Speaker 1: Good afternoon.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Gambling with an Edge.
Speaker 3: Now here are your hosts, Bob Dancer and Richard Munchkin.
Speaker 2: Good afternoon, and welcome to Gambling with an Edge. My
name is Richard Munchkin, and Bob Dancer is not here
with me today. He is off playing the secret game,
so I'm not allowed to tell you where that is.
But we are here today to talk with Max Ruman
and Colin Jones about the twenty twenty five Blackjack Ball
and Colin, you were inducted into the Blackjack Hall of
Fame at this year's balls, so why don't we start there?
How was the How You've been a front runner for
the last few years to get into the Hall of
Fame and this year you finally made it. How does
it feel?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's an incredible honor.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of fun, and you know, it's cool
to get We've been running black Chack Apprenticeship, I've been
running it for a long time, running boot camps for
a long time, and it's cool to see.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Just I feel like it's an honor for the entire
community and all those guys that put in the grind
to make the money, and yeah, huge honor.
Speaker 2: And so Max, there was kind of a twist with
the Hall of Fame voting this year. Do you want
to tell us about what was new with the voting?
Speaker 1: It was and the genesis was last year, I got
a couple complaints from people that said, the only people
that were getting in the ball getting in the Hall
happened to be publishers or somebody who had done something
else noteworthy, but it wasn't about playing the game itself.
And I took that to heart and I told him
before the party, I said, you know what, you were right,
and we don't do that because you're one of those silent,
stealth blackjack and other players. Nobody really knows about you
except us that have seen you out in the trenches,
and we've seen what you've don and I would venture
to guess he's won tens of millions over the years.
That's John Murray, and he got in and we just
opened it up. So we allowed everyone who came to
the ballplus I had twenty absentee ballots and they were
allowed to write in the name of a candidate, and
we got two names, and the runaway favorite was someone
many people have never heard of named bj Traveler who
may be among the top five blackjack players of all
time and money won as far as discount programs and
bringing in teams and that sort of thing. At tens
of millions of dollars, we know that he's won. He
irritated some people he published James Groschein's book in Chinese,
and James said, you could have at least asked. But
they became friends of sorts over the years. I don't
even know his real name, and some.
Speaker 2: People say his real name is Bob Wang.
Speaker 1: And supposedly a pseud Now did you know that?
Speaker 2: No, he always told me that was his name.
Speaker 1: So he told you that name, Okay, So yeah.
Speaker 2: But I mean the other thing about him is he's
one of the most prolific blackjack authors in the world.
I mean, he's written at least nine books, but people
haven't heard of them because they were all written in Chinese.
So but yeah, and he traveled all over the world.
I have an interview with him, and I'll I'll put
a link to my interview with him from Jesus. It
must be ten or fifteen years old by now, and
he had been in seventy six countries already, playing blackjack
at that point. He also spent a bit of time
in a jail in Nepal for they basically were trying
to get a big dride from him. So, yeah, tremendously
interesting character.
Speaker 1: Wasn't it. Seventy six days he's spending Paul dungeon of
some sort and yeah, yeah, scored for money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe I have I confused seventy six with the
number of countries he'd been in. But yeah, anyway, as
I say, I'll put a link to the interview in
the show notes so people can go check that out.
He did die a few years ago, so he's had.
Speaker 1: A fascinating career. Though. He really took comp hustling to
a level nobody had ever done. And Don Johnson did
a pretty damn good job. But his unlike Don, who
would go one on one, he would literally take immigrants
out of the crates get if they had passports. They
used to give you something called Asian airfare. Many casinos
still do, and that's most racist thing ever. If you're Jewish,
or your police or anything else, you have to earn
your airfare and they asked no questions. And these are
the major casinos Las Vegas to day. If you have
an Asian a basically Chinese Macau, any sort of passport,
they will give you nine thousand dollars up front for
a house of one thousand dollars for They'll give you
nine thousand inn airfare for one hundred thousand dollars up front.
So instead of getting his usual thirty five thousand for
a million up front, he got ten people that he's
got nine thousand. When they showed up and they did,
he put them on buses and he brought them up here,
and then he put him in motels because he booked
him into rooms. Then he sold the rooms on the side,
and he had spotters going around with them, and they
were paying twenty percent rebates, and they were taking up
to fifty thousand dollars a number at the Caesar's Palace
at the time, and if you lost half a million,
you got a twenty percent rebate. And he had scores
of these teams coming in and just pounding them to death.
They finally said uncle. But he made a whole whole
whole lot of money off of that one.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I know. He was running people through Korea
as well, where they had remad program.
Speaker 1: He did a lot of this all over the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, So I just want to make it clear
when you because you said when you were talking about
this that John Murraih got in, what you meant was
the right in people. The top two were picked to
be on the ballot next year.
