.
Speaker 2: And there's a guy who's in volume two, for example,
Speaker 2: who was a crew hustler on the West Coast out
Speaker 2: of New York but moved to the West Coast. A
Speaker 2: lot of these guys are older. They're very hard to
Speaker 2: understand when you speak to them. You know, their voices
Speaker 2: are all broken free age and everything, and they ramble,
Speaker 2: and they sometimes they'll come and tell a story four
Speaker 2: or five different ways. And some of these interviews that
Speaker 2: I've done are multiple interview sessions. So I've got hours
Speaker 2: and hours of interviews with these guys, and I've transcribed
Speaker 2: all of those interviews, and then I've gone back and
Speaker 2: if they tell a really interesting story, but they might
Speaker 2: come back to it, because you know, being of a
Speaker 2: certain age, you'd forget you've told a story. I'll come
Speaker 2: back to it and they might have a fresh spin
Speaker 2: on it, or they have a very funny way of
Speaker 2: expressing it in one story that they don't do it
Speaker 2: in the first iteration. So I'll go back and I'll
Speaker 2: just take the best bit and just cram it together,
Speaker 2: you know, so I'll connect it so that it reads
Speaker 2: as well as it can. And then and then, just
Speaker 2: as you do, I would email it to the guy
Speaker 2: and we go through it and they say, look, I'm
Speaker 2: not happy about this or whatever, I'm happy about that.
Speaker 2: And some of them are quite surprised, you know. Some
Speaker 2: of them are like, didn't realize I swore so much.
Speaker 2: Because there's a lot of vulgarity in some of these stories,
Speaker 2: and especially the guy Bobby Machines, who was a practicing attorney.
Speaker 2: He was like shocked at the language that had sort
Speaker 2: of come out in the interview because he wouldn't speak
Speaker 2: like that in his professional life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was really interest.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to say one I was just going
Speaker 2: to say one more thing is that some of the
Speaker 2: stuff that's like the book is warts and all. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of warts and all stuff in there, and
Speaker 2: you know, some sort of shocking revelations for some people
Speaker 2: who sometimes knew some of these people, not realizing the
Speaker 2: extent of that, for example, their drug dependency and all
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff that they'd been through, or being
Speaker 2: in the life where you're involved in other criminal activity
Speaker 2: that's not necessarily accept behavior and polite society. You know,
Speaker 2: people who were pimping, working miss pimps, as well as
Speaker 2: cheats and that sort of stuff. So a lot of
Speaker 2: that stuff's in the book, but there's sort of a
Speaker 2: line that I drew where I didn't go beyond a
Speaker 2: certain point with detail. You know, with some of this
Speaker 2: stuff gets even worse than that with some of these people,
Speaker 2: and I just sort of left that out. Or some
Speaker 2: of these cheats would come back and they'd look at
Speaker 2: something they said about somebody and if it was a
Speaker 2: negative thing and the person was long dead then that
Speaker 2: you know, they'd say, okay, I'm fine with that. But
Speaker 2: they also would sometimes say negative things about people who
Speaker 2: are still around and we would talk about that and
Speaker 2: I'd say, well, maybe we should leave that out. So
Speaker 2: there's a bit of that stuff that's removed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, the cheating landscape has changed tremendously over
Speaker 1: the last fifty sixty years, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: cheating that was going on back then. In Guardena, California,
Speaker 1: they had these poker clubs. They still have poker clubs there,
Speaker 1: but back then the players dealt the cars and the
Speaker 1: deal was passed around, So there was just rampant cheating there.
Speaker 1: And on the East Coast and in the Midwest, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of these games that were in Elks clubs,
Speaker 1: moose clubs, or these these picnics where they would set
Speaker 1: up these you know, casino nights. And but that landscape
Speaker 1: has really changed. Have you been able to inter and
Speaker 1: the people in your book really are kind of from
Speaker 1: that older era. Are there people that you've interviewed that
Speaker 1: are in the modern era? And I would think if
Speaker 1: a guy is still out there doing it, he'd be
Speaker 1: much less likely to want to talk to you about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's that's one hundred percent right. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know people who are doing stuff now, and those
Speaker 2: people aren't really aren't interested in talking about what they're doing. Now.
Speaker 2: A lot of that older stuff has been exposed that
Speaker 2: the game procedures have changed to eliminate the opportunities that
Speaker 2: used to exist back in the day. As you will know,
Speaker 2: there's pass the deck poker is you know, it's long gone,
Speaker 2: so a lot of that sort of and draw poker
Speaker 2: is not the game anymore. All of those opportunities are
Speaker 2: sort of closed off for these people. But things that
Speaker 2: apt and people have adapted certain things to suit the
Speaker 2: modern age, and of course stuff is still going on.
Speaker 2: There's some very sophisticated stuff going on that I'm aware
Speaker 2: of that I just I'm not really willing to talk
Speaker 2: about because the people that tell me about it would
Speaker 2: I'd be persona and on grod. I wouldn't be able
Speaker 2: to talk to these people anymore if I did that.
Speaker 1: Well, so much of that is public now because there's
Speaker 1: there's a cheating scandal here in the States, like every
Speaker 1: other week in poker. I mean, it's just and in
Speaker 1: you know, the poker clubs and things.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true. And of course
Speaker 2: there was that big, big NBA scandal where they use
Speaker 2: celebrities to get people to be comfortable with the private
Speaker 2: gaming arrangements that they had set up. And I wrote
Speaker 2: a couple of blogs related to that on my website
Speaker 2: about the sort of lessons to be learned from that.
