The Unexpected Gambler Robert Asiel Shares Insights on the Old Days of Cheating Casinos

In the wild west, sometimes cheats had an ace up their sleeve.

I was introduced to the world of gaming cheats through Terry Roses, "The Honest Cheat." Roses is a lifelong magician who, according to the magicians code, will not use his skills (sleight of hand, etc.) for crooked purposes. This never stopped Terry from studying the ways of the wilier wayward ones. In this manner Roses has become an expert who trains casino surveillance personnel on how to recognize cheats. In addition to giving seminars related to "Optical Warfare at the Gaming Table" (in which he shows the variety of techniques used to mark cards, among other things) he has also invented a device called the Inspecta Card Scanner which enables casinos to maintain a level playing field for their customers by eliminating marked card cheats. (Visit: DetectMarkedCards.com)

I first wrote about Terry Roses in 2016 after a visit to his secret laboratory. More recently I have met with Terry a few times, each time coming home with fascinating stories, including introductions to a couple writers whose memoirs detail highlights of their lives "on the muscle," an expression explained below by Robert Asiel, author of The Unexpected Gambler: A History of Casinos Cheating the Public and One Gambler's Revenge.

I'd love to share how Terry gave me a card-reading lesson in which I learned to see a "mark" on a card that was previously not there till I learned how to see it, but this is Robert Asiel's story, so we'll save that for another day. All gambling involves odds and risk, but the more those odds are shifted in your favor, the lower the risk.

My interview here with Mr. Asiel is aimed at informing about, not glorifying, the cheater's life. If at times you see here echoes of The Sting and its sequel, I wouldn't be surprised. I've included a link to his book at the end.

EN: You began your gambling career as a 17-year-old blackjack dealer in Vegas. What year was that? And how quickly were you aware that some of the gaming was rigged?

Robert Asiel: I began dealing blackjack in 1963 at the Lucky Casino on Fremont Street. Before I dealt there, I worked there as a shill and witnessed craps dealers shorting winning players their payoffs, and picking up “sleepers.” Sleepers were winning bets that bettors forgot to pick up.

One week after I began dealing 21, I was taught by a senior dealer how to cheat the public on the money wheel (The Big 6 Wheel). I was warned by him that if I couldn’t protect the game I would be fired. Several weeks after I began dealing, I met a 21 dealer, through a friend, who worked at the Lucky but on an earlier shift. He told me he was working for the casino as a mechanic, meaning he was cheating the public for the casino, for an extra $100 per day plus his salary and tips. He showed me his cheating techniques and I had no reason to disbelieve him. He and my friend were trying to recruit me to do business (cheat) against the casino which I agreed to do. They introduced me to two middle-aged crossroaders who were people that cheated casinos full-time. We made a plan to beat the casino which was successful.

Before I witnessed cheating at the Lucky Casino, I was aware that casinos cheated through newspaper articles about casinos caught cheating and closed and through friends who worked as 21 dealers.

EN: How many years did you stay in Vegas and when did you begin taking your revenge on the casinos by cheating yourself?

RA: I stayed in Vegas just over three years. I had made several 21 cheating plays against two casinos with two 21 dealing friends of mine before I went to work at the Lucky Casino. While a dealer at the Lucky, I made several successful cheating plays. After leaving the Lucky, I became a successful crossroader.

EN: What did you feel inside when you first started down that path? Were you afraid early on? How long did it take to become a pro at cheating?

RA: I felt guilty but got over it. I never felt afraid because what I did was safe. I always felt nervous until years later after some other than casino life experiences. I considered myself a professional crossroader when I returned to Nevada in 1969.

This ordinary card has been marked and a pro can read it.

EN: How did the casinos address cheating in those days?