Speaker 1: Right, But that's the whole thing.
Speaker 2: They will be on the ballot for the first time.
Speaker 1: Ever for the twenty twenty six The Hall of Fame,
the existing Hall of Fame members and maybe a few sponsors,
didn't have any any additional input whatsoever. We left it
up to the our public, our little close community, you
see what would happen. And what emerged was bj Traveler
and John muri are now in the next ballot, which
was fair. I think. I think it was a really
good It settled into the right two people. So there
we are.
Speaker 2: So now let's talk about another one of the major
differences about the ball this year, which was it was
a costume party. And how did that come about, Matts?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure it took a lot of careful consideration.
And that Ed said he couldn't come in until October
because he was going to be out of the town.
I said, well, that's right, by Halloween. Let's have a party,
let's wear costumes. We started. That was the genesis, and
it started growing on its own and they got pretty
big and a lot of people wanted to do it.
It was way beyond the success that we expected it
was going to have. We expected maybe fifty people would
show up in costume, and it turns out we had
over one hundred and fifty people in costume. It was insane.
It was a lot of people dressed up and we
had the Halloween Costume Contest. Just some spectacular costumes, and
I didn't pay enough attention to some of them. I mean,
one was the what in retrospect I really really liked,
and that was the guy that came as a Mississippi stud.
He had a big mullet hairdo, and then he had
a bodybuilder's big puffy arms but looked just like one
of those jerk and walked around flexing all the time.
But he's really great. This was probably his tenth ball,
I think at least. Yeah, you much, but uh, but
a lot of great costumes.
Speaker 2: Like you were skeptical about the costumes to start with.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I didn't know if people would would really
do it, you know, But no. I thought it was
a ton of fun, Like, you know, the creativity. Some
people had kind of matching costumes as far as like
someone in their plus one. You know, there was Deadpool
and Wolverine, and I don't know if you saw hit
A seven and his wife were whole cards so that
they they show up and they've got there, they're they're
in a card costume. But then they had a thing
covering it and then they had flashed really quickly and
you know, could you tell what?
Speaker 1: It was?
Speaker 3: Just really creative and you know, and then and then
there's the rella inflating costume. I don't want to say
who was who, but you know, yeah, just it was
a ton of fun.
Speaker 1: We could use his name, wasn't that Andy Block? Yeah?
And Andy Block's a terrific blackjack player and terrific poker player.
He just a great gamble all the way around, and
a patent attorney and a bunch of other stuff. And
he's been to the finals a couple of times, and
he went to MI I T and he's got Harvard law.
And he still can't rememorize more than two cards at
a time. Never could understand that. But we changed that
this year. And it was more fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get to that. Yeah, definitely, we want to
talk about that, but we have to talk about the
guy who won the best costume contest, because the most creative,
imaginative costume that I think I've ever seen, and so
brilliant in its simplicity. Max, you want to tell.
Speaker 1: The party was starting and as you I imagine, we have
triple security at these parties, and nobody gets in this year,
but because they were in uh name tag, nobody got
in without a name tag and we'd preapproved and they
had to give us their handle, but we were there
vetting every single person that walks in the door. Well,
he walked in early, which I wasn't ready for, and
the manager of the center came up and said, did
you hire someone to be a washroom attendant? And I
said no, And he said, there's some guy off the
street and he's in there getting tips and he's in
the bathroom and he's got this trays and all this
stuff and he looks like a washroom and I said, well,
let me go see. And I walked in. I said,
excure's me. Who are you and he said, I'm your
washroom attendant, Sir, and then I looked in and said
math the washroom attendant. I said, is this a costume?
He said yeah. I said, oh, this is awesome. You're
right number one pick. It was so good. And he
had these people flummocks at the place we were having
the event. It's a very exclusive place. I don't know
how he waseled in the door, but he got in.
Speaker 2: He got I checked him in when he came in,
and he showed me he he had brought his own
mouthwashed paper cups, cones, you know, all the props that.
Speaker 1: He had, a boxill of tic tacks and all the aftershaves,
and it looked just like in the seventies when you
would walk in. So I called the manager of the place.
I said, can you bring us some cubes of ice
and put them in the urinals because in the old days,
in the seventies in Vegas, there was ice in every
urinal and there was typically an African American man standing guard.
And then when you took a leak, you peed all
over yourself because it splashed on you and got on
your hands, and you had to go wash and they
would hand you a warm towel and they got a
buck and it was one of the best jobs in Nevada.
Those guys did really, really well, and he was acting
like that guy. It was so good. So yeah, I
was hats off. I thought it was just outstanding. But
there's a lot of good ones.
Speaker 3: His commitment to the to the character was I think
what put him over the top. That he was in
the bathroom for a long time handing out moist towels
or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was pretty good. That was pretty good.