Speaker 2: And it's quite interesting that from my perspective, is that
Speaker 2: some of the technology that was used in those scans
Speaker 2: is technology that was developed by one of the people
Speaker 2: that I interviewed in the first book, a guy called
Speaker 2: doctor X. And these are the things that they people
Speaker 2: in the media call X ray tables, and they're not
Speaker 2: X ray tables at all, but the technology is really
Speaker 2: fascinating technology that it originates through experimentation with optical like
Speaker 2: laser beams and optics that are involved in like special
Speaker 2: Forces night vision goggles and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: It's like really interesting adaptations military technology to the sort
Speaker 2: of card cheating space. And so, did you want me
Speaker 2: to mention what the x X ray table is or
Speaker 2: talk about.
Speaker 1: That or sure, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah.
Speaker 2: So when I interviewed doctor X, and I interviewed him
Speaker 2: about twenty five years ago, so you know a number
Speaker 2: of the interviews in this book were old interviews. And
Speaker 2: I remember him telling me about the X ray table,
Speaker 2: but he didn't call it the X ray table. He
Speaker 2: caught it the octopus. And he caught it the octopus
Speaker 2: because it had like eight extensions, and so you could
Speaker 2: target people around the table. And what it is is
Speaker 2: it's a series of optical lasers that shoot photon beams
Speaker 2: beneath the table, and the photon beams are pushed up
Speaker 2: through translucent plates, plastic white plates that are underneath the table,
Speaker 2: underneath the cloth, and these beams are invisible to the
Speaker 2: human eye. They operate outside the spectrum of visibly for humans,
Speaker 2: but they can be captured by a camera that's set
Speaker 2: up to see those verbams. And what happens is they
Speaker 2: burst up through the tabletop and they burst up through
Speaker 2: the plane cards, and the camera can capture the light
Speaker 2: traveling through the playing cards plastic or paper cards, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. And the ink of the pips, it doesn't
Speaker 2: actually burst through the ink of the pips, so you
Speaker 2: could actually see the pips in reverse on the camera
Speaker 2: which is set up in a separate room. So what
Speaker 2: it is is it's an example of an elaborate peak,
Speaker 2: like the peak that was at the Lambs Club all
Speaker 2: those years ago, classic sort of scams, especially cheap gin
Speaker 2: rummy and games things like that. So it's like a
Speaker 2: high tech peak technology. And I remember him telling me
Speaker 2: about this. You know, they're not even my cards. The
Speaker 2: light goes up through the table, you know, you can
Speaker 2: it's like you're reading the card from the other room.
Speaker 2: You can see everything. And I remember him telling me
Speaker 2: this and thinking, man, no one's going to believe this.
Speaker 2: No one's going to believe this, right, And then late
Speaker 2: late last year, the NBA scam broke, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: thank god, you know, And so so I called the
Speaker 2: the US Justice that the office in New York, and
Speaker 2: I spoke to the press people there and I got
Speaker 2: some photos for the book, and I was able to
Speaker 2: blue that in the book.
Speaker 1: So I tried to get Doctor X to come on
Speaker 1: this show because he's quite a character, and but he
Speaker 1: he wasn't really willing to talk about the stuff that
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about, Like he likes to talk,
Speaker 1: you know, he's yeah, but yeah, but but I haven't
Speaker 1: been able to make that one work. And by the way,
Speaker 1: just as an aside, I think you'll find, after all
Speaker 1: of the hundreds of hours you were put into writing
Speaker 1: this book, that the way to go is to just
Speaker 1: have a podcast instead, because then you get to.
Speaker 2: Do the energey when you don't have to do all.
Speaker 1: The grunt work of transcription, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally get that, but but I you know,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of old school and I love books, you know,
Speaker 2: and I feel that putting something in a book is
Speaker 2: just a really fantastic way of capturing information and people
Speaker 2: when people engage with it, you know, their imagination as
Speaker 2: they interpret what they're reading is what really sort of
Speaker 2: holds for them, and you know, creates these lasting memories
Speaker 2: of the information and everything else. So I kind of
Speaker 2: I prefer book. So my plan is to actually produce
Speaker 2: a few more series if I can. We'll see.
Speaker 1: Sequels to this one about Cheeks or the other.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm hoping to Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got some
Speaker 2: other ideas as well, but definitely I've got When I
Speaker 2: decided to print this book, I actually had a book
Speaker 2: that was twice as long, and I realized it was
Speaker 2: way too long. It's going to be like a doorstop,
Speaker 2: like a giant bible or something, and so I thought
Speaker 2: I'll cut it in half. And so I had to
Speaker 2: make some decisions in doing that. A number of the
Speaker 2: people in the book have passed away, and they didn't
Speaker 2: have a chance to see the book in its final form,
Speaker 2: although they all got to read their interviews, you know,
Speaker 2: So I basically I sort of chose some of these
Speaker 2: things to make sure that people in there would get
Speaker 2: to read them, you know, because some of those people
Speaker 2: are still alive, and some of them I held over,
Speaker 2: you know, people had long passed. I thought, well, I'll
Speaker 2: move this to the second volume. And getting back to
Speaker 2: what you said, there is somebody in the second volume
Speaker 2: who's working today. So there is some quite interesting stuff
Speaker 2: on some current activity that will appear in the second volume.
Speaker 2: And there might be a few more people who are
Speaker 2: working today in the second volume. But we'll just see
Speaker 2: how it goes. Just you mentioning doctor X. He's an
Speaker 2: interesting interview in so many different ways. But he was
Speaker 2: one where I really had to change names and place
Speaker 2: names and stuff like that, because when we spoke about it,
Speaker 2: he was still heavily involved in it all those years ago,
Speaker 2: and he said, look, let's change this. So I came up,
Speaker 2: I changed with the names and they to protect people.
