Speaker 1: Good afternoon. You're listening to Gambling with an Edge. Now
Here are your hosts, Bob Dancer and Richard Munchkin. Good afternoon,
Welcome to Gambling with an Edge. I'm Bob Dancer and
I'm Richard Munchkin. Today we're having one of our irregularly
scheduled podcasts with the guests who has graced our airwaves before.
We're going to be talking to writer Michael Kaplan discussing
his new book, Advantage Players. Michael Kaplan, Welcome to Gambling
with an Edge.
Speaker 2: Hi, guys, it's super great to be here. Now.
Speaker 1: You've written about a myriad of subjects. A large part
of your career has been writing about gamblers and gambling subjects.
How did you get started in that field?
Speaker 2: It's kind of interesting. What happened was I mean, I
grew up you know in New Jersey, Jewish kid hung
around people. There definitely was a lot of gambling around me,
like you know, low stakes gambling, like you know, we
play nicol and die poker after school at this kid's house.
His last name was gold Figures, Like that's the guy
who was hosting the game. And I learned very quickly
that the guy who hosts the game usually wins, and
he would have like a fake Monopoly board setup in
case his mother came in and he would like drag
it across the table. My mom would just playing Monopoly.
So I kind of grew up around gambling, like you know,
selling football tickets and stuff like that, and I always
just you know, was drawn to that world and I
did a few gambling stories over the years. When I
did a story about that poker player Austin Squatty for GQ,
I was like probably the last person to interview Stu
Hunger before he died for this magazine. Icon was a big, long,
involved story which was amazing, one of my favorite series
that I've ever written. Actually. Then I did a story
about the Binions when the murder happened, when Teddy Binyon
got murdered. And soon after that I got a call
from Cigar and Ficionado, for whom I was writing some
sort of celebrity stories, some stories about Cigars, and they said, oh,
would you want to do our gambling column because their
old gambling columnist left. And I was like, Yeah, that's
that's great. I never thought that that would even be
an option, and I did it and I learned an
awful lot. I mean to tell you how much I learned.
The very first story I did was about beating, was
about beating blackjack, baccarat, and roulette. And I met with
somebody that we all knew who had a roulette system,
which is a losing system, trust me. And I didn't
know that, and I wrote about it being a way
to win. It was, you know, it was not what
I would call my finest hour, but that was the start.
And then I became friendly with Max, and I got
invited to a blackjack ball when I was I don't know,
this probably would have been when it was still at
his house, in the basement of his house, and wow,
I went this old house. Yeah, I went there knowing
nothing about this world at all. And Richard actually did
a cutting, a cutting demonstration, and he was like able
to cut like to the fifth card, to the sixth card,
to whatever Cardbody's like ooh ah. And I knew so
little about this role. I'm like, okay, fine, that's like
an interesting parlor trick. How could that possibly help you
win money? Which I know that's no what now, I
know that's not the case. And I lost. You know,
when you do the when you would have the quiz.
I finished worst the next two for the first two
years in a row, and I got the Jackass Trophy.
And I heard somebody say, this guy behind, you know,
behind my back, obviously whispering to somebody else. He goes,
this guy's supposed to be some big gambling writer. The fuck.
And I was like, yeah, well, you know, I try,
and you know I but I learned. I mean I
met a lot of people. In fact, one of the
first or second Black Check, while I went to I
met James Groschen and he handed me a copy, you know,
the old original copy of Beyond Counting, and I took it.
I was like, oh, what's this? You know, of course
it made noes. I took it home to look at it.
I couldn't make heads and her tails out of it.
I mean, still a little bit of a challenge. But
I started meeting people in that world and like learning
about the world of advantage play, and it became really
fascinating to me.
Speaker 3: How did you it? I mean we often ran into
the problem of turning up more guests. How do you
How did you find it getting people to talk to
you for your articles?
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's funny, like I think maybe by
going to the Blackjack Ball it gave me a certain credibility.
Max has always been like an amazing ambassador for me.
I mean, I wanted to do a story on Rob
Wrights it and I met him at a blackjack ball
when you know, I think it was the year that
he that he got player, that he got Player of
the Year, and I went up to him and talked
to him, and you know, he kind of sort of
blew me off a little bit, you know, and I
think you said to Max, you know, what's with this
guy Kaplan? And I think Max said some nice things
about me and then writes and called me, said hey,
I'm going to be in New York. You want to
grab some pizza? And we went to I'm a gluten
free pizza place because he's gluten free, and we became
we became pals, and I mean, i've we're like legitimate friends.
And I wrote about him, and I don't know, I
think being at the Blackjack Ball helped. Knowing some people helped,
I don't know, learning a card count playing on a
card counting team that probably helped. That gave me some
credibility even though, you know, James Grosheen said, you know,
people think you know of card counters as you know,
monkeys swinging through the trees, you know, on the evolutionary
scale of APIs because they're actually salamanders just crawling out
of the water. I was like, okay, fine, yeah, that
is one of his notorious quotes. But you know, I
think I think like, little by little, I became, you know,
part of this world. I was able to call somebody
and say, hey, I want to do a story about you.