He got the boats. A lot of good contenders though,
and a lot of people had a lot of fun
doing that, and we're surprised they were. But we got
feedback that it made for a much much better date
night for husbands and wives because now they had something
to do and talk to other women about, as usually
people drag their wives around and they go do we
got to put up with this nonsense again again and again.
So now everybody's getting involved. So hopefully this can evolve
into a date party and something exclusive, and we've talked
about this. I'm not sure if that's what's going to happen,
but it might be pretty cool if the Blackjack Ball
became a costume party at the end of end of Octobers,
and became something analogous to the met Gala or something.
But it's a costume party for blackjack people because if
we all costumed up, we could actually take pictures at
the ball. This was my twenty eighth mall. I don't
have any pictures, you know, we always realizes everything we do.
I've always had a no pictures allowed at the ball,
so this year we actually allowed some. So Ed Thorpe
graciously posed with a lot of people and we had
some pictures taken, but nothing like it could be in
the future or so. Anyway, I thought it turned out well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, as long as Ed is alive.
He's ninety three now, you know, we really want to
accommodate his schedule, so you know, hopefully if he's available,
we'll keep it at the end of October and do
it again. Yeah. I'd like to see this to be
a regular thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'll check with him sooner than later in
the next probably week or so, and let him clear
the decks. And the reason we had it now is
because he was traveling. He's really doing a lot of
traveling in his life now and seeing a lot of
places he didn't see before. But and as you notice,
he's very cautious about COVID. He masks up, he takes
care of himself. But at ninety four, he may be
the best look in ninety four, ninety three, ninety four
year old I've ever seen. I've never seen anything like it.
He is as quick as any of us. He's he'll
ally of me by ten years probably. But this guy
is so fit, he's so nice, he's so kind, he's
so gracious everything. He even made a donation this year
to the Blackjack Paul the Hall of Fame, which was
you know, we never asked him for anything. He's had
a lifetime comfort He and all of his guests get
to comfort free forever. And he said, I've got a
table full of nine. I said, your set, and he
said I want to pay. He said okay. So he
gave us a lot of money. It was very nice
of him. So that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So yeah, I guess while we're on that subject
of the charity aspect, we partnered with someone new this year.
So we're partnering with the UCLA gam Link Studies program,
which is a program with the purpose of examining gambling
behavior and its impact on body, brain and Mind and
the person who came to represent the center was doctor
Timothy Fong. He's a professor of psychiatry there and yeah,
he just you know, he got up and had to
talk for a few minutes about the center and and
what the money was going to be used for. And
you know, I thought he was perfect. He really hit
it out of the park, just like the right amount
of time, the right tone. He was energetic and funny.
Anybody else have any thoughts?
Speaker 1: Well, my first thought was standing next to you, and
I saw him come up to the mic, and I said, please,
don't be another guy from academia because they're so boring,
and he just started quicking the one liner. So once
he like me and said he's done this before. I said,
yes he has, and he and I went in the
back and I started doing some other stuff because I'm
afraid we're gonna have to get the hook fast because
some of these guys are very boring. He wasn't at all.
But he really has a deep understanding of what is
happening with the mechanic, when not the mechanics, this evolution
of gaming and how it's starting to impact all these
disparate people out there and sports betting, and during the
week all of these things happen with Chauncey Billups getting
arrested and this guy getting this and the sports kids
are getting it. And it's been a contention of mine
for a long long time that this thing is they
have opened Pandora's box with this unlimited gambling online and
you can do it from the comfort of your home
and a bottle of vodka and snort and cocaine. Or
being a teenager when all teenagers invented Martin Gale systems,
And it's starting to collapse underneath on the edges, and
we're seeing the biggest pod of problem gamblers are turning
out to be eighteen to twenty five year old white males,
and that's going to create what about ism? And we
see this you go back to all the way to
Nancy Reagan. She was totally against, absolutely against stem cell
technology until she found out they could help Alzheimer's. She said, well,
in that case, I'm all for that. And people do
this with all sorts of things. But as more and
more children and these are fraternity kids, is basically on
the campuses that are out playing, these are fairly well
to do people's children that are starting to make these
horrible mistakes out there, and they're gambling dad's money. And
the laws are you can take your dad's credit card,
you can gamble with it. You can't get that money back.
In order to get that money back, you have to
file criminal charges against your child, otherwise it costs that family.
So those kind of things are starting to happen. But
worse than that, we're seeing the dynamics of selling games.
