Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians

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One of the most successful blackjack team in America is made up. Surprisingly, Christians tell a story or two of the winningest players, Helen Jones, founder blackjack apprenticeship.com and the player dubbed the most notorious part-owner in America. David Drury. Dave when I was maybe eight or 10 years old. My father was pastor of a church and they were doing a big bonfire behind the church and is one of these events where you're supposed to bring in your rock records are your you know anything that is causing you to stumble and throw it in the fire and give a little speech and so I was an eight or 10-year-old kid and I said, my parents, what are we bringing this Pyrex I want to throw some enough and they're like well aware that where the passive you have anything like Akamai so we we went all over the house of one of the things we found in the back of a pencil drawer was a single playing card and they said while Katie can throw this in the fire. This represents gambling and at the fire you know is my time in my dad spoke and said you know talked about gambling. I'm throwing this card in the fire. I'm calling and get a card counter for almost 20 years and I'm here with my good friend David, I'm David and I've been a card counter for a bank is about 15 years and for me. Card counting started when I had just graduated from college with a math degree and not really any ambition and I was volunteering at a Bible camp and a friend bandit was up there. He's like, hey: your math guy check out this book I'm reading.

It was called professional blackjack written by Stanford Wong, who is a mathematician and it broke down the math behind card counting in blackjack and I thumbed through and I thought that while I'm a math guy probably do this. From there I went to substitute teaching, which is the most boring thing you can do with the math degree basically babysitting high school students and on the days I didn't get called to substitute teach. I convinced my newlywed wife for me to take $2000 of our savings and try this whole card counting thing at the local casinos here in Washington state. We have these like bowling alley casinos and stripmall casinos and they don't have slot machines or anything. It's like you're going into a 7-Eleven with about 10 table games and I trained way too little. I didn't know enough about card counting but I went for it and I just got stupid lucky the first two days I doubled my $2000-$4000 and I'm buying a bottle of wine for my wife and I say in a this is easy money. This is great and then I start losing day after day like slowly kind of back-and-forth and every day I'm calling Ben and I'm like, hey, what do I do in this situation. You know how many spots do I play.

What if someone jumped into the table, but he kinda got lonely doing the carjacking thing on his own and so we combined his $7000 with my $4000 and then all of a sudden, we had $11,000 to be playing blackjack labor 11,000 there's yeah we were yet five figures and we just started grinding in and of course you know he helped fix my game luckiest thing that could've happened was when he was playing at a casino. This was before he and I teamed up he's playing a casino and he gets noticed by this guy that was on a national blackjack team like the most feared card counting team in America spotted him and was like a this kids not bad, but you know there's some things he could fix and so they can exchange phone numbers and the guy was kind of trying to recruit Ben to be on his team and that resulted in Ben not really joining their team. He did one trip with them, but in getting his skills really refined, which was what what I needed because I thought I was good and I wasn't.

Ben was able to refine my skills and so then we have this $11,000 and were just grinding were going all our local casinos every day and fighting a call to substitute teach. I was working in Elkind and 95 gambling essentially and pretty quickly. We started winning and we added 1/3 friend Jeff and the three of us grinding and we grew that $11,000 into about $100,000 over three or four months, joined up with 1/4 guy that we spotted a casino that when I first saw him playing as I was a drug dealer because he had this satchel full of $500 chips and uses betting like crazy at the casino and then we start watching how his bedding is like eight as a card counter to so the four of us we start playing, and over the course of two years.

We want about $500,000 playing but as many small businesses, especially with 20 something-year-old guys a kind of you know that the relational that the personality character issues started to come about and then I decided to split off and get into real estate, so we figured it were smart enough to be casinos were definitely smart enough to beat the real estate market. Unfortunately, we weren't and what I tell people as we were investing at blackjack and we are gambling at real estate and we go and we lose something like $400,000 on $3 million worth of properties that we had leveraged to the hilt right when the housing market crashed and we didn't know what to do. So we pulled out all the equity we could and we went back to the only honest thing we need to do, which was to play blackjack go back to the casinos and it starts working again and the two of us. You know very quickly. We got a couple hundred thousand and that's for people like David came in because were thinking.