Speaker 2: And then he got to read it, read it again
Speaker 2: last year of the year before, and he's like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, you changed all these names. Because his life
Speaker 2: had changed a little bit, he wasn't quite so concerned
Speaker 2: about it. I said, well, yeah, so that's that's where
Speaker 2: we are with doctor X. But I'm actually going to
Speaker 2: be spending some time with him later this year, so
Speaker 2: I'm hitting out to spend some quality of time with him.
Speaker 2: He's a very interesting character.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd like to go visit him. He seems to
Speaker 1: have like a museum there in his home of all
Speaker 1: kinds of interesting, wacky wacky stuff. Oh so I want
Speaker 1: to go back to the mechanic because I thought he
Speaker 1: was a really interesting case. Because once you feel the power,
Speaker 1: once you know you can do this and pretty much
Speaker 1: go out and make money, it will. It was very
Speaker 1: interesting that he that he was doing this to put
Speaker 1: himself through law school and then basically stopped.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he is a really interesting guy. And in
Speaker 2: the book we call him Bobby Machines. Obviously that's not
Speaker 2: his name, but to spoake to him and I said,
Speaker 2: we've got to give you a name because he was
Speaker 2: still he's still quite a public figure. He's passed away
Speaker 2: since since we interviewed the guy. Yeah, really so, but
Speaker 2: eight of you. Yeah, I thought mutual prison Burroughs visited
Speaker 2: him recently. I don't know, that's no, no, that's actually
Speaker 2: you're probably thinking of Bobby asil So Bobby.
Speaker 1: Recently.
Speaker 2: But that's right, that's what I was going to say.
Speaker 2: He only passed away about a month ago. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: Bobby Machines. You know, when I interviewed Rod Rod the
Speaker 2: hot Rod d Rod d was the first person I interviewed.
Speaker 2: I think pretty much Rod perhaps, and maybe Bill Zender
Speaker 2: and Ron Connolly, but I think Rod was the first person.
Speaker 2: And because he's one of the He was a friend
Speaker 2: of mine, a good friend, and we used to chat
Speaker 2: a lot, and so I really wanted him to be
Speaker 2: in the book. He never got to see the book,
Speaker 2: which is unfortunate. But when we were talking, he mentioned
Speaker 2: this guy, Bobby Machines. He said that when he was
Speaker 2: a young cheat and he got turned out, and you know,
Speaker 2: he was almost going to get himself killed hanging around
Speaker 2: a card room in San Diego and doing a couple
Speaker 2: of basic moves. He got turned out by a couple
Speaker 2: of guys. There's Black John and Bobby Machines with the
Speaker 2: two guys that turn him. But he said to me,
Speaker 2: this guy, man, this guy was fantastic. He's one of
Speaker 2: the best mechanics I've ever seen. And I don't know
Speaker 2: if you probably would have met Rod, but I think
Speaker 2: Rod was one of the best card mechanics I've ever
Speaker 2: met in my life. I would put him up there
Speaker 2: is probably the best at poker. I don't think there's
Speaker 2: anybody who can touch him or could touch him. And
Speaker 2: some of the shuffle stuff that he did was just
Speaker 2: out of this world really. But anyway, he said, look,
Speaker 2: there's this guy that turned me out. And I used
Speaker 2: to sleep on his couch and he showed me moves
Speaker 2: and he said he played a machine hold out machine.
Speaker 2: So you know the old Blinger holdout machine, which is
Speaker 2: an elaborate body worn device that's hidden inside the jacket
Speaker 2: up the sleeve and you have to get specially tailored
Speaker 2: cuffs so that there's no catch on the thief as
Speaker 2: it comes in and out of the arm that takes
Speaker 2: the card. And he said This guy was unbelievable. He
Speaker 2: could work the machine like you wouldn't believe. But he
Speaker 2: could also do like a double gypsy, you know, steal
Speaker 2: two cards and put two cards back, which is a
Speaker 2: super hard move with a machine. And I was like, man,
Speaker 2: this is great. And then I thought, jes it would
Speaker 2: be so great to speak to this guy, you know.
Speaker 2: And then Rod passed away and I thought, well, that's it.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be able to find this guy.
Speaker 2: And then I spoke to a guy and who's a
Speaker 2: crossroader and we were talking about it, and he said,
Speaker 2: I think I think I might know who this guy is.
Speaker 2: Like there's a name that Rod mentioned and it sounds
Speaker 2: like this might be the guy. So basically, the two
Speaker 2: of us did a little bit of a detective work
Speaker 2: and we found found a guy. And I reached out
Speaker 2: to the guy and left a message on his answering machine,
Speaker 2: which is you can imagine being a lawyer and attorney. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's respectable. And you get this phone call from this
Speaker 2: from this dude and this random dude in Australia who
Speaker 2: rings up it as get a mate, you know, and
Speaker 2: I just said on the phone, I said, hey, listen,
Speaker 2: you know, I think we had a mutual friend who's
Speaker 2: a dear friend of mine, a guy called Rod d.
Speaker 2: Rod's obviously passed away long time ago, but Right and
Speaker 2: I had been speaking, and I've been working on a book,
Speaker 2: and part of the book is talking about Rhyd's life
Speaker 2: and the life of people who knew Right I worked
Speaker 2: with Ryde. I was wondering whether maybe we could have
Speaker 2: a chat about the project, you know, and so on,
Speaker 2: and so I remember I was, I was getting some takeout,
Speaker 2: and I'm in the car with my daughters and the
Speaker 2: phone rings, and I put, you know, comes on the
Speaker 2: speakerphone and here's this rough as he just sounded so
Speaker 2: rough for an attorney. And he goes blah blah, blah,
Speaker 2: blah blah, and then he said, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: know if I can swear, but he said, effort. Let's
Speaker 2: do it, you know, like I say, he said, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's do it. So the next day we recorded this
Speaker 2: this first of us a series of interviews, and they
Speaker 2: were fantastic, really interesting. That guy was a bit of
Speaker 2: a beast.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And as I say it, just it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty rare for people to get out of that life.