And now the NC TWOA ruled the last week before
the mall that they could now college kids could now
bet on pro sports. IF's going to happen to those
colleagues kids that are good enough to play in the
pros that once they get to the pros they can't
bet on those sports they've been betting on for the
last four years. They're going to say, never mind, it's
not gonna happen. We're going to see some really really
colorful stuff happen. And you know what our government does,
they tend to overreact to everything. So it would be
nice if we were a bit pre empty even got
out in front of this a little bit. I'm not
sure how, but I think it's incumbent upon all of
us that we take care of the less fortunate gamblers
out there, or we try to preempt some of this stuff.
They're still going to be there. But it's not just
a notion though. I think it's really important for the
long term health of the AP industry that all these
people don't collapse. It's really to our advantage that that
doesn't happen. I'm not sure how we do it though, So, Yeah,
it's a great it's a grand gesture. I'm not sure
if any of it works, Colin, what do you think?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought it was great.
Speaker 3: And I think Pandora's box that's a good way of
put just what's happened with adding gambling onto people's phones
from home or their dorm room or wherever. And the
more the more that people like doctor Pohn can understand
what's going on in people's brain chemistry and how to help,
you know, either just try to you know, kind of
like with alcohol, try to just get rid of it
completely like they did, you know, back in the day,
or you figure out how to help people, how to
regulate it, how to you know, not have it be
so detrimental to society. And I think he's doing good
work there, so I thought it was a great fit.
He was entertaining and I think that he's doing.
Speaker 4: Really good work. So yeah, he was great.
Speaker 2: Colin. You had him on your podcast, so I can
put a link to that podcast also in the show
notes people, Yeah, check that out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a great interview.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so yeah, actually that was how I found him.
I heard that interview and I was like, oh, this
might be a you know, someone you know for us
to partner with. And we had some discussions with him,
and yeah, it turned out he was a great fit.
But so let's talk about the card counting competition.
Speaker 1: Well, this year we opened it up and we changed
it a little bit. In order to inspire, if you will,
people to wear costumes. I gave everybody that was wearing
a costume a bonus in a card counting championship, and
it was anywhere from zero to twelve cards over your opponent.
And that's a lot, but it's not that much. John
Chain counts about shoot, what did it break down to?
Four cards a second? Eight cards a second? It's a lot.
They're fast, These guys are really quick. They can count
down deck in eleven seconds. But if you've.
Speaker 2: Got only the winner counted in eleven second.
Speaker 1: Counted that.
Speaker 2: Last year only two people broke broke fifteen seconds, is
that right?
Speaker 1: Yes? And one was in the thirteenth. They practiced this
year and last year the old guard still dominated, and
this year the young people just kicked the crap out
of everybody except Darryl Purpose and he got lucky. He
got to the very finals and he's against what's the
kid's name, he's one of your guys. Call it yes,
Stephen Bridges, and he's good. And Stephen Bridges still had
his free card and the card said zero or two
or ten, and he took that one. He opened it
and he only got a two card spot. But he
was already leading in the time, and Darryl took off,
and he took off, and literally by tenths of a second,
it was stop stop, It was that quick, and Daryl
got him. And Darryl had a little trick up his
sleeve where his but you know, old people have tricks
up their sleeve. And he got to the finals because
he would The rule was you had to say stop.
We didn't say you had to stop counting. So he
would say stop, and he would look at a few
more cards, and then they say what he'd say minus
two and it would be there. And one of the
guys said, you can't keep looking at your cards after
you say stuff, and he said that's not in the rules,
and it wasn't. So anyway, Daryl figured it out and
he won by a split second, so he was very happy.
And he brought his love of his life for the
first time and his daughter for the first time who'd
never been to the ball, and he had a pretty
good showing, so it was a good night for him.
But the card counting was really exciting this year. I
got much more exciting with the young kids in it,
and it did what we wanted. We wanted to create
that energy with the young guys and have them coming
in because the ball has been lacking the youthful energy
coming into it that we've really needed over the past
few years. And I think we saw we've made that
connection now and it's starting to come in. It's really important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not just in the card counting, but a number
of guys who went through boot camps are a part
of BJA. Last year to stand Podolac and anyway, a
number of the younger guys, most of them came through
BJA and the winner of the final table. It was
a b bg A a guy, right. This game is
like the Pokemon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he never came to a boot camp, but he
started through black Check Apprenticeship.
Speaker 4: And I was so proud of these guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Nichols was in the final for the speed counting
competition and Stephen Bridges and you know, these guys have
worked hard and a lot of them are out there,
you know, counting really fast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was pretty pretty cool to see.
Speaker 1: Well, it's so nice they get to perform in front
of their mentor too. That's really a big deal of people,
and it's a big deal for you. It just makes
everybody feel good. Yeah, so it was a good night
for you guys. I was really happy because this youth
movement has to stay sustain us into the future. As
we're looking and Monskin and I have talked about this.
I'm seventy eight. I don't know how long I can
keep doing this. It's hard, and how long he can
deep doing it. So we're going to have to develop
some sort of Blackjack apprenticeship program for running the ball.