We don't want to be in the casinos, but we know how to do this and we can teach people and some friends from our churches start approaching us saying hey can I play blackjack on your blackjack team and that's where things started to really get interesting and you're listening to Collin Jones, founder blackjack apprenticeship.com and the player dubbed the most notorious card counter in America. David Drury seems counterintuitive to think there'd be card counting Christians.

That's what makes the story so alluring, Christian, and I love one of the first things I try to teach my daughter how to throw a spiral out of card count and the laws and theories of compounded interest when we come back more of our American stories and the story of the card counting first.

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The book the book that became the movie 21 that had come out and I had read some things online about this is a beatable game I was working as an editor at a trade publication, and I would sort of sneak off to work early to go try this thing out the casinos with my own money, but it's true. This this whole beginners luck thing because I want and I thought out well this is really really easy and I had a friend I owed some money to so I paid him with $100 bill and of course $100 bill as a conversation starter i.e. painting with $100 bill, I'm glad you asked. I've been not counting cards and men and beating blackjack and now he's like oh well you must've met Ben and I said Ben and he said yeah I think he's been doing that.

He just bought a house, so I like what I need to meet this Ben guy sounds like he's doing the right way so I I met then he took me out to a casino and show me how he played and and then he loaned me a book by Stanford want one of the early heroes of card counting and I read the book and I did all the math and I figured out that the way I was playing I could look to a lifetime of earning five cents an hour if I was playing correctly so I I'd been just lucky for these first few sessions and sure enough I started losing and I gave up on the idea entirely, but a year later I found out that Ben and Colin were forming a team and I had just gotten laid off so I was like, this sounds like the perfect job and quickly I learned that I needed to forget everything that I taught myself about card counting and start again from scratch. I had just passed the test out for the team and bandit was announcing a okay you made it. You did it and we were we were debriefing after the test in a casino we were in the bathroom. The course is that's one of the places you can you can talk and there are no cameras in the bathroom and a casino. So he's in one stall and I'm in the other stall and he's telling me that I passed the test and in his hand emerges underneath the stall with like $30,000 in cash is like okay you're all set. Start play and so that was of course it freaked me out because I never dealt with money like that. It's definitely an occupational hazard that you don't have in most most other jobs you know you can get really desensitized to it, but you know over time that happens. The first is $1000 and freaking out and then it's $5000 that I have in my pocket and I'm freaking out and then it takes you know $20,000 for me to be freaking out and then I've got $100,000 and it's like kind and normal.

I was in Philadelphia and I'm just, you know, just in jeans and a hoodie and II had I had one and for whatever reason I was traveling with $90,000 and went through security just fine. They were like what are all these envelopes and I explained it like always and they let me know on and as I'm walking to the gate. There's like a voice over my shoulder and eyes like I hear you have a lot of money on your with the DEA and now he steers me to the site. Is this whole team of guys in suits and they start asking me questions or were you what did you drive where did you guess you have receipts where you stay with your wife's name with your bosses name, how much cash you have on you were doing all the questions you would ask if you are in the DEA and worried somebody was like you know a drug runner something like that so he went called my bosses and came back and eventually said you know what we have the right to seize this money because of homeland security, but you're a good doing this is that you got a good thing going on here so you have a good day and I I made it. You know, he spent so much time as a card counter in a casino where you're not telling the casino people what you're doing that when those situations come when where you talk into police or DEA.

I personally get excited him like finally I can tell someone all about what I do this career that I'm really excited about that. I'll get to talk to people so when the DEA was questioning me. I I could hear my logs. Here's every hour of work to. Here's the money here's where it came from, and I'm sort of a probably was a little bit too enthusiastic and he's like disguising not a criminal. He's just a geek, so I said there original team of four people and when the guys will call him Sammy. He does want to give his real name, but Sammy when he saw that were starting this team. He's like what is this, the church team because it was all we knew from church and we thought that was hilarious and so now the name kind of stuck but what we would do is there's two ways to form a blackjack team you find people that are interested already in you know beating casinos and you try to build trust with them and team up, but we thought the other way is to take people to the already trusted know that there's some relational equity and we felt like we could teach them blackjack so that it started with one guy and then turned to two, which turned into four and David was probably number three or four on that team.

