{"id":372,"date":"2011-08-19T19:13:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T19:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gwae.apps-1and1.com\/al-francesco-interview"},"modified":"2016-07-27T13:45:57","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T20:45:57","slug":"al-francesco-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/al-francesco-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Al Francesco Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Al Francesco is one of the original 7 people voted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. He hasn\u2019t written any books, but Al is one of the first people to apply the theory to the tables, and take the cash out of the casinos.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a>In my book, Gambling Wizards<\/i>, Bill Walters told me, \u201cIf you\u2019re committed to being a professional gambler, and you want to be the best you can be, you spend every waking moment trying to figure out a way to beat the game.\u201d\u00a0 No one exemplifies this more than Al Francesco. This is the man who invented the Big Player concept, and taught Ken Uston how to count cards.\u00a0 He ran the first computer team, teaching players how to operate hidden microcomputers with their toes.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t content counting cards at a time when the casinos didn\u2019t think blackjack could be beaten.\u00a0 He wanted bigger edges, and moves that the casinos hadn\u2019t seen before.\u00a0 Many people have heard of playing \u201cwarps,\u201d but how many people could do what Al did in Korea?\u00a0 He spotted a dealer inadvertently bending the cards, immediately started signaling to his partner at the table, and within eight hours won over $50,000 in a club with a $100 limit!\u00a0 That is what separates the Hall-of-Famer from the mere professional.<\/p>\n

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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When did you start playing blackjack?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: Ed Thorp gets the credit for that. I started playing in 1963 shortly after I read his book.\u00a0 It took me about five weeks to learn his system, the Ten Count.\u00a0 You had to count backwards with a ratio of small cards to large cards.\u00a0 You started with 36\/16, and if you saw one of each, a ten and a non-ten, you went to 35\/15.\u00a0 You had to divide one into the other.\u00a0 That ratio would then determine when to hit or stand, and your bet size. I remember going up to Reno and playing with it, but it was a very difficult system.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did you meet Thorp back then?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: No, Thorp really didn\u2019t play much.\u00a0 He tried to play and got cheated all the time.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t able to spot the cheating, because he didn\u2019t have the background I did.\u00a0 He had someone with him to see why he wasn\u2019t winning, and that person witnessed all the cheating.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Were you a gambler before that?\u00a0 Did you go to Vegas just to play?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: I had never been to Vegas or Reno.\u00a0 I had just moved to California when I read the book.\u00a0 Earlier in my life when I was 19 to 21, I gambled in my hometown, Gary, Indiana.\u00a0 I used to play some games like Greek Rummy and some other games that aren\u2019t popular now.\u00a0 I guess I was good at it, or else my opponents were extremely bad.\u00a0 I won just about every time I played.\u00a0 It was small stakes.\u00a0 I made about $5,000 a year, but back then that is what I would have made at a regular job.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So you were used to looking for an edge?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: I have always looked for an edge.\u00a0 I probably only played without an edge twice in my life.\u00a0 At least, every other time I thought I had an edge.\u00a0 I remember those times very clearly.\u00a0 I remember the thrill, which is totally different than when you\u2019re gambling for a living.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What were you playing?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: I was in a crap game.\u00a0 I was making $10 and $20 bets.\u00a0 It was a high.\u00a0 I lost $200 and ran out of money.\u00a0 I ran home to get some more, but by the time I got back the game had broken up. I probably saved the rest of the money I had.\u00a0 Maybe someone was doing something funny in the game.\u00a0 At that time just about any home game had something funny going on.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was 1963 and you learned the Ten Count.\u00a0 What was it like playing back then?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: The first time I played, I got a headache within twenty minutes.\u00a0 It was an extremely tough system.\u00a0 I thought I was ready for it, but I wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 I went home and studied some more, and then when I went back I was ready and could keep up with any dealer.\u00a0 It was all single-deck at that time.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You started off betting small?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: Yes, I was betting from $5 to $25 and then started building a bankroll to the point where I was betting up to two hands of $200. They didn\u2019t know the game was beatable at that time.\u00a0 I was varying my bet from $5 to two hands of $200.\u00a0 I was one of the first people that were really beating the game.\u00a0 I played until my heart\u2019s content.\u00a0 I\u2019d just play and play and play.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did you have problems with them cheating you?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: Oh that was the biggest problem.\u00a0 In 1963 I would catch cheating six to eight times every single day.\u00a0 Most of it was at night.\u00a0 It seemed that all the cheaters worked night shift.\u00a0 I always made money during the day, but at night I got my clock cleaned numerous times.\u00a0 I spotted most of the cheating I think, but evidently there were some moves that were beyond me.\u00a0 Back then dealers would switch their hole card.\u00a0 When they had a ten as an upcard, they had to check their hole card to see if they had blackjack.\u00a0 If they had a stiff, when they were ready to play out their hand, they would switch the hole card as they were turning it over.\u00a0 The top card of the deck became their hole card and the original hole card went to the top of the deck.\u00a0 I was facing twenty over and over again.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know about that move until years later.<\/div>\n
