Every year, somewhere in Las Vegas, there’s a gathering of blackjack professionals, past and present, along with some gambling attorneys and a few other miscellaneous gambling professionals, including one video poker writer. Predominantly male, many bring wives or dates, but most come alone. Perhaps it speaks poorly of how often I get out of the house, but it’s a high point of my social calendar. The 2015 version of this event occurred recently.
The ball is hosted by Max Rubin and Barona Casino. Attendees at the ball have to swear on a stack of blackjack chips that they’ll never play at Barona. Barona treats us well, but they don’t want our action. A bottle of premium champagne, preferably comped, is the required entry fee. And each person who is going to play the 21 Questions game has to pony up $20 to salt the Calcutta pool. I’ll talk more about this later.
This year’s ball started out with a demonstration from blackjack cheater Dustin Marks. Dustin made his money primarily as a dealer (giving good hands to his confederates) back in the 1980s. He retired from that and wrote a couple of books in the 1990s about his exploits. These books are being updated and published by Huntington Press later this year. You can bet Marks will be on Gambling with an Edge once or twice when the new editions come out.
When the demonstration was announced, I quickly went over and sat down at the blackjack table. Although I didn’t push anyone out of the way, I was seeking the best seat in the house if I could get it. Marks stood in the dealer position and spoke to the dozens of players who had gathered around. I had a bird’s-eye seat. The moves he put on were akin to close-up magic. He said to assume the guy at first base was his agent and then he dealt some cards in the usual fashion. He announced out oud the ace of spades in the first hand, and the jack of spades in the fourth hand. He then picked up all the cards, using what appeared to be standard procedures, shuffled the cards, riffled them, and then dealt the next hand, giving his agent both the ace and jack of spades. As would be true watching any good magician, I was sitting three feet away and had no clue as to how he did it.
Another move that he showed required a type of false shuffle where the cards didn’t actually come together. But whenever he did it, he had some confederates distracting the pit people — perhaps requesting a comp or arguing about a hand, or maybe a pretty girl having a wardrobe malfunction. Whatever.
He admitted to me after the demonstration that this particular move couldn’t be done today with high definition surveillance cameras on every table. Today’s surveillance crews can go back and watch the same thing over and over again. Although they don’t scrutinize every play every day, when big money is going out, the scrutiny is there. And if Marks and his confederates were going to pull off this move, they were going to do it for the table maximum.
I was seated at a table with the “legal eagles”—attorneys Bob Nersesian, his wife/legal partner Thea Sankiewicz, and Bob Loeb from Chicago. Immediately to my right was Blackjack Insider publisher Henry Tamburin. The rest of the table was filled with pros from the Chicago area who probably don’t want their names in print.
During dinner, we voted on our choices for induction into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. This is a prestigious award sponsored by Barona casino. Previous winners who have been on our radio show include John Chang, Al Francesco, Tommy Hyland, Richard Munchkin, Bob Nersesian, Darryl Purpose, Max Rubin, Arnold Snyder, and Stanford Wong. (It helps that my co-host is on this list and is well-respected by all of the others). The most famous living members who have so far declined to be on the show are Edward Thorp and James Grosjean. We’ll keep asking!
I didn’t know this before, but while each of my votes and the votes of the other invited non-Hall of Fame attendees counted as one vote, the votes of the existing members of the Hall of Fame were each weighted to count as three votes. We all got to vote for two names. I voted for author Don Schlesinger and a man who’s reputed to be a billionaire from betting on horses (and though we’ve invited this man on the show many times, he has so far declined). Schlesinger ended up winning and I was glad. There was previously some unspecified bad blood between Schlesinger and certain others which kept Schlesinger from being invited to the ball in recent years. Somehow that has been resolved or at least set aside. Don was happy to be there and delighted to win. He’ll be a guest on our radio show on February 12.
Later in the evening there was a competition consisting of 21 really tough questions with the top five finishers participating in a blackjack skills contest. The winner received a big trophy, The Grosjean Cup, named after James Grosjean, who has been disqualified from participating after winning this competition three times. The second place finisher received a smaller trophy, The Munchkin Award, because Richard has also won the competition three times. I personally think James and Richard should be allowed to play — but penalize them one point for every time they’ve previously won. Additionally, every other person who has won once (there are no two-time winners other than Grosjean and Munchkin) should start with a score of -1. Starting with a minus score is a pretty big handicap, and if one of these players should win again anyway, the following year their handicap would increase by one. (As it turns out, in exchange for my opinion and $1, a cocktail waitress will bring me a drink almost anywhere I’m playing).
But before the competition began, there was a Calcutta where we placed bets on who was going to win the event. First, second, third, and fourth place cash prizes were awarded, but the money went to whomever bought the players in the Calcutta —not the players themselves. Players were allowed to buy up to 50% of themselves if they felt confident.
As is the case each year, Max Rubin was the auctioneer during the Calcutta. Max is charming and funny. As the auctioneer, Max describes each team of players in flattering terms and teases the audience into bidding more. On occasion, somebody in the audience will make a mistake, such as bidding $500 and without anyone else speaking up, increase his bid to $600. Max will tease that person mercilessly, explaining to all what an imbecile the guy is, and then asking if he’d like to bid $700. (Somehow the “imbecile” never says ‘yes’). As unlikely as it sounds, this happened two or three times in this year’s Calcutta.
There were some “catchall” categories in the Calcutta, such as “Women not on any other team” and “the field,” which included all the men not on any other team. The field is usually a good value. This year it went for $1,800, which was quite low.
After we took a break during which everyone had the right to buy back 50% of himself or herself, we played the game of 21 Questions. (I didn’t buy a share of myself. I probably should have.) I’ll describe the contest in next week’s column. I actually submitted two questions that were chosen out of the 21. Max declared that I would automatically be considered to have given the wrong answer to the easier question (which was fair — I was honored that he thought my questions were worthy of inclusion). The harder question I actually ended up getting wrong! Had I answered my own damn question correctly, I would have been in the final five playing for the Grosjean Cup.
If you can’t wait until next week to see how I could possibly have been enough of an idiot to miss my own question, this Thursday night, February 5, Richard and I will be joined by Max Rubin and the winner of the event. The show airs 7-8 p.m. in Las Vegas on 1230 AM. You can stream it live at www.klav1230am.com, and a podcast of the show is posted the next day on bobdancer.com. We’ll be talking about the ball. It figures to be a lot of fun.