Speaker 2: But super rare. Yeah, yeah, super rare. So so there's
Speaker 2: sort of three people in the book who got out
Speaker 2: of the life. So Ron Connolly was involved in some
Speaker 2: stuff as a young man, and then he became a
Speaker 2: peak in clubs and became a senior surveillance expert in clubs.
Speaker 2: So that's an example of somebody who transitioned or what
Speaker 2: frustraders say. The expression they use is he turned his
Speaker 2: collar around, you know, so he went and batted for
Speaker 2: the wrong team kind of thing, which is a huge
Speaker 2: no no like. And you see that in the book
Speaker 2: with some of the comments from people like Black John
Speaker 2: when he talks about a guy called Toak who was
Speaker 2: a cheat like a machine man who actually became a
Speaker 2: peak and worked with Ron Connley and other people, where
Speaker 2: they actually hate these guys and they're quite quite aggressive
Speaker 2: about what they would like to do to some of
Speaker 2: these people. And I believe Toke actually did get beaten
Speaker 2: up a few times. But yeah, Ron turned his collar around.
Speaker 2: And Ron had a very successful career and up until
Speaker 2: the time he retired, he was probably considered the world
Speaker 2: expert on cheating at poker. For he's work in the
Speaker 2: clubs in California, Robert Assioll moved on and had a
Speaker 2: I think he was pretty well established financially. He was
Speaker 2: one of the smart guy though. He he had a
Speaker 2: long retirement as far as I understand, and he moved
Speaker 2: to Colorado so he could be close to his family.
Speaker 2: But he I think he lived well in retirement. A
Speaker 2: lot of these guys don't live well in retirement. A
Speaker 2: lot of these guys live in penury. Basically, it's like
Speaker 2: a it's you know, the psychology of a lot of
Speaker 2: these guys is, as they say, easy come, easy go,
Speaker 2: And the money they make is pretty money. It's money
Speaker 2: that would just flow through the hands, and they don't
Speaker 2: care because if they go and they burn money one day,
Speaker 2: the next day, they can just make it back. They
Speaker 2: just sort of it's to them, it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: you just walk around and you just pick it just
Speaker 2: grows on trees effectively, because suckers are suckers and they're
Speaker 2: always going to throw their money at you. So that's
Speaker 2: the way these guys operated, and that's why you hear
Speaker 2: these stories like you know the story of the old
Speaker 2: cheat Wilbur Kelsey, who was a machine man in a
Speaker 2: California who was still working machine in his eighties and
Speaker 2: got caught and got beaten up and ended up in
Speaker 2: the hospital. So you know, these guys will beat up
Speaker 2: an eighty year old man for cheating. It's a risky
Speaker 2: business and a lot of these guys have busted up us,
Speaker 2: you know, as they say, we say in Australia. Rod,
Speaker 2: for example, Rod was complicated. Rod was super talented, super skills,
Speaker 2: super smart, all that sort of stuff. He had a
Speaker 2: bit of a gift of the gab as well. He
Speaker 2: had was a bit of a silver dung cavalier as
Speaker 2: they say. But he was also heavily involved in drugged
Speaker 2: you know, he was involved in the drug trade and
Speaker 2: got trouble in that sense, and so then had a habit.
Speaker 2: You know, he was put on He got onto heroin
Speaker 2: through a woman that he was dating who was a
Speaker 2: prostitute and drug addict, and yeah, it was it just
Speaker 2: it just ruined him essentially, and you know, ruined his
Speaker 2: judgment and everything else. And towards the end of his
Speaker 2: life he was still working private games as a muster mechanic,
Speaker 2: but the kind of cut he was getting was nothing
Speaker 2: compared to what was being made in the game. So
Speaker 2: a game might you know, they might take off some
Speaker 2: sucker for two hundred thousand dollars in a private game,
Speaker 2: and Rod would get nine thousand dollars. You know. You
Speaker 2: know that's the sort of money that was trickling down
Speaker 2: his way because he wasn't in a position to negotiate,
Speaker 2: because they knew how desperate he was. And I was
Speaker 2: speaking to somebody just yesterday who spoken to a partner
Speaker 2: of Rod's and said that, you know, Rod's habit never
Speaker 2: gotten the way of his work when he was working
Speaker 2: with partners, but everyone just sort of knew that. You know,
Speaker 2: at a certain time of the week, like on a
Speaker 2: Thursday or something, Rod would disappear and you wouldn't see
Speaker 2: him for four days. You know. They said that he
Speaker 2: was never he's never high when he worked, but he
Speaker 2: was thinking about it, I think, getting back to Bobby Machines, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, go ahead, I was.
Speaker 2: Just going to say that, Yeah, he was very successful,
Speaker 2: but he was he had he was super smart. Obviously
Speaker 2: he was super smart. He was a guy who got drafted,
Speaker 2: went to Vietnam, fought in Vietnam, came back and used
Speaker 2: the GI bill to study. He had some kids, and
Speaker 2: obviously he was separated from whoever the mother was, and
Speaker 2: he was left with a couple of kids, and so
Speaker 2: he would look around for ways to make money, and
Speaker 2: for him, he found the easiest way to make money
Speaker 2: was the steel at every weekend, so he would get
Speaker 2: in the car and he would go to the clubs
Speaker 2: and Sandy and Sacramento and Gadina and he would steal
Speaker 2: you know, a thousand or a couple of thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in the early seventies, and he lived just fine as
Speaker 2: a student, you know, studying to become a lawyer. And
Speaker 2: then he tells the story in the book that he
Speaker 2: was always just a means to an end. He just
Speaker 2: had discipline. I guess, which is that's the sort of
Speaker 2: thing that separates the true master sort of cheats from
Speaker 2: the guys who are in the life for their whole life.