We got to get some youth into this thing, and
there are a bunch of youthful people that have a
lot of skills in their music and they're in entertainment.
They do a lot of things, and we've got to
one of Collins guys was a former writer on Jeopardy,
and some very clever people out there that we can
start bringing into the fold kind of an apprentice program
to get the ball ready to sustain itself in the
decades to come.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, happy, happy to help. Anyway, we can't
be careful what you volunteer for.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you I take advantage of them.
So yeah, we'll do that, all right.
Speaker 2: So Colin, you had mentioned that the changes in both
the quiz and the final table. Do you want to
talk about uh that a little bit?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I thought it was great.
Speaker 3: You know, I was thinking about it that there there's
a fine line I think that you guys have to walk,
which is, if you make it too serious, it takes
the fun out of it. But if you make it
too silly, then you know, no one takes it seriously.
And it's felt like I think the again is not
to you know, blow smoke up. Anyone's asked, but I've
been going since I think two thousand and nine, maybe
twenty ten, and I feel like this was the most
fun of writing that line. You know, the costumes made
it a lot more fun than I was expecting, to
be honest. My favorite was the speed counting competition. I
watched every round of it, either competing in it, and
then Stephen Bridges knocked me out before the final four,
and I wish there.
Speaker 2: Was a way we could do that so that more
people could see, because we don't have cameras on that,
and whereas on the final table and stuff, we do
have cameras on it and they're big widescreen TVs everybody
can see, but it's very hard to get near that table.
For the speed counting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was cool to have the final four everyone
could see. I mean, you know, I'm I got Tommy
hoileand next to me clocking it on his on his iPhone.
Speaker 4: You know, we're we.
Speaker 3: Want to see how fast are these guys going, and
we could see it on the screen.
Speaker 4: I mean, that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: But then the quiz, you know, it was very blackjack oriented,
which which definitely is my bias since since I'm a
blackjack guy, uh above above any of the other games.
But that that was fun, and the people that made
the final table all had skills. Maybe not every skill,
but I mean, you know, some of these guys for
for the actual trade are practicing these things the same
week as the ball you know, they're they're working on
some of these advanced blackjack skills because they're out doing
these same games. So that was just a lot of fun.
I thought the card steering thing was fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me describe that for our listeners. The card
steering this year was a there were only two people
left at the table, Eve and John Chang, and it
was a six deck game and they were going to
watch me cut. So I cut approximately fifty two cards,
and there is a joker at the back of the shoe,
so they know approximately fifty two cards in this joker
is kind of come out. They could spread from one
to three hands and play any legal strategy they wanted,
like if they want to stand on three to two,
they could, and the object was to make the joker
land on your opponent. Now there were actually two jokers,
so because if the joker went to the dealer myself,
then the next card out would be going to the
person on and so we needed too so that's how
the card steering went. And it's funny because John thought
that he was at a disadvantage being the second person
at third base, and I think that was actually a
big advantage on his part because if the joker lands
on the dealer, then he's got two chances to you know,
to win.
Speaker 1: And that's not a specious skill either, because that being
able to move one big card into a dealer's whole
card or into your hand, depending on the value of
that Ask Tommy, ask. There's people in that room and
including us at one point where when you can recognize
a card and you can cut to it, all these
things occur on a table. You're making these strange plays
and spreading out and then going to one hand and
then standing on twelve and hoping it drops over here
because you want that dealer to get the band card
or you're trying to steer that big card to you,
So you've got to make some very strange plays and
the dealer's eyes just crossed and say, what was that.
I don't know, Oh yeah, I screw But it's a
it's a real skill that's necessary out there in the
in your whole scabbard full of all your weapons that
you have. Being able to do that is really important.
I was surprised John Chang lost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he played He played that game a lot.
But the other thing is when when he got the joker,
he said he was off by four cards in his estimation,
and so if his estimation had been correct, then the
card would have gone to his opponent. But that is
a big part of the skill is how well you
estimate the number of cards being cut. You don't have
to cut them yourself if you can estimate how how
many cards were cut by whoever did the cut it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there are people at the ball that would
bet you even money. At one point, they could cut
fifty two cards. Just reach out and come them, it's
fifty two yes or no, and they bet you good money.
And they made a living at this on the strip
for decades, just going out on Graveyard and the dealer
and shuffle. They'd see the back card and they would
cut here and then they would just steer that one
card in and then get up and go to the
next game. And it went on for decades in this town.
So it happens, and they were there at the party
and they were watching these kids. So it was good.
