| So, what's left? Well, I have the answer for the marketing people in the entertainment industry. Gambling is the new rock'n'roll. Yes, gambling. I know when you think of gamblers--real professional gamblers, that is, not the ones in the movies--you think of whimsical bespectacled septuagenarians dryly going on about standard deviation. Not exactly sexy, is it? Think again. I got into this business because I identified with the image of the professional gambler as outsider, the renegade, the unknown man who operates by stealth, beholden to no one. Many of the elements of this fantasy were borne out by my experience. Life as a high-stakes drifter is weird and fantastic. The plush and ornate trappings that surround the lifestyle, the constant James Bond-style battle to avoid detection, the beautiful women (most of them shills, admittedly), and especially the spectacular returns are all there, if you want it badly enough. There is a downside, of course. There are the frequent losing sessions. The total alienation from the rest of society. No one really understands what you do. Tell them and you will conjure up one of three or four completely misleading stereotypes. Then there are the antisocial hours. The harassment by casino personnel. The lose of identity. The paranoia. Left alone, professional card-counters can grind out significant profits in the long-term. Unfortunately, the casinos fear and take measures to prevent card-counting. If, anywhere in the world, you are suspected of card-counting, your play will be analyzed by invisible surveillance operatives (the eye-in-the-sky). If their suspicions are confirmed, you will be: Politely welcomed to play any game except blackjack. Given a verbal warning. Given a written warning and formally barred, being given notice that a return to the casino will result in your arrest for trespass. Subjected to any of an array of countermeasures, such as increasing the number of cards cut out of play or restricting your bet size. How much of a problem this is depends greatly on the individual. For the full-time player who is always travelling, there is always the next casino. A barring from one is not of great significance, though he must be careful not to get himself on a blacklist. For the casual player, who may be tied down to a full-time job and patronizes only a few local casinos, the problem is more serious. Most modern blackjack literature overemphasizes the problem of barring. Great importance is based on the establishment of an "act." This requires the card-counter to assume a persona that would not normally be associated with the obsessive and intelligent characteristics of the card-counter. This, of course, will not fool anybody who is familiar with card-counting and is analyzing the counter's play. The act is designed to prevent this from ever happening. In general, this will only happen if the pit boss becomes suspicious of an individual's play, and requests confirmation that this is the case. A pit boss is naturally going to pay more attention to a middle-aged professorial type than a loudmouthed tourist, or a rich playboy, for example. Acts are fun. They allow you to play different characters and revel in your own deception, and they can be successful in throwing the pit off your trail. If you adopt an "act," you must not be half-hearted about it. You must be 100% committed to the character you have created. Often high-stakes players become enamoured with the possibilities inherent in disguises; some even employ special effects whizzes to kit them out! In truth, most of a successful act can be accomplished by adopting subtleties of movement, mannerism and speech. You must become the character you are playing. It is not enough to put on an accent. That is not convincing. Good actors, both in the casinos and on the stage, do not act from the neck upwards. Create your own character's history, friends, occupation etc. You should never be asked a question you do not have an answer for. Moreover, if you are not wrapped up in the lifestyle of your character, your body language will give you away in many small, unconscious signals. Other people pick up on these signals without realizing it and they will become suspicious without knowing why. Pay attention to details such as the way you walk; these little details can give you away. Another method of avoiding detection involves making cover plays, i.e., a play not in accordance with the recommended actions of a card-counting system. This may mean making incorrect drawing/standing/splitting/doubling decisions, not raising your bet when the count goes up and not lowering when it goes down, or betting high off the top of the shoe. Be careful with deviations from your system. The reasons for being careful with your deviations is simple: your edge is small, do not jeopardize it further. You will make incorrect plays from time to time in any case. You cannot make playing errors when you have large bets out, because the cost is too high--your profit depends on these large bets. This is precisely when the pit will be watching you closely. My opinion concerning the necessity of cover is simple: while the card-counter plays blackjack against the dealer, he plays poker against the pit--that is, his play is geared towards the intelligence of the pit. Against incompetent or disinterested casino personnel, the counter plays tight, i.e., in accordance with the precise recommendations of his system. Against personnel skilled in the art of game protection he plays tight and loose, i.e., he mixes up his play between correct and seemingly random play. He is always keeping the pit guessing but plays close enough to the dictates of the system to win consistently.Jutting out from the mountain, Crazy Horse, astride his galloping horse, points across the plains to where his people, the Oglala Sioux, once roamed. Standing at the base of this gigantic sculpture and looking up, I am awed by its beauty and the genius of the sculptor. While massive heads of the four presidents at Mount Rushmore just 20 minutes away are more impressive than any photograph can capture, Crazy Horse, outlined against the vast blue Dakota sky, has a majesty that any president would envy. Slowly, painstakingly, the Crazy Horse Memorial has emerged from rock until now the warrior's prodigious head and arm are freed from stone and his horse's face and mane await the dynamite that will liberate them as well. Since 1948, when Sioux Chief Henry Standing Bear asked sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to make the Whites aware that "the Red Man has great heroes too," Crazy Horse became the obsession of one man and now his children as they create the world's largest sculpture. The nose of Crazy Horse is 26 feet long and his face 9 1/2 stories. When completed, the entire piece will be 563 feet tall and 641 feet long from the horse's tail to its mane. Even more amazing, the memorial, unlike Mount Rushmore, can be viewed from all four sides. History buffs remember Crazy Horse as a great Indian warrior who led his people to victory over General George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn. One year later, even though he was considered invulnerable, Crazy Horse was forced to surrender and was killed by a soldier who stabbed him in the back. Having lost the Dakotas to white greed and consigned to small reservations, the present day Sioux now look to Crazy Horse as a symbol of who they once were. So it is fitting that this monument sits high in the Black Hills, the very same mountains that Custer allowed the gold-crazed prospectors to steal from the Indians, breaking the Treaty of 1868. A Vanished Life |
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