Speaker 2: And as you know, scuffling at the bottom is that
Speaker 2: he was smart, and he had discipline. He had a plan,
Speaker 2: and he stuck to the plan. And the day that
Speaker 2: he found out that he'd passed the bar exam was
Speaker 2: the day he stopped cheating forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing, you know. I moved to Las Vegas in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven and started work as a blackjack dealer,
Speaker 1: and I worked with a lot of these old guys
Speaker 1: who had been in Hot Springs, Arkansas and Newport, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them had been cryders. And you know,
Speaker 1: my big regret is that I didn't spend more time
Speaker 1: talking to those guys and getting more of their stories,
Speaker 1: because it was just amazing to hear the kind of
Speaker 1: stories they had and the people they knew, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look to me, that just sounds like, yeah, that
Speaker 2: something that I would love to have been able to
Speaker 2: have the opportunity to speak to those guys. Like Volume
Speaker 2: two has an interview with a guy who bought in
Speaker 2: World War Two, learnt to gamble as a soldier in
Speaker 2: the Pacific, got a purple heart, was blown up by
Speaker 2: a hand grenade, ended up in the hospital, and then
Speaker 2: he came back to New York and got turned out
Speaker 2: by a bunch of road hustlers, went on the road,
Speaker 2: and he was cheating for the forties until the day
Speaker 2: he died. I interviewed him in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: and so he was one of the classic old road hustlers.
Speaker 2: And he's the only guy that I've got that's of
Speaker 2: that sort of that sort of vintage. I met other
Speaker 2: partners that he worked with, and I know people who
Speaker 2: knew those partners, like Ron conleeknew and of those partners,
Speaker 2: guys like Frenchie the Hawk, who was a guy who
Speaker 2: was around Farmer's Market and worked in the clubs in
Speaker 2: Gardena and these guys are all in Cruise. And another
Speaker 2: guy who is a name that might be known to people,
Speaker 2: Tony Georgio, who was an actor in Hollywood. Tony Georgio,
Speaker 2: like magicians know that Tony Georgio claimed to have been
Speaker 2: a cheat, and he wrote some articles for a magic
Speaker 2: journal called the Georgio Letters, where he talked about all
Speaker 2: the cheats he knew and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: And some magicians have asked me in recent years, you know,
Speaker 2: was Georgia really a cheat? One hundred percent? Georgia was
Speaker 2: a cheat, and he cheated for twenty years. He was
Speaker 2: a professional chick for twenty years up until the early
Speaker 2: sixties when he became a professional actor. And he was
Speaker 2: a good actor too, by the way, but he was
Speaker 2: he was a very scary kind of guy who was
Speaker 2: this big man, big Italian dude, and he had like
Speaker 2: a pretty scary, rough looking face, like a pugilist, bit
Speaker 2: of a gargoyle, and in fact was he was lined
Speaker 2: up to play Cobrassi and The Godfather, and then at
Speaker 2: the last minute Capolo said, no, We'll go with this
Speaker 2: other guy, and the guy who ended up playing Luca
Speaker 2: Brassi replaced Georgio in the role. And the person that
Speaker 2: told me this story said that Capola said he wanted
Speaker 2: somebody who was scarier than Georgio, and he said to me,
Speaker 2: which is crazy, because I've never met anybody scarier than Georgia.
Speaker 2: And so George actually does appear in the movie. And
Speaker 2: so in the scene where Luca Brassi gets garrotted, one
Speaker 2: of the guys behind the bars stabs him in the hand.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember the scene. So they
Speaker 2: pin him at the bar while they strangle him. But
Speaker 2: the guy cleaning the glass who lights his cigarette is
Speaker 2: Tony Georgio. That's the guy, and if you see him
Speaker 2: in that short scene you can see what a menacing
Speaker 2: kind of person he was in real life. And it
Speaker 2: was actually him that suggested to the director that they
Speaker 2: stabbed him in the hand when they do the scene,
Speaker 2: So the director incorporated that into the film, but he
Speaker 2: was in a bunch of movies. Escape from Which Mountain.
Speaker 2: He was in Magnum Force. He's the guy with a
Speaker 2: shotgun in one of the scenes, the leader of a
Speaker 2: gang that gets killed by Benisewood. And and he's an
Speaker 2: amazing guy. And he was a master mechanic, very good
Speaker 2: with dice and cards, and you know, I got to
Speaker 2: meet him a few times in Los Angeles, and we
Speaker 2: spoke a lot on the phone, and we also chatted
Speaker 2: online a lot in the early days of the internet.
Speaker 2: And i'd spoke to spoken to him and said, look,
Speaker 2: I'd really like to interview you, and he said this,
Speaker 2: you know, in his rough ways, like there's no way,
Speaker 2: you know, he had this this very scary kind of voice.
Speaker 2: And I was like, okay, that's fine, that's fair enough.