You know, would you talk to me? And I think
it kind of evolved like that. I mean, you know,
I try to be trustworthy and I'm like, I honor
what I say I'll do, and I think people like that.
I actually understand how it works that I'm not just
like some person is saying, oh, so you're cheating, right,
because that's what people think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, often so.
Speaker 1: An advantaged player AP Now it's largely a gambling term,
although in this book you extend the term to a
number of non gambling situations. How would you define advantage player?
Speaker 2: I would say an advantage player is somebody who figures
out how to do things that other people can't or
won't figure out how to do, and that they're going
up against a place or a system, or a world
or an industry that is difficult to overcome, and they're
basically beating the odds, like you know, through hustle, through
not through luck. As somebody said somewhere and somebody else
said when I was writing the book, they out house
the house. So I think, like and I think it
extends beyond gambling. I mean, that's sort of the premise
of the book. And I know that to people who
are like, you know, you know, serious advantage players in
the gambling world, they might they might take umbras with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I mean this is a theme that
I like that I've often thought about that there are
people in life who are advantage players that have nothing
to do with gambling. I was telling you before we
started that there's a guy who would have been a
perfect fit for your book. And you might want to
find this guy and interview him sometime. But he's the
pudding guy and he thinks exactly like an advantage player.
Because what happened was, I believe it was Craft was
doing this promotion with the airlines where for every item
you bought you would get airline miles. This guy, he
valued airline miles at like two cents apiece, and he
liked this particular soup, and he realized that buying this soup,
you know, it was costing him much less because of
the airline miles he was getting. So he started going
through the grocery store and he found these six packs
of pudding that were you basically got the miles for
every one of the six and so it was actually
positive ev to buy the pudding. So this guy bought
out the entire store and went around to other stores
buying all the pudding he could. And then, like a
true advantage player, he realized, oh man, cutting out all
these UPC quodes is going to be a big, a
big problem. So he went to the Salvation Army and said,
I'll donate all this pudding to you if you get
your people to cut out the aps UPC codes for me. So, uh,
you know, he ended up with lifetime free flying I
think on American airlines and gold status I'm United. And
then to take it even one step further, because he
donated the pudding to the Salvation Army, he got to
write it off on his taxes as a charitable donation.
Speaker 2: I thought I was about to I was about to say,
I bet he was able to write it off. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they they kind of took this idea. There's
an Adam Sandler movie, which the name of it I
forget now, I think now I can't remember it. But
he he is the pudding guy in the movie. Although
it's got nothing. The rest of the movie's got nothing
to do.
Speaker 2: It's awesome. I wish I knew about that. I would
have put him in the book. He would have been perfect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the common definition to ap
includes the caveat without cheating or without breaking the law.
Speaker 2: Is that.
Speaker 1: Now many of your examples in the book certainly didn't
follow that, But do you consider that a key part
of being an AP or just not.
Speaker 2: I think it's on the fringes of advantage play. And
I think here we have said that somewhere in the book.
I hope we did, because I agree with that. I
think it's definitely on the fringes of the advantage play world.
I mean, I don't know. I think Dustin Marx seemed,
you know, I guess like I felt like even though
they were cheating and breaking the law, they weren't doing
it in like kind of an innovative way. It wasn't
just like you know, brute force walking and robbing a
bank and putting a gun to somebody's head. There was
some finesse to what the AP's quote unquote aps who
did break the law did in the book. So I guess,
I guess it is an expansion of AP I will
agree with that, but I felt like it's sort of
I don't know, it was on the edge of it.
Speaker 3: So the original definition, there was a book called The
Advantage Player. I think it was called The Advantage Player,
and it's from like the late eighteen hundreds, I think,
oh wow, and that book they were talking about people
who cheated. They were talking about people who got who
would do anything to gain an advantage at a game.
But the more modern definition has really become do it legally,
you know?
Speaker 2: So I mean, I do say I mean so maybe
the book is somewhat contradictory in a way because in
the introduction when I describe it, I do say, you know,
advantage players do it without cheating, and I say something
along the lines of, you know, cheaters go to jail
advantage players, you know, go to the cage and cash
out their chips. Right, So there is I do make
that delineation, And yeah, I guess that last section of
the book does kind of tredict that, But I don't know.
Maybe I couldn't resist the juiciness of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they were interesting stories.
Speaker 2: You know. They may not have been advantage players in
the truest truest sense of the word, but I hope
the epilogue redeemed me.
Speaker 1: So now you've attended several Black Tech Balls. At every
one of them, there were several dozen players who could
accurately be called a piece, each of whom are getting
the money from the casinos in a slightly different way.
Of all those players, you only have time and space
to interview a few. How do you pick and choose
which ones you believe will have the most compelling stories?
Speaker 2: I mean, to a degree, it's the ones that I
know about and the ones who will talk to me.