But we were taken from scratch would say hey blackjack is a very unique game in that it's one of the only things in a casino where future events are dependent on past events. If you're playing blackjack and a queen of diamonds is dealt.

You will not see that queen of diamonds again until they shuffle and so that's how it was created. There's a guy doctor at Thorpe and in the early 60s he saw that someone had used computers to figure out the optimal way of playing blackjack and then he just hypothesize hey, what if an ace comes out of the deck of cards that they're dealing how does that change the odds and he realized what makes it worse for the player as I settle with the other extreme, said what if the two comes out and he realized that actually gave players the advantage because that to won't be seen again that the game is different now with that to gone and so card counting was born with his book beat the dealer and you know it just evolved were casinos. This cat and mouse game kept evolving. Casinos are then increasing the number of decks and changing the rules and card cards are also adapting but this is weird, symbiotic relationship because blackjack became popular simply because it can be beaten. It wasn't the most popular casino game but once a book came out, the said this game can be beaten.

Of course everybody with you know any money in their pockets want to go and try to beat this game and 99.9% of don't actually have the skills to do it, but the .1%. We actually do have that advantage. So we would teach people. Card counting isn't gambling in a sense it's more investing yet when anybody sits down at a blackjack table. Generally, they're gonna win 48 out of the next hundred hands in the casinos and win 52 of the next hundred hands and we are able to turn that around. So we're winning 52 hands out of 100, but you can understand that at any point we could lose the 48 hands in a row and I would still be well within the realm of possibility. The reason we went with a team is that there are several things to make it to more valuable one is you get to pool your resources and so we had anywhere between 500,000 and $1 million to play off of.

Which meant we can bet a lot of money we can keep our risk really low, but the other advantages are this game you wouldn't believe the amount of variance.

There is like the swings. It is not uncommon for card card to go on a two or three or 400 hour losing streak well 400) common, but it happens and and when you're on this losing streak. If you got other teammates are also playing. It's like you're getting to the law of large numbers faster and I know that from reading the history of some of these teams that had gotten gather like you might other team personality conflicts come into play, especially when you're dealing with large amounts of cash and the rule of honesty you know because you can go into a casino and win $1000 and go back to teams I all I lost $1000 in pocket $2000 and there's no way for a team to keep up on that kind of thing.

The only way you would know is over the long haul. If there winning or losing.

So there's a lot of honesty that comes in the play and the camaraderie and interest it really sorta glues us together and you been listening to David Drury and Collin Jones tell the story of their card counting Empire, their small Empire, but a growing one and well recreational on the turned into a livelihood. When we come back more of the story of Collin Jones and David Drury card counting Christians. On our American story, and we continue with our American story is the story of Collin Jones, founder of blackjack apprenticeship.com and the players of the most notorious card counter in America. David is Kellan and David to continue with their story. Some people think because we are a group of people that it met at church that that made us all more or ethical or something. I don't know if that's it necessarily true. I do know two people have admitted over the years that they pocketed money and later fell guilty and and shared and they were both Christians and I know some people that are incredibly like I would trust them with my life savings that are not church people but I think the fact that it was more that we had a similar circle relationally. There was a huge cost if they came out, the someone was stealing from the team, they wouldn't just lose their job is like it would hurt the relationship so it's almost like if a group of friends and family teamed up. You know there's more at stake than just getting fired. I think that was a big part of why it worked yeah absolutely. My particular situation was that I was married with young kids, so I was motivated to get these hours in an and do the stuff. I think a lot of the other people on the team were younger tended to be, you know may be single and so they would fly out to a resort hour like wow, look at this great pool well is really comfortable. So I was just working working working so I ended up doing a lot more playing than resort lithic setback a little bit is a 23-year-old you have just graduated from a Christian college Bible camp Christian school guy. It was not the easiest thing to tell my family that I was gambling for living. I remember when I told my parents they were missionaries of the time in Guatemala and my mom basically went on a hunger strike that she would know she was like terrified that I was just can end up a degenerate gambler, a homeless and my dad was afraid I was can be buried in a shallow grave in the desert by the mob my father-in-law when I told him he said he would speak to me again until I spoke to three older, wise, godly man himself yelled. The consensus I got was like what: what you're doing whether I would want my son to do it or not there's nothing inherently wrong. You know it's not illegal to count cards using your brain. It's not illegal to use your brain and casinos. But you know there's there's this whole view of of casinos or even like gambling. You know like the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. And this thoughts like well if you get paid well is a lawyer that that's okay, here is Dr. but if you're beating casinos or something really nefarious about it, but it was really this odd double life doing this because the days I wasn't playing blackjack.