RA: If a casino suspected an employee of cheating, or caught him, he would be fired and possibly black-balled from working in other casinos. I knew one dealer who was fired for cheating but did get a job in another casino. I never heard of a dealer being arrested for cheating in my early casino career. There were rumors of dealers and crossroaders being roughed-up, but none that I knew except one. He was the first crossroader I had met who told me that one time while waiting in a casino’s back-room for a sheriff deputy to arrive to arrest him, a casino security guard stomped on his foot breaking a few toes. He told me he had been arrested numerous times for cheating in Vegas but paid a local bondsman who would have the charges dismissed. Gambling offenses were misdemeanors in Nevada until around 1980. A personal experience of mine being back-roomed happened was when I was nineteen-years-old. It was in a mob-run casino in the Bahamas where a boxman had nailed me switching dice on his game. The casino manager there threatened me with a warning but I was soon released unharmed.

EN: One of the things that aided in your success was working with confederates. How did you find confederates whom you could trust?

RA: I met my confederates through others I had worked with. I was immature and trusted everyone I met. I was betrayed twice but choose not to mention that in my book. Most crossroaders I met had been casino dealers who were black-balled, or found it more lucrative to work “on the outside” rather than “the inside.” Outside meaning “on the muscle.”

EN: Can you describe some of the ways you would signal one another so that the “eyes in the sky” were unaware of what was going on?

RA: The signals that crossroaders used that I learned were universal. Touching your nose means trouble. Same with a closed fist on a table. Touching your chin means everything is OK. Crossing one arm across your chest also meant OK as well as an open hand on a table. Brushing off your sleeve meant to exit. Brushing quickly meant to leave quickly. Touching an eye meant you want to talk to someone in private. Same for pulling your ear. There were verbal signals as well. George meant everything is OK. Tom meant bad. Mr. Long meant a high-roller, etc. When I formed my own crew we invented our own much-improved set of signals.

EN: What is the biggest mistake cheats make that gives them away?

RA: Greed. Going to the well too often or winning too much money on a play.

EN: Today’s casinos are run by corporations. How did Nevada clean up the mob connections to the casinos?

These are all "crooked dice" from Terry Roses' private collection.

RA: It was a long, complicated process because of political, economic, and other considerations. Nevada had to clean-up their act when FBI undercover operations against mob-run casinos succeeded in convicting nationwide mob members and associates. Nevada legislators found legitimate owners to take over the corrupted casinos to keep those casinos from closing and throwing hundreds of people out of work. Most of the casino bosses who had run the casinos for the mob kept their jobs.

EN: What about cheating today?

RA: It’s impossible to totally stop casino cheating — casinos couldn’t hire enough employees to watch every single transaction that continuously takes place in a casino. There will always be money leakage in casinos everywhere. Employees discover new methods to steal chips and cash, and will work with crossroaders using new moves. Today’s crossroaders are more geek than magician that use modern technology to assault casino games and slot machines. To combat the cheaters, the casinos buy state-of-the-art surveillance cameras and hire private experts to train their casino surveillance personnel on how to police crooked employees and crossroaders. One expert invented a device called the Inspecta Card Scanner that will discover any type of marked cards in a casino.*

Today, it’s unlikely that any U.S. land-based casinos are cheating the public. Most casinos are owned by multi-million dollar corporations that couldn’t afford to be caught cheating and lose their gaming license. Quasi-cheating is practiced openly in some smaller casinos and riverboats. What I mean is this: a dealer will keep track of how many aces and ten-value cards have been dealt. If the deck has proportionately more big cards and aces than normal, the dealer will shuffle the remaining cards early to take away the 3-to-2 bonus for a player having a blackjack, and to lessen his chance of busting his hand. If those cards are dealt early, the dealer will then deal out all the cards before shuffling.

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If this kind of thing interests you, let me know. I have many more stories to share.

Related Links
The Unexpected Gambler
* Inspect Card Scanner
The memoirs of Fast Jack: The Last Hustler

Recent Readings and a Pew Research Study About Who Does Not Read Books in America

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
--Ray Bradbury.

This past week I read an article on Medium about reading books and how women are reading more than men now. Not only that, but that more women are enrolled in college than men, which at one time was heavily skewed toward males.