I mean, there is a degree of that. Not everybody
is game to talk to me, and I do think
like it's by snooping around and finding who are the
interesting sturgeon. There's one person who's incredibly interesting who I
would love to interview, and I don't know if that's
ever going to happen. And I've talked to her about
it and she was kind of into it, and then
I don't know. It seems now it might not happen
for reasons that I'm not sure of. But they have
to be game to do it. Number one and number two,
you know it's I don't. I can't say that I
know about every single Advantage player because some of them
they're at the Blackjack Ball and they're kind of they're
kind of quiet, and I'm not having any contact with them,
and I really don't know about all of them. I
would imagine that Richard knows about a lot more of
them than I do. I mean, I've heard about people
doing some things that I found pretty extraordinary that I'm
not sure if I should mention or not that I
have not been able to access those people. I mean,
certainly us too.
Speaker 3: We have that same You know, there are certain people
on our wish list that we would love to get
on this show but just have never been willing to do.
Speaker 2: Well. We should collaborate, maybe see who we think. Wow,
I have to.
Speaker 3: Say, I would, you know, really amazed when you I
mean that was many many years ago when you got
Alan Woods and did Bill Bener talk to you for this?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, no, this this was a crazy This was
a crazy situation. I mean, I went to Hong Kong
for Details magazine to just do like a random story
on like Hong Kong horse racing, because I thought it
was like this cool scene. And somehow I met there
was a guy I was told was the turf columnist
for the Hong Kong What is it, the Hong Kong
Jack Post. Oh oh yeah, yeah, that's that's the daily paper. Yeah,
And I go to the racetrack looking for him, and
I say, oh, I don't even remember this guy's name. Now,
I go, oh, so and so here, and they all
kind of snicker. They go, well, he doesn't really come
here to report. I'm like, oh, do you have a
number for him? They gave me his number and I
called him and he goes, yeah, you can come by.
And I came by and talking to him, and he's
explaining to me that he bets and like you know,
uses computer models, and of course that was more fascinating
than anything else. Then he introduced me to a guy
named Rod Duffersee, who was like incredibly open. He let
me come on a racing day. It was his wife
or girlfriend and her sister. They were like entering all
this stuff. It was really cool and I watched and
hung out with him and we became kind of friendly.
And then I found out that the big guys are
you know, Bill and Alan Woods. So I came back.
I wrote the story for details, and I pitched to
Wire to do you know his story on Bill Benter
and Alan Woods, and they assigned it to me. And
somehow I got the number for Alan Woods and he
would talk to me on the phone like he would,
you know, entertain my calling him, and you know, he
talked briefly, go, well, the guy you really no? I
think I got Bill Bener's number originally, and then Bill
and Alan had out a falling out. The guy you
really need to talk to is Alan Woods. He gives
me Alan's number, and he was like Bill was not
enthusiastic to talk to me. He gives me Alan's number,
and Alan was much more forthcoming to talk to me.
And so I'm having a I mean, I was having
a bunch of conversations with Bill, like off the record, conversation.
He wasn't really telling me that much. And I'm having,
you know, off the record conversations with Alan. And I
had a story to do for another magazine in Bali,
and I said to Wired, I go, look, I'm in Bali.
What would you think about flying me to Hong Kong,
putting me up for a few days and let me
try to get this story. I mean, it's speculative. I
may not get it. And if I don't get it,
you know I'll have wasted some time, You'll have wasted
some expense money. But you know, we'll call it a day.
So I land in Hong Kong and I call Bill
and I say, oh, it's Michael Kaplan you know, yes
or I am? And I go, I go, I'm in
Hong Kong. I want to come talk to you. He goes, uh,
I've got to go basically right. And I called him
back multiple tuzzles, Oh he's not here, He's not here.
And then I called Alan. I go, guess where I am?
And he goes Hong Kong. I go, yeah, I want
to come talk to you. He goes, you know, you
know how he would do that, right? And so I go, well,
look I go him all the way here. How about
letting me come see you. He's like, okay, fine, and
he gives me his address. I went there the next
day and he was awesome. I mean, he gave me
a story. I mean, I hung out with Rod again,
got some more stuff from him. I think in the end,
like Bill was trying to get me not to do it,
and he let me. I went through the whole story
with him, and he said, well, maybe I'll give you
some stuff if I know everything in the story. I
eventually went through. It was like basically an elaborate fact check,
and he didn't really in the end, I mean, he
kind of got what he wanted. It was a bit
of an advantage play on his part. You know, he
got what he wanted and I didn't really get. But
we became we're like some I mean I would say
when I see him with the Blackjack ball, I say hello,
he talks to me a little bit. I mean I
was jealous. When Bloomberg BusinessWeek did the big story on
Bill Benter, I was like, Wow, how did that guy
get it? That was like kind of annoying to me.
But not only did I interview Alan Woods for Wired,
but he had me come out again. And oh and
I got the greatest compliment from Anthony when that Wired
story came out. He goes, this story is the tells
the exact way that advantage players earned livings. He loved it,
and I was like, I was super flattered at the time.