I was volunteering at church are playing on a worship band or yell leading community group at our church are or just being a normal young 20 something very something you know eventually dad but then were flying out and I'm getting picked up by a limousine and driven to the strip and your offering me free drinks all the stuff and I don't drink what I play black check or whatever but you know you're this this highroller in these casinos and then just fly home and got normal responsibilities and a moan the lawn and all that stuff. Yeah that dichotomy. I remember one Sunday I I need to get a transfer of $30,000 from someone who is on the team went to the same church and I was gonna fly out after church and so so I went through the communion line and then I sat down back my PO and then I saw this guy in the communion line and he had a yellow paper bag with them went to the communion line then slapped this paper bag in my stomach 30 grand.

It wasn't uncommon for me to go straight from worship and practice to a casino armor one time I played basin in a worship band and guys like O: what what is on your pocket, as Leo is 10 straps going out $10,000 you know out of out of each pocket and another 10,000 out of each coat pocket because I need 40,000 for the limits of good place and that they circle me 10 straps that was like my life nickname and and to me it was anything new. It was odd, but it wasn't that odd and one of the weird things is people assume you know because the amount of money were playing with that.

Is this shortcut it's really easy but it's not easy. One way friend put it is. It's a hard way to make easy money and it takes 200 hours to learn minimum 200 hours so is not something you learn in a weekend. But even that's not the hard part. The hard part is the emotional part that getting thrown at a casino or winning and losing streaks. The okay it's 2 AM I just got thrown out. I don't know where I'm staying tonight. I gotta figure it out is the casino scanning my license plate so there you know who I am before even show it up in the casino yeah get run out of the casino are or where they walk you to your hotel room to watch you pack your bag so that they can kick you out of the hotel room that they had come to you. You know an hour and 1/2 earlier this two kinds of people. Generally when you tell someone about this.

There's people that are too excited for like no that's amazing like so you just go in there and then you walk out with a casinos money and you know it's like well it's not really that excited like you're good to go lose lame the casino if if you're that optimistic. And then there are of the people that I think are more our background like that the church recall that they're not even curious about it. They just instantly put it in this category of that's out that that sounds wrong. I don't want to ask any follow-up questions. I just don't like that you're doing it and that's really like frustrating and disappointing. I was his personality before card counting you know I was got kind of not doing anything wrong, but also not willing to do the things I was told to do. Just just because us was to do it like I went to Christian school, we had to wear a tie for chapel day every week and so I had a wooden tie. I had like a sequence hi I had a like infants clip-on tie like okay I'll call your rule but I'm not going to play this partly your time get at least questionnaire. Be curious about it and I wish there was a little bit a little bit more of of that from our culture that there's these people in the Bible called the Pharisees and their these people that are obsessed with their cultural political identity there super defensive there there, terrified that the way that they think they're supposed to be doing things is going to be changed or questioned her to lose their identity and it feels like a lot of the background we come from.

It's that same thing of like just play the part. Act a certain way and they're not going to question if that's her way of doing things is right is just like protect that identity. Yeah, I was in Palm Springs at a casino and the circumstances were such that I had been annexing a before and I had lost a lot of money. They probably just thought I was a bad player and they were happy to bring me back in company of top floor suite and all the stuff so I stroll out onto the casino floor. The next morning and for whatever reason I sat down in the first shoe that I played was just one of these glorious things that that happens so rarely.

But I just want all the money and once you like $30,000 and immediately in all click for them. They realize, like, oh, this guy is actually a card counter needs to now is taking alarm so they backed me off and I was waiting to cash out of the cage and this is particular to tribal casinos.