I intended this post to be a list of my recent readings with summaries of the books I'd read, but then I decided instead to begin by drawing attention to some findings from a Pew Research study on who doesn't read books in America. Since there are many studies showing a correlation between reading,  education and wealth generation (or career empowerment), it seems that a primary aim of good parenting should go beyond making sure kids have food, shelter and a safe place to live, but should very definitely include reading, writing and 'rithmetic as basic foundation stones for a successful life, just as it was in grandma's day.  (Good social skills can be added here, too.)

All that to say, here were a few numbers from the Pew study. And again, the interesting feature here is not "who" is reading, but who is not reading.

24% of Americans have not read a book in whole or in part in the past year. In other words, reading books doesn't appear to enter their minds as something having value.

They assessed reading habits by age, income, gender, level of education attained and race. In most cases there were few surprises. More men have not read a book (25%) than women (22%), fewer whites have not read a book as compared to blacks and Hispanics. People in the lowest income bracket (under 30K/year) are three times more likely to not have read a book the previous year.

When compared to a 2016 study regarding libraries, "the same demographic traits that characterize non-book readers also often apply to those who have never been to a library." Sad.

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My apologies if it sounds like I was ranting. No doubt if you've gotten this far you are a reader, so I'd best move on.

My reading list is always longer than my available ti
me, which is probably the challenge for all avid readers and lovers of books. Here are a handful of books I've completed recently, followed by a few others that I am in the process of reading.

The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace
Paul Thomas Chamberlin

I read the HarperCollins audio version of this book, which was so powerful I bought the hardback and am reading it again. The audiobook is read by Grover Gardner. While reading it I kept feeling like this was the saddest book I'd ever read. My reason for this was two-fold. First, it is heartbreaking how the superpowers (Soviet Union, China, USA) are playing this global power game but the people in power moving armaments and making decisions seem unharmed by any of it while literally millions of innocent civilians are being killed, wounded, displaced. The litany of horrors committed during this "time of peace" after the last world war is mind-boggling. Second, the degree to which our own country (U.S.) was complicit in generating all this human suffering just makes one ashamed.

I strongly recommend the book because it is the first and best book that I've seen or know of that connects on the dots regarding the miscellaneous and seemingly unrelated conflicts in various parts of the world during the Cold War.

We Die Alone
David Howarth

This is another audiobook I read. (See my review of the Untold Story of the History of Talking Books) The story was originally published in 1955. It is literally an amazing story of survival in the most harrowing Arctic circumstances. It is the story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian who ends up in Britain to return as part of the resistance. A boat with 12 men come into the fjords on a mission, but are thwarted by the Nazis. All are captured or killed except Baalsrud, whose toe is shot off. He escapes, and must now survive.

All that (above) occurs in the very beginning of the story The rest is one challenge after another including frostbitten feet, and an assortment of other complications The writing is totally compelling. One reason I wanted to read this is that I also have a compelling survival/escape novella that I have written about a young man with a withered leg who escapes from Estonia as the Red Army is heading West at the end of WW2. 10% of the population of Estonia fled in a single wave, whic should tell you something about life under Stalin from 1940-42. If I can tell Ralph's story (Uprooted) half as well as David Howarth tells Jan Baalsrud's, then I will be happy.

Don't Quit Your Day Job
Michael Fedo

The full title is Don’t Quit Your Day Job: The Adventures of a Midlist Author.  s a memoir recounting the five-decade writing career of Michael Fedo, whose books have not attained best-seller status, despite receiving mostly favorable reviews in publications such as The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, among others. What follows here are a few excerpts from my review of the book on Amazon.

The book is essentially an overview of Mr. Fedo’s life as a writer, but it’s written in such a way as to provide good lessons all along the way. Each story has a purpose and though it is a book for writers, it would be useful for many other careers in the creative arts.

His first chapter, Authorities and Experts May Be Wrong, is a lesson I learned myself and have written about more than once. “Who Are Your Experts?” is something everyone has to address at various points in a career. We are shaped by those whom we listen to, and sometimes we don’t have enough experience to recognize the difference between good and bad advice.