I'd be flattered now to hear that from him. And
he and then Alan and I stayed in touch. I
guess Alan liked the Wired story well enough, and he
called me once and he messaged that emailed me and
he said, there's a big triple trio coming up. Would
you like to come out and be with me when
I bet on it? And I go, yeah, of course,
and I pictured it to Cigar Fishenado. They put me
on a plane and sent me to the Philippines where
Alan was living at the time. Went up to his apartment,
and you know, I spent I spent a couple of
days with him, and I was with him for the
triple trio which he lost. They lost, They got crushed,
and you know, he said, he goes, We've we've lost
about a million dollars. He goes, well, after those a
million dollars, I'm glad I did it. In front of
a journalist, so it shows that he loses also, and
he told me he didn't really. I mean, he took
it like remarkably well obviously. I mean, you know, he
knows that it happens, and I think he was legitimately
happy that I didn't see him, you know, win a
ton of money. And it was great. I thought Alan
Woods was an amazing guy. I thought it was really
really cool.
Speaker 3: Changed my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's funny because I when I was got the
idea for Gambling Wizards, I was reading a book on
the plane going to Hong Kong to do some work
for Bill, and I was reading this book, Market Wizards
that was a collection of interviews with commodities and futures traders,
and I was like, gamblers are way more interesting than
these people, right, And so when I first got there
and the first person I talked to was Bill, and
I was like, Hey, I have this idea to do
this book. And he was like, I can't do it.
He goes, but Alan'll do it, and he was right, Yeah,
Alan was sure.
Speaker 2: He got annoyed at one thing. I sent him the
John Bradshaw book Fast Company. Yes, I thought, oh, you know,
he you know, kind of is a thanks to him
being so nice to me. I ordered from Amazon I
had sent to his address, and then I go, how'd
you like that book? He goes, Oh, those people are
awful because they're all cheaters. They're all broke. He goes there.
You know, he was very strict I guess about his
definition of an advanity. He didn't think any of the
people in there were advantage players. So I was like, wow,
that's interesting. Yeah, he was like he was like totally.
Speaker 1: I thought.
Speaker 2: I was like, he's gonna say, oh, wow, this is
so cool that you sent me this. That definitely was
not what he said.
Speaker 1: In the section where you discussed Phil Ivy, Phil makes
a point that a secret to his success his humble beginnings.
He didn't have money growing up, and he had to win.
If he didn't win, he had to resort to sleeping
out of doors under bridges. Do you believe that this
humble beginnings makes you a better? Ap theory is something
that applies to a lot of people, or just something
to fill?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I thought it was interesting, but well,
I mean, listen, I don't know how much money people
who went to MIT had to begin with, I have
no idea, and like those guys were obviously grade aps.
But I think Phil's point was if you have a
lot of money, you don't have to really put in
the work, and you could gamble, you could play poker
and it could be a fun thing and maybe you'll
win a little bit, but you're not like kind of
playing for your life. And I think I think he's right.
I mean, I think that you know, if you're out
there playing for your life and if you don't, if
you lose, you know that you might not be able
to pay your rent. And I think that doesn't make
you take it more seriously. It doesn't make you really
grind and would make you find ways of winning that
other people might not be able to find, which kind
of is a definition of being an advantage player to me.
It's like, you know, finding these ways to do it
that other people might not be able to figure out.
But I mean, if you were born super rich, also,
it's so much work. It's not like, you know, it's
not like the easiest life in the world. I don't
know that somebody who was born rich they might think, oh, yeah,
this is interesting. I don't really would have it in them,
like to walk through casinos for hours on end trying
to find the one great dealer, the superstar dealer as
James would call them, who were giving it up. I mean,
you know, we're giving up whole cards. And I think
that it's and I learned that when I played on
the card counting team. I mean I really enjoyed it.
And this was not I wasn't doing it for a living,
so it was not you know what I mean, And
to me, it was fun. I was enjoying it because
it was. It was amazing to me, like to be
you know, even tangentially a part of the AP world,
being on a card counting team. But you know, it
was it was definitely work, you know. I mean, it
was fun, but it was also work for sure. And
I mean, I don't know, I mean, I think that
the real work that aps do, like you know how hard.
I mean. I know James, you know, I've seen him
working on, you know, figuring out games. I mean, to
sit in front of a computer as long as he does,
and to spend as much time, you know, at the
casino before the game even happens, to kind of get
himself set up and to get to get things going
and then to do what he called clean up at
the end. I mean, it's a lot. It's a lot
of work where you're not really making you know, the money,
You're basically playing like a regular player. And I think
I think having humble beginnings goes a long way, because
I just don't think somebody who was born rich would
want to do all the hard work that you have
to do. I think, you know, I think being an
advantaced player is a little bit like being a journalist.