Speaker 2: But I interviewed one of his partners, a guy called
Speaker 2: called Phil h Phil Hertzog, and that's a fantastic interview
Speaker 2: being volume too. But the whole time that I was
Speaker 2: interviewing him, he's saying to me, you know, he had
Speaker 2: this whole old man voice. He's like, whatever you do,
Speaker 2: don't tell Tony I'm talking to you. Don't say a
Speaker 2: word to Tony. They're all scared of Tony, right, So,
Speaker 2: but Hertzog was the real master mechanic like in that
Speaker 2: in that group, he was the guy that probably had
Speaker 2: the best chops. And that's that's just a great interview.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed that one. There's sort of sort of
Speaker 2: a code to this story. You know. I worked as
Speaker 2: a diplomat overseas for a number of years, and I
Speaker 2: remember I was on a Friday, I was at the
Speaker 2: mall shopping when I lived in Saudi Arabia, and I
Speaker 2: got a phone call from somebody who was very close
Speaker 2: to Tony Georgio and he said to Tony was dying
Speaker 2: of cancer, and he said, Tony's ready to talk to you.
Speaker 2: He wants to do the interview. And I said, I
Speaker 2: just can't do it. Like I'm in Saudi Arabia, it's
Speaker 2: just not something I can do. And so that's one
Speaker 2: of my big regrets. Like you were talking about those
Speaker 2: guys from Arkansas and other places, and that's my big
Speaker 2: regret is that I didn't actually get to record Tony
Speaker 2: for that interview, because that would have been a But
Speaker 2: I did speak to somebody who knew Tony very well
Speaker 2: and There's an interview in the second book with Darwin
Speaker 2: or Tears, who knew him very well, and Darwin recounts
Speaker 2: a bunch of stories that Tony had told him about
Speaker 2: his work. And Tony worked with a partner in Cuba
Speaker 2: before the Castro period, and they ran razzle for the
Speaker 2: mob in the casino there, and razzle's the old carnival game.
Speaker 2: And they made lots of lots of money running razzle
Speaker 2: as a casino game, right, which.
Speaker 1: I did not see. That's the first I've ever heard
Speaker 1: of razzle being dealt in the casino.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it was huge. And Tony told this
Speaker 2: story to Dah and he said, me and my partner,
Speaker 2: you know, we had this deal with the mob. It
Speaker 2: was fifty to fifty and we were just making money
Speaker 2: hand over fist, you know, just making tons and tons
Speaker 2: of money. And then of course the mob came back
Speaker 2: and they said, okay, listen, things are changing. Now it's
Speaker 2: sixty forty, and then it was now it's you know,
Speaker 2: seventy thirty. It was a classic kind of you know,
Speaker 2: like a buyout, like a forced buyout kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And so Tony just said screw it, and he said,
Speaker 2: I'm going back to the States and he left his
Speaker 2: partner and his partner stayed on working this scam. And
Speaker 2: Darlin said to me, you know, everything that Tony told him,
Speaker 2: he spoke to other cheats and they all backed up.
Speaker 2: It was all validated, like people said, oh, yeah he
Speaker 2: did this or yeah he did that, So he legitimately
Speaker 2: was a hardcore cheeter. And there's a book called Havana
Speaker 2: Turn by TJ. English, and there's a whole chapter that
Speaker 2: talks about the mob's casino activities in Cuba, and it
Speaker 2: actually talks about Rezzle in that book.
Speaker 1: So that's a huh, yeah, I will check that out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I lean more toward I'm much more interested in the
Speaker 1: people who were cheating in casinos than you know, the
Speaker 1: card rooms and things like that. And you know one
Speaker 1: of the guys who was an old cheat that I
Speaker 1: talked to back you know, I met this guy back
Speaker 1: in about nineteen seventy nine or something, and you know,
Speaker 1: his move was to play what they called switches, which
Speaker 1: is to literally have two guys. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the move that Bobby Azel claims to have invented. I
Speaker 1: had always heard it called the muck switch, where the
Speaker 1: switch is happening under the table. But these guys would
Speaker 1: switch on the table and one of the moves was
Speaker 1: to just basically throw the to the other guy and
Speaker 1: the two cards would pass and into each's hand. But
Speaker 1: back then, there were really no cameras, there was no video,
Speaker 1: there wasn't any of that. So but he said, you know,
Speaker 1: every once in a while, like the guy would miss
Speaker 1: and the card would just go sailing across the table,
Speaker 1: and you know, and the dealer would be like, what
Speaker 1: the hell just happened? Yeah, but I remember him saying
Speaker 1: that he ended up giving it up because they just
Speaker 1: lost their nerves, you know, because if you got caught
Speaker 1: back then that you know, it was a pretty serious thing.
Speaker 2: Big problems, Yeah, big problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love those stories. I love hearing that stuff. And
Speaker 2: you're right, you know, things have changed in terms of
Speaker 2: you know, there were no cameras, there were peaks in
Speaker 2: the ceilings and things like that. But now with these
Speaker 2: camera systems, the resolutions crizy, and there's so many other
Speaker 2: things that limit, you know, the ability of cheats to
Speaker 2: function in effectively in casinos. And it's all it comes
Speaker 2: down at technology, and the same technology that helps governments
Speaker 2: to prevent transnational crime, you know, people smuggling, drug smuggling,
Speaker 2: state and nonstate actors engaged in terrorism, all that sort
Speaker 2: of stuff. All of this technology can easily be applied
Speaker 2: to cheating stuff. Now, so especially for me, you know,
Speaker 2: if you look at biometrics is just to killer problem
Speaker 2: for people involved in cheating. Once they know, once they
Speaker 2: have your scan, your biometrics and they identify you and
Speaker 2: you're confirmed or suspect kod of being a cheat, then
Speaker 2: biometrics is going to pick you up everywhere. You just
Speaker 2: can't beat it. There's you know a lot of cheats
Speaker 2: wear disguises, and they'll still wear disguises, and those disguises
Speaker 2: are effective up until the time that people have an
Speaker 2: elevated suspicion of who you are. Those disguises will allow
Speaker 2: you to function until you draw attention to your But
Speaker 2: once once you draw attention to yourself, biometrics just bypasses
Speaker 2: all of that because there are things that even if
Speaker 2: you wear disguises, you can't change. You can't change or
Speaker 2: capital distance, you know, the distance between your eyes, this
Speaker 2: points on your face that just can't be modified in
Speaker 2: a way that will defeat biometrics and then the other
Speaker 2: factor is AI, the ability of AI. I'm not a
Speaker 2: big fan of AI in other regards as somebody who's
Speaker 2: an author, I think AI is terrible in that sense.