It was really nice that you got to sit by
a guy like Tommy Hyland. You know, Tommy doesn't look
as old as he is, does he. I mean Tommy
was out there in the eighties. I mean, Tommy's been
around forever, but he really looks good. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and his costume was perfect for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We should tell people he was dressed as Santa Claus,
which I wonder if that's the same Santa Claus outfit
that he got barred in Atlantic City on Christmas Day,
dressed as Santa Claus.
Speaker 4: I'd like to think it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did too. I Yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, we should mention the sequencing competition that
it was beat the Wizard and you you actually had
memorized the how many cards did it go before before
people were eliminated.
Speaker 2: Well, first, let me describe the way we did it,
because you know, I think a combination of nerves and
people drinking and you know, being up in front of everybody.
For the last few years, people could not remember one
card in a sequence. And so this year we changed
it up. And the idea was we would look at
the car all of I would spread a deck. We
would look at the cards for I didn't actually time it,
but it was between thirty seconds in a minute, and
then I would announce what I thought the card was,
and they had each person I had a card that
said true or false, whether they thought I was correct
or if I was wrong. And I realized pretty quickly
that if I just kept saying the real card, they
were all just going to keep going true true, true.
So I did start mixing it up and throwing and
Darryl Daryl was on the final table and he asked
me before at the beginning, before I spread the cards,
He goes, are you going to try to get them correct?
And I said, well, we'll just have to see. I mean,
I'm not going to tell him right because anyway, so
I think we got about fifteen oh and they got
three strikes, so if they were wrong, they got a
strike a black chip, and they got three strikes before
they would be eliminated. And I think we got about
fifteen or sixteen cards in before we finally had someone
to live.
Speaker 1: I thought about that. Something to think of, Richard is
next year, spread the first twenty really wide so the
public can see them, so they can try to memorize that.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought I was trying to do that. Actually, yeah,
because we do have a camera right over the table
that is focused on those cards. So yeah, I was
really hoping that people in the audience would be trying
to memorize.
Speaker 1: In fact, Colin, you should have seen us rehearsing at
the house and Montchkak kept saying, well, they're all drunk.
I said, they're not all drunk, and he said, well,
they're all choking, And I said, is everybody choking? But
we couldn't figure it out. For the last five or
six years, they miss on the first question every time.
And these are the smartest guys we know. We don't
know what that dynamic is. But I said, we have
to change it. It's no fun to watch a game
where the guy just steps up and it's the squid game.
You kill him, it's over. So let's figure out a
way where they get extra line, like a video game
or something. And we came up with this that really worked. Well.
We're called it Beat the Wizard. Next year, will we'll
make that a little bit better, but it was it
was pretty good. I really liked it.
Speaker 3: I would say, yeah, of kind of black check apprenticeship people.
I think sequencing is probably the skill that the fewest
people have put time into because it's so hard to find.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think that that's part of it.
Speaker 3: Find some of the you know, some of these guys
that have made the final table once or even multiple times,
it gets to that and they're like, oh great, you know,
this is just something I haven't put the work into.
It doesn't really correlate to card cutting at all. So
it's just have you spent time on this completely different skill,
and I think most BJA guys have not.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, cutting, I mean or estimating cutting is not
applicable to card counting either, right, It's a separate skill,
and either they've worked on it or.
Speaker 4: They have exactly.
Speaker 3: I think more people have probably worked on that than
then sequencing is, is my guess. At least you know yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh absolutely not as many of those, and they're
not nearly as many hand shuffle there's a few, you know,
stations still shuffles all their games by hand. Yeah, a
lot of games, but it's stays. There's still bottom cards
there too, so there's there are ways, There are ways,
So that's right, And even.
Speaker 2: Though those sequencing games are rare, if you do happen
to run across one, feel free to shoot me an email.
Speaker 1: No, if you run across one, feel free to shut up.
They last about a day. Now, Munchkin wouldn't say anything,
but boy, these things get burnt out fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah so well that though, I mean, a sequencing game
doesn't get burned out as fast because, as Colin pointed out,
there just are not many people.
Speaker 1: Who play it. So shooting a line yes, yeah, yeah, right, okay,
which else? What else? Will go?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: What else? What am I?
Speaker 3: I want to I want to ask you, you two,
what it's like just seeing what the black check ball
has become compared to what it started.
Speaker 4: You know, Max, was it a barbecue the first No, My.
Speaker 1: Wife cooked for everybody, and I had a giant basement
at the time, and it got to where we had
close to eighty people in the basement, and my kids
revolted at after three and made me get it catered,
and my wife said, thank you very much. And then
we happened to move. I had a too big a house.
My kids were both out of the nest, so I
moved to a place and we had a really great
clubhouse and made sure I did and gated place, and
so we started having the party here and it grew
and grew, but it got too big for that room too,
and you were part of that. I mean we were
packed in there and we could see it about one
to ten. And after that it got pretty pretty darn crowded.