I mean, I've said to people I've met, like young
people who want to become journalists, and like they say, well,
how do I do it? And I'm like, listen, if
this is not the thing that you want to do
more than anything in the world, it's never going to
work for you. Like unless you're the most talent, unless
you're like the one percent of one percent, or we're
like that talented that it's easy. But if it's not,
If it's not, if you're not in that one percent
of one percent, which you know you're probably not, you
have to like say, oh, I'd rather go out and
chase down stories and hang out with my friends. I
would rather come up with story ideas than watch a
really cool movie on TV. And I think it's the
same thing with being an AP. You have to want
to do it more than you want to do anything
else in life. Like it has to be a thing
that you love doing and you're willing to kind of
sacrifice large parts of your life to do it. I mean,
you know, people are on the road endlessly playing it
out of the way casinos, places where not. They always
quote James, but he's very quotable, as James put it,
where the cell phones don't work. You have to be
willing to do that. And if you're not willing to
do it, you are not going to have much of
an AP career in my opinion. And also you have
to be willing to be thrown out of casinos. That
was one of the interesting things when I was playing
on this card counting team. I got thrown off with
so many tables, you know, to me, as Bill Bender
puts it, if they're not chasing you out, you're doing
something wrong. So I said, oh, wow, this is like
proof of concept. When I would get backed off from
a table, I'd be like, they're not backing me off
because I think I'm an idiot, you know, even though
everybody would say you like you were the worst person
on earth. And there was a guy on the team
who said to me, I hate getting backed off. I
really try to avoid it because everybody the table looks
at me like a complete degenerate. And I was like, wow,
how can you care about that? So I do think
you can't be the kind of person who's going to
get bothered by being told you got to stop playing.
You know, we don't want your business, which I don't know.
I don't know that everybody could handle that.
Speaker 3: No, You're right, A lot of people can't and a
lot of people can't handle betting large amounts of money.
I Oh, I had a friend that we we tried,
you know, we taught him. He learned how to count cards,
and we tried to use himount of team, and if
he put out two hands of five hundred dollars, his
hands would shake.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like to me, like, this is gonna
sound this is gonna sound counterintuitive. But one of my
proudest moments as a card counter was I was playing
at the Palms. I had won a couple grand and
I put in my hour. That was the protocol, play
for an hour. No matter win or lose. Leave. So
I was colored up. I'm ready to go, and this
guy sits down, takes out a giant marker. He's got
a beautiful woman with him. I'm like, oh, nobody's gonna
be looking at me. I go all stick around and
play one more shoe. Get my you know, you know,
get my low denomination ships. The kind of immediately goes
through the roof. I'm betting two spots of fifteen hundred
getting crushed. I left there with like, you know, the
the packs of ten k those rappers with two rappers
on the table in front of me, and that's all
I had left. And I had to, you know, call
our guy in Vegas and get more money, and he goes, well,
dig your way out. But like looking back, there was
no way I was going to stop playing or alter
the way I was playing, even though I was just
incredibly unlucky. You know, the dealer would have you know,
sixteen and get a five. I would have you know,
eleven and get a five. I mean, it just was
one of these horrible, horrible shoes, and the dealer felt
bad to me. He even said, maybe you wanted to
just play one hand and change the rhythm of the cards,
I'm like, nah, I'm trying to get my money back,
and you know I and I'm sure that you know,
everybody was loving it. The casino was probably loving that
I was losing so much and wouldn't stop digging into
my money belt throwing out more cash. And but like,
in retrospect, that to me was kind of a proud
moment because I didn't alter what I did. I played
exactly the way I was supposed to play, like I was.
I made myself be numb to losing that kind of money,
Like that's a lot of money to a guy like
me twenty k and I made myself completely numb to that.
And I did exactly what I was supposed to do
that I got more money, and I don't know that
I want it all back, but I definitely played continually
as much as I possibly could. I won back as
much of it as I could. And I don't know,
I thought that was an interesting Like at the time,
I didn't think of it like that, But in retrospect,
I think of that as you know, that's part of it.
And I don't know that everybody in the world could
do that, Like I would never leave with a positive count,
like some people might say, Oh, man, I'm just unlucky
on this shoe. I'm going to stop. I've lost ten
k you know, in record time. I'm not going to
keep playing. Well. Yeah, people can't make it. Yeah, yeah,
you would get if I left with a positive count
and told the people running the team, they might have
thrown me off. I mean that would be a really
really bad thing to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things that really surprised me
of the book, maybe the thing that surprised me the
most was you, for the first time in the book,
revealed that James and his partner Keith were behind the
whole Don Johnson thing. Which how did you get allowed
to reveal that?
Speaker 2: Don told me the whole story? It was interesting. I
mean I knew it, so like, this is the funny thing, Okay,
this is how I found that, This is how I
got an inkling of it. I was at the Wyn
and I was friends with the guy who owned Excess,
you know the night club there. And I was at
Excess and I was sitting at Victor Dre's table and
you knowble pretty good table. He was one of the
co owners or you know, or managing partners. It was
a pretty good table to be sitting at. You know,
Victor's there, he's getting you know, lots of booze or
all these attractive women, blah blah blah. And then walks
over Keith and he I think we had met once
or twice, and he goes, hey, he goes, he goes,
we're one table ahead of you. And I looked over
and I see, I see James. And I didn't I
didn't know do I didn't even really, I don't think
I even knew who Don was at the time. And
I see, I see they're sitting at his table. They've
also got a bunch of you know, interesting people there,
and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And we're talking a
little bit, you know, blah blah blah. And then it
turns out that there's a big party in Don's villa
after so I'd followed them out. There were a couple
of people from my table who were going to the parties,
so I kind of glombed onto them and we're following,
you know, we're following every the crowd to Don's you know,
fleet of cars to go back to his villa. And
I'm there and then the guy that they call Big G.