They were like this is illegal.

You are card cheating and I hope I was almost entertained by this, so that's what Hank said well, where should I wait to meet the police and fill out the report and of course there were they they had called police.

There is there is trying to run me out of the casino and you been listening to Cullen Jones and David Drury and they're telling the story of how they became card counters what that life was like as one of the men said it was an odd kind of double life by day I was playing blackjack soon thereafter will be leading a small group or worship service, and then leaving those things to hit the tables again. And oddly enough there are many Christians to this that is not part count play poker or play the horses and try to find an advantage in the numbers and try to find out a winning strategy. When we come back.

The story of the card counting Christians were talking about David Drury and Collin Jones on our American story. Can we continue with our American stories and the stories are Cullen Jones and David during the card counting Christian. Let's pick up what we last left off. That's one of the big misconceptions that couple of them.

One of them is that it's illegal and like us is perfectly legal to use your brain, but the other is that casinos are are going hit your hand with the ball pin hammer in the back of the casino or that you know you can end up hospitalized or or you or even worse, no one will ever see you again and there is movies were that happens, and there are some pretty crazy stories from the 60s and in early 70s, but now these postings. Casinos are owned by megacorporations and I know people that the casino just detain them against their will end up with a six-figure settlement but that doesn't mean I haven't been in the back room of the casino. One time were playing in Arizona and this was on the earlier team is four of us and we're just crushing the casinos and after.

By the end of our trip at hundred $40,000 in chips for the casino we all end up in the back of a casino explaining them to think we know you cheated us explained was how how you cheated us and I like reading cheaper counting cards alike. How does that work so explain her getting to them and they said will have you know to bet his will.

When my favorite lines ever was Sammy on the team. He says I'll tell you for a fee just to see how the Baylor consultation fee. Eventually they cash out our hundred $40,000 and walk us to our cars instead of something in the mail thing will be rested come back, but the whole thing is getting roughed up by casinos hasn't happened 91 interaction with police, but it was kind of a mistake similar long story short, I'm cuffed. He takes every thing on my pockets. He looks me up is like do you have a criminal record and like one of a speeding ticket from three years ago and by the end of it.

He's walking out to my car and he's like, hey do teach other people how to count cards. I said locksmith matter-of-fact to have a website.

We just started and told him about electric apprenticeship that the website and we just begun. Of course he casinos all their advertising is like a come when we want winners. Look how many winners we have and then they find someone that actually has the ability to win and there like a granola like what you think you're doing trying to win. You have though the winners wallet a casino with their like that all the old ladies with holding up their oversized check for 15,000. I would love to sneak into a casino in and put my picture up on the wall of of the time I took them for whatever I took them for.

So the fact that it is beautiful is what makes the casino so much money so were disproving the fact that it is beatable.

So they shouldn't hate us too much where we're part of the reason why they're making some but when we started the church team.

It was working.

We're winning like crazy. We actually ended up winning for the duration of this team won $3.2 million, but the way that we played. It wasn't really sustainable so people started cutting burning out. Either there been a hard time getting hours in a casino or the travel is getting to them or or like me want to start a family and it's one thing when I'm like out odd hours and gone five days at a time when I had no kids different. When I got one kid in two and 34 kids. I did a road trip with my wife and work is drove down to San Diego back and I played 40 hours of high limit blackjack, but it would be something like we show up at the casino. My wife sits in the minivan with an iPad watching monsters Inc. or something on the iPad while I'm playing, trying to get a come to room. I finally get the comped room.

I get the family checked in them tucked in bed and then coat play blackjack so I can keep my eyes open sleep for like three hours and my kids are jumping on my bed is like this. This isn't really the life I want. For the next 30 years.

But yeah, that's the reason I never brought my family, but there are some diminishing returns.

II remember the beginning my career I could go out to Vegas and play. You know, 10 to 12 hours a day and come home with thousands that I learned or whatever and then as time went by I was noticing like all I can only get in note 6 or seven hours a day there kicking me out. They know my face and in the end I'm having to either bet lower to stay under the radar or winning less because I'm doing all this ducking and dodging. I was at one casino in Las Vegas and got kicked out really quick and I was standing in line to cash out the diffuse chips that I had a night I hear someone yelling my name David. David and I've trained myself to not turn because sometimes they'll try and test like this is that guy. Like what's called his name and see if he responds.