And we said for the twenty fifth, let's do something spectacular.
And we had a lot of benefactors that put up
a lot of money and we started having this spectacular event,
and some people balked at the three hundred and fifty
dollars price, and a lot of them don't understand. This year,
for example, we're probably closer to five hundred and forty
dollars per person net cost on that party. And if
it weren't for the largess of our benefactors, we wouldn't
be able to have this thing because we'd be charging
you guys five point fifty to break even, and that
people would revolt at that, I think, But it's what
things cost. Is if you have a nice wedding, a
nice wedding costs a lot of money. In this country.
They cost one hundred thousand dollars for the average middle
class wedding these days, and we're in a venue that's
one of the greatest venues ever. I mean, call it
seen and it's a pretty spectacular place. So we have
to pay and that stuff doesn't come cheap. But I
think the level of exclusivity and the one up a year,
I'm really happy, I mean me from having start off
in my basement this thing to have evolved into this
giant thing. But it's really dawned on to me, dawned
on me that it ordered for us to have continuity,
we've got to have a succession plan.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The other thing is, you know, in the beginning, it
was almost like a frat party. You know, the contests
were you know, arm wrestling and you know, putting me boxing,
you know, I mean, it had nothing to do with
blackjack at all, you know, but you know, and I
think it was actually Blair Hall who came up with
the idea of forming the five O one C three
and turning it into a charitable event, and I think
that kind of made a lot of it more serious
and and it's really grown. I mean, we were at
what one hundred and eighty five.
Speaker 1: This year, Max, Well, we had one hundred and eighty
eight seats. We had too empty because some people brought
a person or two and then two people couldn't show
up because of the norm Wattenberger and one other person
couldn't come because.
Speaker 2: Of somebody got sick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got one got overlaid. He got overlaid in
Dallas or something and had to go back home from
a flight. But we had two no shows. But we
had two seats empty out of the one eighty eight,
so we had one eighty six, which is pretty darn good. Yeah,
we could probably handle another fourteen. We could handle a
couple hundred in that room. But the the tickets are
going to get more deer than less in the future,
we believe. So there'll have to be some considerations where
some people may get invited every other year. I'm not
sure who gets invited now. Of course Colin, now he's
in the Hall of Fame, he'll be coming at the
head of the class and have reserve seating and everything.
Speaker 4: So it sounds good.
Speaker 1: That was really nice, though. You really deserve to get this,
and everybody, all the seniors believe that too. You've done
a lot for the blackjack community.
Speaker 4: It's thank you.
Speaker 1: It's really impressive what you've done. You've stayed the course,
because most people just quit. It's hard, as you know,
it's not easy making living doing that. Yeah, so yeah,
yeah it worked. What else, munch? What else we got?
Speaker 2: I think? Uh, I think that's about it, unless anybody
else has any Uh, I'm just looking at some of
the questions we were talking about in the email thread,
but I think we've pretty much covered everything. What was
the any personal highlights this year? Obviously getting inducted in
the Hall of Fame, I guess was the highlight for you? Yeah?
How about your kid? Your your wife? How how did
she feel about the ball this year?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, she loved it. Yeah, she had a blast. And
it really is.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's fun seeing people where it's it's
the one time of year you see them, and then
there's enough going on that, you know, kind of constantly entertained.
I could have I wish it could have gone on
a couple hours longer, you know, talk to more people
before before we had to be done. But no, she
had she had a blast. She was very excited for
me to get inducted. My kids could not care less.
I keep telling them I'm a Hall of Famer and
they just don't care.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, but I never will.
Speaker 4: They never will. I got zero.
Speaker 1: You look good. You look like a couple from the
outback with their leather hats and all the rest of it.
I thought Grace looked great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, that was fun.
Speaker 3: She's already sending me ideas for next year. If it's
a costume competition again, awesome.
Speaker 1: That's what we're looking for. Yeah, that's terrific. That is terrific. Well,
I mean this has to be to you what you've
done with the Apprentice kind of like what's happened with
the Ball. It was a it was a vague notion
in your mind at one time.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now you've got a cottage industry of your own.
I know some guys are coming at you with the
ap Insiders, but that's a different story. We're not worried.
Speaker 4: About them, so yeah, no, it just we're just uh,
you know.
Speaker 3: And and there is there's a lot of similarity that
to see it of all over the years, and it's cool.
I remember my first ball and walking in that room
and you know, meeting you Max and saying, hey, what's
the name of your guys blackjack team and saying, oh,
we don't want to name we don't want.
Speaker 4: Anyone to call us anything.
Speaker 3: All the way now to to what the ball has
become and you know and same same, you know, I
remember our first Raggedy black Jack boot camp in a
comped hotel room at Caesar's Palace, and all the way
to you know, with that was maybe half a dozen people.