He says to me, oh, no, you know, you can't go,
like like I think he like took my aunt and
basically ushered be away and said, yeah, you can't. You
can't come. I go, why because yeah, we got too
many people. I'm like, really, I go, I'm friends with
two of the guys that are going. And he goes, yeah,
he goes, you can't go. I let him from Keith.
I told Big G not to let you go. I
think the reporter at the party, I wasn't. I guess
I wasn't that trusted at that point. I wasn't that
tested me. And you know, Don goes, oh you could
have come. I'm like, well not really.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, well Don wouldn't have been the one objecting.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, exactly exactly. So I kind of knew, but
I wound up. I knew. I knew that they were
playing together, obviously, And I think that James at one
point told me the story about how they met, you know,
which is in the book about how they met, and
that Keith went over there and you know, as James
put it, go there with pockets empty because they didn't
know anything about Don at the time, they didn't know
he was who he was, and I was like fascinated
by it all. And then I think I was talking
to Don and said we should maybe do a book together,
and he's like, yeah, that'll be okay. And then I
came out to see him and you know where he lives,
and went to his house. We hung out for a
few hours, went to movies with him and his kids,
one of his kids friends, and then we went back
and finished talking. I think he made play to go
to the movies, so we did the movie break and
then we went back and finished talking, and he told
me a lot of stuff, you know, and I was
like wow. And then I became friendly, you know, relatively
you know, friendly with Don. And when I was and
I never really wrote it up because I think we're
going to do a book and then I couldn't really
figure out what the book would be. And I don't
know it just I never wrote the proposal, like I
was injewing him, hoping I would write a proposal then
it could be you know, by him with me, like
history of how I won you know, X amount of dollars.
It never happened, but I had I had all the
recordings I had the interviews, and I think I used
a couple of little bits and pieces of it somewhere.
But when I was going to do the book, I
called him and said, would it be okay if I
used that? And he goes, yeah, And so then I
I wrote it up and as a courtesy, because I go,
I know, you don't really talk to people about this,
I went through the whole chapter with him, from beginning
to end, and he wanted me to change a couple
of little things, which I changed. I don't know. It
was Yeah, it was interesting that, like he was willing
to reveal all that, but he was comfortable with it.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm sure he was, but I'm not. I'm not
sure how comfortable Keith and James were with it. But
I haven't asked them, so I don't know.
Speaker 2: They've seen it, they've seen the book, they've seen everything
in the they've seen the whole book. So yeah, you know,
you know, I guess they were. They're comfortable. Yeah. Did
James say anything to you?
Speaker 3: No, No, he didn't. He didn't.
Speaker 2: He would if he wasn't, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would think so yeah, but and and again,
and it wouldn't be with you, it would be with
don that they'd be upset if they were going to
be right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I think I think he was cool
with it and they and James gave me incredible access
when I when I did the the story for the
Times magazine. I mean, that was like insane access that
he gave me. And then he had me come out
and bep for him after the story came out, and
that was like filed access. I mean, I was. It
wasn't like, oh, yeah, we want you to come right
about it, but it was. That was incredible. Yeah. So
my getting to actually play with James, that was that
was an unbelievable experience. I mean because basically my advantage
playing up to that point was limited to card counting,
doing some whole carding. But playing with James was really
a real experience. I mean that was I don't know
that that was that was amazing. And listen, that underscores
what we were talking about before. You know, He's got as
great a work ethic as anybody I've ever met. I mean,
he'd be up all night running numbers on his computer.
You wake up, he goes, oh, we could shave off
one tenth of one percent if we do this, and
I'd be like, wow, you know it just I don't know.
And it was amazing, like how how hard he worked
and how generous he was with the other people in
on the play, because he said, oh, this is my play.
I'm giving you X amount of dollars per hour, like
everybody was a partner the play, which I found to
be extraordinary and really really smart on James's part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's not greedy, he's not. And his work ethic,
I mean he'll go out and play sixteen hours a day,
get back to the hotel room, and then program for
you know, six or eight hours while everybody else sleeps.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, well that was the funny thing. When I
was there. We were like staying in this in this
like quote unquote cabin together and everybody was angling to
get their own bedroom, and James was happy to sleep
on the couch because there was a giant TV at
the TV playing movies all night. He sleep for a
few minutes, then get up and do more coding, watch
the movie, fall asleep, get up, do more coding. So
he wasn't really even getting a full night's sleep, it seemed, ever,
which again I found that extraordinary considering. You know, it's
a big responsibility what he was doing.
Speaker 3: He told me recently he was somewhere and in a
large casino and basically he had logged thirty three thousand
steps that day in the.
Speaker 2: Casino, like looking for dealers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, five years ago or so, I got to
sit with Edward Thorpe and his family at the Blackjack
Ball really by accident, but I had a nice long chat. Wow,
I held it together inside. I was pretty giddy from
being able to spend time with one of my heroes.
James Gross Jean and Phil Ivy are kind of ap royalty.