Speaker 2: But in terms of casino security, AI allows very fast
Speaker 2: pattern recognition and analysis to be conducted. You know, like
Speaker 2: all of that really hard work analysis and identifying trends
Speaker 2: and tracking of locations and of activities and all of
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff can be done in an so
Speaker 2: that you can you can wag ahead of the game
Speaker 2: in terms of your analysis. So there's that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the other thing is because of all
Speaker 1: the financial reporting. You know, forty years ago, fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: you could walk up to the casino cage and cash
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars and they would not dream of asking
Speaker 1: you your name. Like that was you know, people, it
Speaker 1: was considered like privacy, a privacy thing, like you wouldn't
Speaker 1: ask somebody their name just because they want a bunch
Speaker 1: of money. And now you know, you can't cash out
Speaker 1: three thousand in most places without having to give ID
Speaker 1: and once they know who you are as you say,
Speaker 1: you know, they have the databases, and so yeah, it
Speaker 1: gets more more difficult and you know, the the real
Speaker 1: killer is going to be within the next ten years,
Speaker 1: it's all going to be cashless. You're going to you're
Speaker 1: going to have to buy in on your phone, and
Speaker 1: that means they're going to know who you are.
Speaker 2: You know, the digital trial. You just can't get away
Speaker 2: from that digital trial. So so cheating, I think the
Speaker 2: cheating and casinos is going to be you know, it's
Speaker 2: going to be the collusion in it. So that sort
Speaker 2: of inside of threat is going to be the biggest
Speaker 2: deal for cheating and casines. You know, it's still it's
Speaker 2: still going to be the case that someone somewhere is
Speaker 2: going to try and get some papers and markets in
Speaker 2: or casino from the inside so that people from the
Speaker 2: outside can take it off. And if they're smart, they'll
Speaker 2: take it off over time. They won't be greedy. And
Speaker 2: you know, because you know, one of the lessons from
Speaker 2: from these books my book is is that greed is
Speaker 2: a killer. Discipline and greed are the two problems that
Speaker 2: cheets have.
Speaker 1: So we have a mutual friend and I say to him,
Speaker 1: you know, the problem with you guys is not only
Speaker 1: do you guys not want to have a losing session,
Speaker 1: you don't want to lose a hand, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean if they just played a little bit of cover
Speaker 1: and settled for only having a fifty percent advantage or something,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, they do so many stupid things
Speaker 1: that just shoot themselves on the foot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That and that comes through in the book when
Speaker 2: we talk about people like Santa Rosa Jimmy. You know,
Speaker 2: he just couldn't leave a nickel on the table. He
Speaker 2: just had to steal everything. You know. It's like it's
Speaker 2: just a lack of discipline. And because those guys had
Speaker 2: the mentality of a road hustler, it's like, well, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if we burn it up here tonight, We're
Speaker 2: just going to move on to the next place, you know.
Speaker 2: So they don't care. But then you read somebody like
Speaker 2: Bobby A when he talks in the last chapter of
Speaker 2: the book, and he's like he's so angry with his
Speaker 2: partners because he's like, if you guys had had some discipline,
Speaker 2: we could have gone forever with this play. We could
Speaker 2: have just made money. Everybody could have been fine if
Speaker 2: we've just flown under the radar and not developed a
Speaker 2: profile of activity. But these guys, they just couldn't do it.
Speaker 2: They just lacked discipline. It's just it's not that they're dumb,
Speaker 2: but they are dumb. I mean, they're not low IQ,
Speaker 2: they're just not They just don't have a strategic view,
Speaker 2: right right.
Speaker 1: So are you are you a I mean, I know
Speaker 1: your background isn't magic, but do you work as a magician?
Speaker 2: No, I don't. I don't. I worked as a magician
Speaker 2: many years ago, and I very quickly got involved in
Speaker 2: a gambling demonstration. So my whole thing was I mean,
Speaker 2: I like card magic. I've still got good friends who
Speaker 2: are a really good card magicians. In fact, one of
Speaker 2: my closest friends in life is a guy called Jason
Speaker 2: Danny who had Jason on the show. Yeah, I saw that,
Speaker 2: and Jason's kind of like my little brother, you know.
Speaker 2: We were both very close to Darwin or Tears, and
Speaker 2: we both do high end hard techniques and that sort
Speaker 2: of stuff. But I don't do as much magic anymore.
Speaker 2: I mean, I still remember like five tricks that I
Speaker 2: used to do, and I can. I can dust them
Speaker 2: off and do them, but it's really just not my interest.
Speaker 2: My interest is the techniques of cheating, and that's always
Speaker 2: been a passion for me. So if I'm sitting down
Speaker 2: with a pack of cards. I'm practicing various card controls,
Speaker 2: you know that come from the table deals, and especially
Speaker 2: dice switches. I just have a I started off doing
Speaker 2: a lot of card stuff, but now really my focus
Speaker 2: is dice moves. I like those traditional dice moves, and
Speaker 2: I guess I've always liked the challenge. So dice moves
Speaker 2: for me sit at the very sort of pinnacle of difficulty.