All the way to what we're doing now and much
more than just the boot camps is people having success
with it. It's it's cool seeing, you know, these these
events evolve and advantage play.
Speaker 4: That was one thing.
Speaker 3: You know, we had a brief conversation some of the
guys that put on the boot camps with me. We're
talking about one of the takeaways is it doesn't seem
like advantage play is suffering.
Speaker 4: You know, casinos have.
Speaker 3: All their technology and this, that and the other. But
there's plenty of people you know, in the trenches and
and you know, happy to spend money flying to Vegas
to celebrate the advantage play community because it's it's going strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is, and it's going strong. And virtually every
area you can imagine, from marketing to machines to stadium
seating to this to this, the pros are up thinking
while they're sleeping, and they're always coming up with the
next day. As we say in the business, another bad idea,
but they're a great idea, you know, if you can
figure out a way to legally beat them. But you're right,
that room is full of people that are extraordinary aps
in some fashion. And one of Roxy Roxboro, he buys
a full table and brings in his sports sharps, and
they want to be around the same kind of people.
And so that room has a lot of like interested people,
including Wall Street. Many people out of Wall Street come
every year to pay homage to doctor Thorpe. But they've
also a lot of these people played in the past.
It's even the Koch brothers were blackjack players, and Paul
Yang was a blackjack player. It's astounding Blair knows many
many of these people that are very famous now in
any of the more blackjack players in the seventies and
eighties that are famous people today. But they all a
lot of them cut their chops playing blackjack and learned
a lot about discipline and what to do and that
sort of thing. So including very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know when you mentioned wishing it you had
a couple more hours. I mean I'm I was so
busy I didn't even eat, like I didn't want to,
And I wish I had had more time to be
able to go talk to a lot of people that
were there that I just didn't even get to talk to,
you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Well, we're trying to find the right limit.
We forced three breaks this year, and we want to
do that again because people are coming there to socialize.
One person there who's a Hall of Famer, his wife
is a His girlfriend is a torch singer, and she's
fairly successful now. She's in a lot of places. And
he said, well, the first two hours she'll be singing
for everybody, and her quartet will be up there playing.
And I said no. He said, what do you mean no?
I said, people come to this is a reunion. You
don't have bands at high school reunions for a reason.
People are there to talk. We're not going to have
a band, no music. He wasn't very happy about that
because he wanted her to get to performance, and we
don't need that sort of thing. So it's a it's
a fine line. I think the party without any of
the extraneous stuff would probably still be fine if we
didn't do anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just a party. Yeah, you're right, it would,
you know.
Speaker 1: But I do like the fun stuff. So the ladies
get a chance to do something everybody else. So I
don't know. We're trying to find the right mix, but
I think we're getting better at it.
Speaker 4: It felt the balance.
Speaker 2: I miss having the the after party. You know. For
a few years there, I was having an after party
and just like you Max, my wife was doing all
the cooking, and uh, you know, but it just it
it kind of got too big, too fast, yeah, you know.
And and and I told my wife, look, we can
have a caterer. You know, that's not the issue. But
I don't know, having a hundred people in your house
is like it's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's really a lot for a wife.
Speaker 2: It's nothing for us, you right, We're going to go
out with.
Speaker 1: Our friends and you get to clean up. No, it
doesn't work. There's a certain level where it just doesn't
work any work, And we hit it.
Speaker 3: So I was going to say, I I think you
did find the right balance of uh, you know, moving
the Calcutta to be not not taking up time during
the event, and some some of those tweaks. There were
enough events that it was. It was a lot of fun.
You know, I probably could have socialized more if I
hadn't watched every round of the speed counting competition off
to the side.
Speaker 4: But there there's it was.
Speaker 3: It was good having having those breaks, but also a
lot of entertaining activities going on.
Speaker 1: Good. All right, Well, expect I'm going to be calling
on you because you have to be very careful what
you volunteer for with me, as uh Mark th other people.
I may take you up on a couple of things.
Speaker 3: Here is my wife going to be feeding everybody's pretty much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Washington and the house Grace is cooking.
Speaker 4: It's very good.
Speaker 1: You're gonna need a bigger kitchen. Yeah, just a cater
but that's okay. All right. Well, I thought it worked.
I thought it went great. I'm as pleased with this
one as any of them. I thought it was good.
It wore me out, It was a lot of fun.
Family got involved and they always do. And so just
things we have to think about in the future. How
this is going to have some continentity to it. It's
important that it doesn't die.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well think for me, I think this was
the best ball ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought so. So all right, that's about it.
Colin will be in touch with you. Be careful when
you pick up the phone, okay
Speaker 2: All right, so Bob is not here, so I will
tell people to go out and hit lots of Royal
flush everybody, good day,