Most casino gamblers head to Las Vegas for Atlantic City looking for free booze, a nice meal, and the chance to plunk a few bucks down on the craps or blackjack table. If they win a few bucks, so much the better. But many would never consider that they really have a chance to win. However, some gamblers – known as “advantage players” – seek out scenarios to turn the tables on the casinos and tilt the edge in their favor.
Poker legend Phil Ivey caused quite a stir in 2012 and 2014 when it was revealed that he’d won about $22 million from Crockfords Casino in London and the Borgata in Atlantic City.
Ivey hadn’t won at the poker table, but instead while playing baccarat. He and an accomplice named Cheung Yin “Kelly” Sun used a technique called “edge sorting,” in which a player detects subtle irregularities on the backs of cards, allowing for a long-term advantage over the house for those savvy enough to read the backs of the cards.
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Author Michael Kaplan now takes a look at these types of gamblers who look for an edge. His new book, Advantage Players, offers insight into this world that most won’t experience on a quick trip to the local casino. He recently spoke with Skillset about the book and this unique sect of gamblers.
New York Crime to Casino Time
Kaplan is no stranger to detailing interesting tales, including crime, gambling, the bizarre, and celebrities in trouble, among other subjects. The longtime New York Post feature writer is always digging into something different and also serves as the gambling columnist for Cigar Aficionado.
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“I like that it’s always different and I appreciate the speedy turnarounds,” he says of his job with the Post. “My writing has definitely become quicker through being there.”
One of his most interesting stories involved hanging out with illicit street racers – they initially thought he was a police officer. Another gem was a feature about a guy known as “Baby Al Capone,” who was accused of masterminding a $25 million crypto heist (his tale is featured in the book). He also once profiled “Tiger” Mike Davis, the biggest gambler at the Wynn Casino, until he burned through nearly all his money and died broke, which was his plan.
Friendship
“Before he passed, though, I had dinner with him and a mutual friend,” Kaplan says. “Between appetizers and entrees, Tiger Mike gifted our friend a very heavy pistol known as ‘The Judge.’ When the friend balked about being handed a very noticeable gun in a crowded restaurant, Tiger Mike patted the breast pocket of his custom-made leisure suit with its built-in holsters and he said, ‘I feel naked without a gun.’
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Advantage Players is Kaplan’s fifth book, and some of his other works include: Buried Mistakes, about the resolution of a previously unsolvable murder; and Aces and Kings, a deep dive into the high-stakes poker world. With the newest work, Kaplan delves back into the world of gambling but also looks at other parts of life where visionaries use some “outside the box” thinking to find an advantage and bring in some big bucks.
“Initially, the book was going to focus just on gamblers,” he says. “After all, advantage player is a gambling term. It refers to people who devise and deploy legal strategies to beat casino games that are designed to be unbeatable.”
Crushing the Casinos
Card counting is the most basic of the advantage plays, made famous by the MIT blackjack team featured in the Ben Mezrich book Bringing Down the House, which inspired the film 21. In the book, Kaplan also examines more complex and lucrative moves.
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“I’ve written about a lot of advantage players over the years,” the author says. “And it all seemed straightforward. Then, while working on the book, I realized that I’ve also written about advantage players outside of gambling. At that point, the book became a much broader survey of advantage players in many dominions.”
The chapter titled “Baccarat Machine” details Ivey and Sun’s casino adventures, and their original story in Cigar Aficionado about their baccarat winnings is being developed for a feature film by the same production company that produced Crazy Rich Asians. Some of the gamblers featured include:
Sun winning tens of millions at blackjack
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James Grosjean, who crushes so-called “carnival games,” such as Three Card Poker
Ivey’s success at the poker table, where he has almost $51 million just in tournament winnings.
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The Biggest Winners
“And I think the Don Johnson chapter is telling in that it shows how a mostly ordinary person figured out, point by point, how to be extraordinary and evolve into one of gambling’s biggest winners,” Kaplan adds. “Then, once he took down a fortune and got kicked off blackjack tables around the world, he found another way to capitalize on his casino reputation. Plus, through it all, he made his real money by beating horse racing.”
Kaplan is an advantage player himself and was once part of a blackjack counting team. When heading to a casino, he doesn’t like the casino having an edge.
“Personally, I don’t have much of a stomach for random gambling,” he says. I’ve never been a fan of playing blackjack without a plan, and poker was a minorly losing proposition until a guy taught me how to beat 90-man sit and go’s(smaller online tournaments) on Full Tilt. I began buying in for $24 and below, loading up eight tournaments at a time, and playing them through.
Chasing The Action
“Then, around 2008, I had the opportunity to learn card counting and joined a pretty big team. It was great and suited me well because I never veered away from the system thanks to my distaste for random gambling. The team broke up, and I got to work on a couple of interesting, more complicated plays with other APs – like the card craps gambit outlined in Chapter Four. These days, my card counting is limited to low stakes at a particular casino in downtown Las Vegas, where I’ve been ‘backed off’ many times.”
Backing off means the casino will no longer accept your action and may result in being shown the exit door. He’d once been told to pick up his chips when playing at the same table with “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss. She’s in the book and told him at the time: “You’re the biggest fucking gangster in this whole place.”
Beyond the Casino
The author moves beyond the casino floor in “Advantage Players ” to focus on other aspects of life and business. For example, the book examines master magician David Blaine and a financial dominatrix who employs social engineering rather than a whip to separate men from their money. There’s even a feature on the Ramones rock band.
“I interviewed all of them and saw parallels: all the sources in this book, whether they frequent casinos or not, are advantage players to the max,” he says.
The book also includes a more personal story, with a tale of some advantage players that meant a great deal to Kaplan.
“My favorite story in the book, of course, is the epilogue – about the brilliant doctor/scientists who find a non-toxic treatment for my incurable cancer,” he says.
Valuable Lessons
Beyond just offering success stories and gambling tales, Kaplan believes there is a valuable lesson to be learned from Advantage Players as well. Winning some cash from a casino or finding success in other seemingly impossible endeavors simply takes practice and persistence.
“Regular people can totally learn the techniques described in the book,” he says. “One woman, who’s not in the book, became a crack card counter by signing up for the tutorial site Blackjack Apprenticeship. From there, she learned how to execute the much more profitable hole carding and, presumably, other moves. Before signing up for the site, she didn’t even know how to play basic strategy. Now she knows it all and is a masterful advantage player. If she can do it, so can everyone. As a side note, I find all of this to be very inspirational in terms of our ability to accomplish things that may seem impossible or unattainable.
“I think people need to find their advantages and focus on amping them up. What is my advantage play? Being able to extract information from people who probably shouldn’t be sharing their secrets with me. This book might be proof of that.”