Though primarily a book for writers, each chapters contains lessons for writers, I think others might enjoy reading about his life in the writing biz. He writes in an easy-going style that would make this book worth reading the most valuable one being to make sure you can pay your bills before you launch into the deep. It's a memoir designed to be both entertaining and instructive.

Read my blog post about his writing workshop and the reading he gave from this book.

The Year of Less
Cait Flanders

Amazon version has livelier cover.

The full title is actually, The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store.
It's a short book with a promising title, related to several other book I've read about simplifying one's life and reducing clutter. Unfortunately, I didn't care that much for the reader. (The author.) She's a blogger whose primary theme seems to be her self. The book essentially documents her efforts to live on less and the lessons she learns along the way. One reviewer on Amazon (who liked the book) wrote, "This book isn't about minimalism or decluttering (although it will inspire you to pursue those goals!), it's about living with less, consuming less, and ultimately needing less." Another wrote, "To the uninitiated: trust your instinct to "buy less" and pass on this." I almost quit the book two or three times, but plowed through anyways.

My biggest problem was that I was unable to relate to a person who "buys things" to make herself feel better while racking up massive credit card debt. By shopping to make oneself happy, I am referring to replacing all the furniture in the living room, clothes, etc to the tune of $30,000. There were a few good insights early on and I thought there would be more. As a blogger she has built a following who apparently enjoys her transparency and candor. For the wider public, it should have been an article in a magazine.

CURRENTLY READING
I have a number books in mid-stream. Some I will write about in the future, one I already wrote about but need to finish.

The Unexpected Gambler
Robert Asiel

This book and the next are about guys who learned how to win by cheating, as in power or dice games. Asiel went to Las Vegas as a 17-year-old and became a poker dealer at a casino at which time he learned that the casinos were also crooked. (EdNote: It's my understanding that things have changed because the odds already favor the casinos and they do not have to cheat to rake in the dough.) Asiel subtitled his book, A History of Casinos Cheating the Public and One Gambler's Revenge. It sounds like a self-rationalization to me, but most of us spend a lifetime justifying one form of bad behavior or another.

Robert Asiel went to Vegas in the 60s, while the casinos were still mob run. Later in life he was all over the country and did a lot of cruise ship hustling as gambling opened up everywhere. In the end he was wanted by the FBI, but not before he'd lived a life of adventure. Like Fast Jack (below) he did finally get nailed and spent time in the pen. The book will likely surprise you at the games people play.

Fast Jack: The Last Hustler
John Farrell

One of the more interesting places to hear good stories is from the cab drivers in Las Vegas. On my first trip the Las Vegas our cabby told about how far downhill Vegas had gone since the corporates took over and the mob no longer ran the casinos. We asked for an explanation and he said in the old days you lose all your money at the gaming tables and the casino would put you up for the night and pay for your ticket to get home. "Not any more," he said You lose all your money and the send you packing.

Fast Jack was born in 1937 so he came of age in the Fifties. He learned all the tricks of the hustler's trade and then took them to another level. As a card and dice mechanic is also learned the risks involved, including being beat up, shot at and doing time. He wrote his memoir because the world has changed. In the old days most gambling was a private matter. The hustlers knew where the action was. Nowadays, casinos, riverboats and cruise ships are everywhere.
At age 80, Jack's dice moves are still astonishing. Here's a video with no special effects showing off some Fast Jack dice mechanics.
Here's a podcast of Fast Jack being interviewed on Maria Konnikova's show Grift.

An End to Upside Down Thinking
Mark Gober

The subtitle of this book is Dispelling the Myth That the Brain Produces Consciousness, and the Implications for Everyday Life.  Gober's book is essentially an assault on the arrogant assumptions of science, specifically as it pertains to materialism. The notion that consciousness could evolve from matter did not make sense and he began to explore this problem in greater detail. He learned that this area of science is one of the biggest stumbling blocks and is still not yet resolved.

Though I'd not finished the book yet, I wrote a review earlier this month and interviewed the author afterward.

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Aren't books amazing? There are so many varieties of books, and so many stories still to be told.

What have you been reading lately? I hope it's good.