Speaker 2: The very very good dice moves are very hard to do,
Speaker 2: and I do all of the hard high end dice switches,
Speaker 2: the palms which is in the tip switch and the
Speaker 2: fly switch, and that sort of stuff I don't do.
Speaker 2: I think the next level above that is these dice
Speaker 2: controls like the air ball that Robert Asil talks about
Speaker 2: in the book and that I've known three people personally
Speaker 2: that have actually worked that in clubs and casinos and
Speaker 2: have made money doing it. But as you find when
Speaker 2: you read the book and from Roberts comments, basically they
Speaker 2: were covering their nut. It's just not effective. And what
Speaker 2: we're talking about for the listener is that you take
Speaker 2: a pair of dice and you shake them. It looks
Speaker 2: like a fair shake and then you throw them and
Speaker 2: you kill the six on one of those those dice,
Speaker 2: and it's an amazing thing. And I don't know, you've
Speaker 2: probably had a chance to see somebody do it, but
Speaker 2: when you see it, it's out of sight. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: So just to give the listeners a little more detail,
Speaker 1: one die spins in the air. This is not a slide,
Speaker 1: but the dye goes in the air and but does
Speaker 1: not bounce off the back wall and it's spinning and
Speaker 1: so it stays with the top side up and the
Speaker 1: other die bounces off the wall. Yeah, and the problem is, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've gone out and tried to make money at this
Speaker 1: with somebody who spent many, many, many years working on it.
Speaker 1: And the problem is that from above, from a camera,
Speaker 1: it looks like a slide because you don't have the
Speaker 1: depth perception. And even from you know, a boxman could
Speaker 1: think you're trying to slide to die too. So you
Speaker 1: can't do it over and over and over. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe you get to do it once or twice, and
Speaker 1: then you've got to try to go to another casino.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just a very difficult way to make
Speaker 1: any serious money.
Speaker 2: That's right, And you're right, you've got to turn it
Speaker 2: from the eye in the sky. It looks bad. It
Speaker 2: travels in a flat move across the top of the table,
Speaker 2: even though as you've as you well know, because you've
Speaker 2: seen it, you can put the cane across the table
Speaker 2: and it's flying over that cane, you know, so you
Speaker 2: know it's getting air. But it just doesn't look good
Speaker 2: from the camera. So yeah, it's just but it's as
Speaker 2: Robert Assiel caught it, the Impossible Dream.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's different from all these guys who make
Speaker 2: money by teaching people how to dice setting all of
Speaker 2: these it's just such a sucker thing. And and and
Speaker 2: and Bobby A is very very critical of those people
Speaker 2: in the book.
Speaker 1: Yeahs as well he should be.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, anyway, I want to thank you for doing this.
Speaker 1: This has been great and for the listeners. Again. The
Speaker 1: book is called Thieving Bastards and it is available on Amazon.
Speaker 1: Is there if are you on any social media? If
Speaker 1: people wanted to try to get a hold of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the book is available in hardcover from my website.
Speaker 2: I'm in Australia. It ships from Australia, but it's it's
Speaker 2: it's a big, heavy book, and it's a high quality book.
Speaker 2: I know you've had a chance to read the book
Speaker 2: and see it physically. It's a super high quality product.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's available from my website which is www
Speaker 2: dot Thecolddeckcompany dot com, so you can get it in
Speaker 2: hardcover there, and it's also available as a kindling. And
Speaker 2: I'm also I'm on Instagram as the Cold Deck Company.
Speaker 2: If you search for Andrewimhurst, you'll find me on.
Speaker 1: And I'll put links to your website and your Instagram
Speaker 1: and put I'll put links to all of it in
Speaker 1: the show notes so people can confind you.
Speaker 2: Thanks. I really appreciate it. As I said, I've been
Speaker 2: reading your book and I really enjoyed the especially the
Speaker 2: chapter with Chip Reese. And I was quite interested to
Speaker 2: find out that he was the manager of the poker
Speaker 2: room at The Juice from about seventy nine into the
Speaker 2: early eighties, which is interesting because Rodd got his start
Speaker 2: working as a cheat in the Juice.
Speaker 1: Oh I know, and am I heard like whenever whenever
Speaker 1: he was putting in a cooler on the poker table,
Speaker 1: Chip would like high tail it out of the room.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to be around when when that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff was going on. So yeah, he has some
Speaker 1: great stories about dealing at the dunes. It was too
Speaker 1: bad that those those didn't really make an end of
Speaker 1: the book.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, well actually.
Speaker 1: I heard, I heard the very first time that he
Speaker 1: dealt he he was dealing seven cards, standing, sat down,
Speaker 1: shuffled the deck, dealt out the hands, and he dealt
Speaker 1: himself in. And because you know, because he was he
Speaker 1: was used to guardina where the dealer is, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the players are like, buddy, you know, you don't.
Speaker 2: Need to play. I thought it was interesting that Chip says,
Speaker 2: he says, you know, a lot of these cheats they
Speaker 2: learned a cheap before they learned how to play. And
Speaker 2: that's exactly what Rodd says. Oh, I said, you know
Speaker 2: to me, he said, I learned how to cheat before
Speaker 2: I learned how to play. And then once you learn
Speaker 2: how to cheat, you never learned how to play because
Speaker 2: you don't need to, right right. Well, thank you very much, Richard,
Speaker 2: I really appreciate the opportunity. I really appreciate it absolutely.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and have a good one everybody. I'll see
Speaker 1: you next time.
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