And if I don't respond.

Maybe they they think don't think it's me, so this guy is yelling my name and finally, everybody in the line is looking at behind me so I had to turn around and there's this guy without one arm long ZZ Top beard and EE comes up to me enthusiastically. He's like I'm buying you a drink. I okay so I got a crazy fan in this casino must been watching the whales playing something. Turns out he was the head of all surveillance or a string of casinos and sure enough he sat me down let me drink and he was wanted to know everything.

He was a super fan, but he was on the other side and I ended up giving me you know tips to how to evade his own security because he was such a super fan but from that.

He told me that I had become known as the most notorious card counter in America. So that was my claim to fame from that short time. But it also meant that I had sort of worked myself out and everybody knew my face less ice and that's how you became a master of disguise is right yes of the night. I try to do the disguise route. Nobody had disguises. This is good is David's own thing anyone tried as hard and no one pulled it off as well. Couple of your books yeah I had a knack for looking a lot younger than I was. Or a lot older than I was and so in a casino. There are shift changes. So basically everybody is working there, worked there for eight hours and then a whole new team comes in and so we would come back on shift changes because you know your not being seen by all the same people that were there so I come in on my first shift of the casino with whatever I could grow beard wise before the trip. You're wearing a worn leather and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and so I was a eunuch. Sort of like Harley guy and then I go in night and shave it all off and put on my fugu jersey and be sort of like this young punk is throwing money around the casino and then I go and change again. I put on my promise keeper hat and my fleece vest in my flooded khakis and come across like I was sort of middle-aged accountant David was able pull that off, but over the last couple years of the team. A few things happened one is you know we had half $1 billion of mine and friends money invested in this thing and people like David R continued to grind out hours here and there, it casinos and my stomach churning on.

I'm not sleeping well. I had I never lost a night sleep losing my own money I had nights where my net worth would drop.

Maybe as much is six figures and it would suck. But it was like well whatever he's come PC go in and we trust the math but it's different when you have to tell you know your father-in-law or or a friend like hey how's the team doing and say what not. Not good. Get out.

It always turns around, but when it's down all the investors are freaking out so I'm not sleeping well in my mind is I'm thinking about these Internet businesses more than I'm thinking about blackjack and this is scary. We got half $1 million of money that I am responsible for in my head's not in the game. This is a recipe for something really to go bad. And so I you know, called all of the investors and I said hey I think I want to pull the plug on this and they were all okay with it so I had to call all the players and say hey I'm I'm done the church team officially ended there and I mean part of that also was that someone made a movie about us which we signed on for you know that it may put up more of our identity out there so the casinos can totally yeah yeah I was all these things I converged it to where was like list list pull the plug when all that started happening in and you know ice focus on my time on black sugar ship David decided to work on his memoirs writing the entire story of the rear section of spiritual personnel and card counting. You know II got a degree in writing signed before I was ever a card counter creative writing was my favorite thing to do and so now it's time then I'm not a look at these stories. Write them down and see if we can put together book so at the end of the day. I feel like my store was able to come full circle where I started as a teacher and I get to teach and a great job as always by Greg. Special thanks to Collin Jones, founder blackjack apprenticeship.com and also the man dubbed the most notorious card counter in America David Drury and it is so true he didn't get it. Both men got at the misconceptions about card counting a it's perfectly legal. By the way, if you ever setting a blackjack table. Notice somebody on a $25 table suddenly moving their bat from 25, 250 there probably card counters, and then if they bring that bent back down at 25 and then they randomly go back and forth between those two bets for the card counters, and they found that there's an advantage in the count in the deck.

It is the rare game, but for poker, where it's up to the player and the player skills to win and also the horseracing and pari-mutuel windows for skilled horse players and also when and by the way were not endorsing gambling here. Either way, but Americans love to gamble and by the way, Christians loved him. It's when you have a problem, but you should do it.

The story of the card counting Christians were talking about David Drury and Collin Jones here on our American story