When you interview such people, do you get giddy?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I try to be really focused on
what I'm doing and that I'm going to get my story,
But yeah, there definitely is a degree of that. I
mean with Ivy, it was a little bit different because
it was the time was really stilted. I mean I
think that he thought I was going to just come
and interview him and leave, and that's not what I
was promised, and I wound up spending I think I
was there for like ten days for Playboy, and I
would sort of hang out with him. Then I then
I would call him and not hang out with him
for a couple of days. I'd hang out with him
for a day, so it was stretched out. So it
was a little bit too stressful for me to be
very giddy. I would say. The first time I interviewed him,
I had that feeling. So I did a start on
him for Cigar f Shonado and it was like, that
was what it was. I mean, I met him at
in his sweet at the at Aria, and I hung
out with him there and it was, Yeah, it was
just him and I sitting down and there was that sense.
I mean, yeah, you're with like a guy who's like
the best of the best in that world. And it
really did feel it did feel that way. I mean
I felt that way a little bit, to be honest
with you, With Alan Woods, I mean when I was
with him, it was like this set when when I
interviewed him for I guess probably for the Cigar Officionado
story more than for War, because the Wars story also
was like one of these ten stories. I didn't know
when he was going to end it, when he was
going to kick me out. It wasn't like one hundred
percent comfortable. When I went to the cigar for Sionado.
So I was kind of like an invited guest, and
there was that sense of giddiness. And I mean, you know,
I watched him swimming up on his roof, waited for
him to come down. And the great thing was he
sent a photographer there, and like, you know, he's doing
all this stuff. He had a pool table in his
living room and he's like doing all stuff around. He's
shooting pool, he's like doing all stuff. I go, hey,
I go, I've got a great idea. Why don't we
get some some Filipino money. You could set it on fire.
He goes, yeah, I'm not doing that. He wasn't just
set money on fire. For the story there was, well,
there was a great story about Ted Binyon when I
when I was doing this story about him from I
wrote about for Los Angeles magazine. You know, after he
was murdered, and somebody told me that he would go
to strip clubs and if he wasn't getting attention, he'd
take one hundred dollars bills, start lighting them on fire
and hold them up over his head till somebody came
over and said, stop burning that money. We'll take it.
Speaker 1: One of the people in your book God included as
an ap because he was hung like a horse. I
found myself wondering how being well endowed qualified one to
be an ap.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so my thinking was he took a thing
that he had, and admittedly he was born with that. Well,
you know, you could argue that some people are born
really mathematically astute, and you know, it comes easier to
them than others. But I felt like he kind of
decided to use that to to make more money at
a pursuit than he could have made. You know, he
was working as a stockbroker. I mean, I'm sure he
was making pretty good money as a stockbroker, and he
realized that he could make more money in porn, and
I guess I viewed that as you know, the ultimate tool,
let's say, and he was gonna you know, I don't know.
In my opinion, I think it is kind of an
advantage play to take this thing that you have and
to use it in the most profitable way possible. It'd
be like if somebody was really really good at math.
I mean, they could be somebody who I don't know
what they would do instead of you know, a casino ap,
but they could do something just I don't know. Maybe
they would play a lot of chess. You know, somebody
was really good at strategizing, and they'd spend hours and
hours playing chess and not really capitalize on it, but
they would use it instead. They would apply it for
either beating Poper or figuring out ways to beat casino games,
like in a weird way. And I know, I know
this might be a little bit of a stretch, but
in a weird way. You could argue that Lexington Steele
did that with his large appendage.
Speaker 1: Okay, now I'm confused, Michael. A few minutes ago, we
agreed that the APS are the smartest people in the room,
the hardest working, and really exceptional intelligence wise, and now
you're implying that everybody can be an AP. Those are
two different sets of people. What do you say to that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think I think that they're they're
the smartest people in the room. They're also the most
observant people in the room, the hardest working people in
the room, and the people who are best at applying
their intelligence towards something. I mean, I do think that's
another AP quality is figuring out what you could apply
your intelligence too. I mean, I mean I'm not trying
to say, oh, I'm like, you know, the James Grosteen
of journalism or something, but like, I'm not the smartest
guy in the world. But I did realize that, like
I have a skill like for writing, I'm good at
talking to people, I'm good at getting information. I'm going
to figure out how to make that into a story.
So that is like a little bit of an AP move.
I think it is. There is an element of being
able to take this skill or this intelligence or this
I don't know, maybe born ability that you have and
knowing how to apply it to a certain pursuit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, once you have the AP mindset, then you see
the world in a different way. Even if it's just
the during out how to best unload the dishwasher, you
know you're gonna think about doing it the most efficient way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a great story about that. Sidney Lamet's daughter,
the director was talking about her father, and I know
it was an actor hanging out having like an hour
long discussion about the best way to load and unload
a dishwasher, the most efficient way to do it, And
I was like, that was a total AP move, Like
exactly you're saying, and I think that people who are
aps want to do everything in the most efficient way possible,
in the smartest way. I mean I was telling you
a poker player who said, like, you know, yeah, Like
you know, if you drive fifty five miles an hour
instead of sixty five miles an hour, the lifeli of
you getting into an accident is reduced by x percent,
and you're giving up x percent in the time it
takes to get there. It's a better deal to spend
the extra time. I mean, you know it sounds obvious,
but you also have to have it in you to
do that. I mean, you know, most people would be like, oh,
I'm going fifty five, Well why is everybody passing me?
Speaker 3: All?
Speaker 2: Maybe you'll seventy and but if you're an AP, you
might have thought that through and said, I don't really care.
That's the other thing is like not really caring about
how other people do things. That you want to do
things in the right way, the most efficient way, the
most advantageous way, the way that gives you ev at
whatever you're doing.
Speaker 3: So another person that usually does not want to talk
about what they do is Eddie Teams and you somehow
managed to get him to talk to you too.
Speaker 2: I met him when I was doing the story for
the Sunday Times magazine and I interviewed him for that,
So I first met Eddie teams in a strange way.
So when I was card counting, one of the things
I learned was tournament strategy, because sometimes we were get
invited to play in these free roll tournaments and somebody
I know knew that and he put me He paid
for me to get into a tournament at Treasure Island.
He put up the money for me to enter, and
if I won, we were going to chop the money.
So I was there playing and I advanced a couple
level and I'm not making the money. Came pretty close,
but i want up. Not making the money unfortunate, but
I advanced I think one or two levels. And there
was a break and I went with the guy who
put me up. We went to breakfast and there were
a couple other players at the breakfast and Eddie was there,
and Stanford Wang is there, and Eddie's got Stanford Wong's
tournament Blackjack book with him, and there are all these
post it notes sticking out, and I'm like to myself,
like this goofball. He brought the book to the tournament
and he's gonna like try to get Stanford Wang to
sign it or something. It's just like it's weird. I
was like, who is this guy? And we sit down
and the guy who put me up he whispers to me,
he goes that guy is the sharpest of the sharp
meaning Eddie, and I'm like, okay, right, and then he
starts talking about what happened while he was playing, and
he's talking about things that I one hundred percent do
not even understand. What he's talking about happened to him
and how he handled it and what he did. I'm like, Okay,
this guy's obviously, you know, a few planets above me
and no ornament play. And I sort of said, okay,
I probably shouldn't judge a guy by carrying this book.
And I later found out he's got a library full
of books loaded with post it notes, and he's like,
you know, does insane research for everything he's interested. And
when I was doing the Sunday Times magazine story, I
was hoping to meet Kelly, and I reached out to
this guy who put me into the tournament and said,
do you know anybody who would know Kelly's son, because
I didn't know. It was clear that what the play
she did with Ivy was known, but I didn't know her.
I didn't know, you know, I really, I just knew
what was in the newspapers. He put me in touch
with Eddie. I went and met with Eddie and I
was asking a bunch of questions about Kelly, and he goes,
you want to just meet her? And I was like yeah,
and we went and I met her at this casino
was it, I don't know, some casino at the bottom
of the strip where she was playing baccarat and we,
you know, we hit it off and we talked. You
gave me some pretty good quotes from my story, and
the story came out and you know, she liked it.
And then I said, what are you think about just
doing a story on you? And she was like, okay.
I came out and did it, and we did the
story and that went really well, and it wound up
getting optioned for a movie, and I wound up doing
a story on Eddie. On Eddie himself, Yeah, I did
a story on Eddie Teams and that's in the book.
I think Eddie's a fascinating guy. It's really he's a
guy who's really really smart and you know, really knows
what he's doing.
Speaker 3: Obviously, Michael, we want to thank you for joining us today.
This has been a very fascinating episode and so for
our audience. For people who want to find your book,
where where can they find it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, you can find it on Amazon dot com.
Or you could order it directly from Hunting Compress, which
I'm sure Anthony would like. But either way, it's a
great book, and you know, Amazon is an easy place
to get it, as is Hunting Impress. You get it
from either either place, and I hope people or to
you know, the what I would hope is that people
will read this book and what you know and realize
that you could that everybody could be an advantage player,
that there's advantage play in almost everybody, that you could
find your area where advantage play makes sense and where
you could be an advantage player in your dominion, which
is a term that we use in the book that
dec came up with, not me, and that that's a
you know, I think I would hope that this will
inspire people to find their kind of inner advantage player
and you know, use that to be more successful and
live a better life and do more interesting things, more efficient,
make more money, have more fun. Whatever reward it is
that you want, you could get by being an advantage
player in some area, whether it's coaching Little league baseball
or I don't know, racing motorcycles or fixing your car
or anything, or emptying your dishwasher, it will be. There
will be an advantage play thing that you can do
in life, and it will make your life better.
Speaker 3: Michael, if people want to get a hold of you,
how can they do that?
Speaker 2: They could do it. I mean, I have a website
and I have My email is Michael at advantage playersbook
dot com, and that would be a great way to
reach me.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, we will put a link to that in
the show notes, and of course we will put a
link to the book as well. So Michael, thank you
very much for being with us today. All Right, well,
Bob's connection seems to have dropped out, So go out
and hit less royal flushes everybody.
Speaker 1: Good day.