The Cal Neva in North Lake Tahoe was notorious for cheating.\u00a0 Frank Sinatra owned a piece of the place at that time.\u00a0 I went in there because I wanted to see it first hand.\u00a0 I went to the blackjack table and got ten silver dollars.\u00a0 I bet a dollar a hand and it took eleven hands to lose the $10.\u00a0 During that time I got the five of hearts three times in one deck.\u00a0 The dealer was rolling the deck on me, dealing seconds, every move you could imagine.\u00a0 He was practicing on me at $1 a hand.\u00a0 [In the \u201960s the dealers would place the discards face-up on the bottom of the deck.\u00a0 A dealer who cheated would spot a combination of cards that guaranteed the player would lose, place them on the bottom, and then roll the deck over \u2013 inverting it.\u00a0 He would then deal the same cards that had been played on the hand before.\u00a0 This is how Al received the five of hearts three times in the same deck.\u00a0 A more thorough description of this technique can be found in How to Detect Casino Cheating at Blackjack,<\/i> by Bill Zender.]<\/b><\/div>\n
I left the table and I walked over to a busy crap table.\u00a0 Right away I saw something funny going on.\u00a0 I never play the game, but I\u2019m familiar with some cheating moves.\u00a0 I knew some guys back in Gary, Indiana, who could switch dice, and I read a lot of books on how to spot cheating.\u00a0 I saw the croupier give the dice to the guy next to him. The guy picked up the dice, and put them back down.\u00a0 I knew that he switched them. Everybody at the table was betting the \u201cdo,\u201d so I immediately bet the \u201cdon\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0 If I had been smart, I would have just bet the \u201cdon\u2019t\u201d and not paid any attention to the dice.\u00a0 But it was the first time I had ever seen anything like this in a casino. I couldn\u2019t take my eyes off the guy, because I was so amazed.\u00a0 Evidently there were some outside guys who were protecting the game, and they noticed that I was betting \u201cdon\u2019t\u201d and had my eyes on the guy switching dice.\u00a0 They got the message to me that I\u2019d better leave.\u00a0 I knew I wasn\u2019t welcome, and I got out of there.\u00a0 I probably won $300 but they didn\u2019t like me having any part of it.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did the casinos ever assault you?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: <\/b>I got roughed up one time at Harvey\u2019s.\u00a0 My brother had told me about seeing a guy there get the hell beat out of him by security guards.\u00a0 Nobody did anything or said anything. \u00a0They just assumed he had done something wrong.\u00a0 About two weeks later I was in Harvey\u2019s.\u00a0 They had barred me before and told me not to come back.\u00a0 I was just scouting the place, and they spotted me and took me upstairs to a security office.\u00a0 While we were going upstairs they were tripping me.\u00a0 They were trying to get me mad.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t do anything at all because of the story my brother told me.\u00a0 They hit me a couple of times, but nothing really bad.\u00a0 This was back in \u201963 or \u201964 and I had heard about people being found out in the desert, so I wasn\u2019t going to take any chances.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did you form a team right away?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: No.\u00a0 I played by myself, mostly in Reno and Tahoe.\u00a0 After a year and a half I started getting barred left and right.\u00a0 I was being hassled too much, so I quit playing.\u00a0 I stopped for about eight years, and then they introduced 4-deck games, and Lawrence Revere came out with the Advanced Point Count.\u00a0 I learned that system and started playing blackjack again.\u00a0 I played for about a month, started getting heat again, and stopped playing.\u00a0 I knew that I had to come up with a better way to play.\u00a0 [Lawrence Revere wrote Playing Blackjack as a Business<\/i>.]<\/b><\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did you know Revere?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: Yes.\u00a0 We went to Mexico together on a vacation.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Were there casinos in Mexico at that time?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: No, we just did it to spend a few days together.\u00a0 It was a fun trip.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How did you know him?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: I called him up because I was using his system.\u00a0 He wanted to give me lessons, but as it turned out I played the game better than he did.\u00a0 He was a character.\u00a0 He would always take a card out of the deck without his students knowing it.\u00a0 The student would always end up with the wrong count.\u00a0 That way he could charge them for more lessons.\u00a0 He made more money off his students than he ever did off the casinos.\u00a0 He played both sides, too.\u00a0 He would teach people how to play, and then he would go to the casinos and point out the people he had taught.<\/div>\n
We went to Panama together once and were arrested.\u00a0 I believe it was Noriega who arrested us.\u00a0 They picked us up and put us in jail.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t speak English and we didn\u2019t speak Spanish.\u00a0 They wouldn\u2019t let us make any phone calls.\u00a0 The next day they let us go.\u00a0 They never did explain why they arrested us.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did they keep any of your money?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: No.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have a lot of money on me, maybe $5,000.\u00a0 As far as I\u2019m concerned we were arrested for one of three reasons.\u00a0 Revere was going to Panama frequently.\u00a0 That was probably his eighth trip that year.\u00a0 There was a certain amount of drug traffic between Panama and Columbia, so they might have thought he was dealing drugs.\u00a0 Another possibility is \u2014 Noriega was in the casino at the time we were arrested.\u00a0 He was second in command at that time.\u00a0 This was, I think, 1971.\u00a0\u00a0 One time a woman came to my table and wanted to sit down, and I was rude to her because I wanted to play by myself.\u00a0 That could have been Noriega\u2019s girlfriend.\u00a0 The third possibility \u2014 I made a pass at a beautiful woman, and she may have been Noriega\u2019s wife or girlfriend.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never know for sure, but I think it was one of those three reasons.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How did you come up with the Big Player concept?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: I was in Lake Tahoe with my brother and sister and her husband.\u00a0 We had reservations for the Top of the Wheel in Harvey\u2019s.\u00a0 We were killing time waiting for dinner, and my brother was playing blackjack.\u00a0 He was betting from $1 to $5 and he knew how to count.\u00a0 I was standing behind him talking with my brother-in-law, and every time I noticed my brother make a $5 bet, I threw $100 on his hand.\u00a0 I just kept talking to my brother-in-law and let my brother play the hand.\u00a0 It looked like I couldn\u2019t care less about what happened.\u00a0 If my brother went down to $1, I pulled all my money back.\u00a0 We did that for about thirty minutes and the pit boss loved it, because they didn\u2019t see many hundred-dollar bettors at that time.\u00a0 When it came time to leave, the pit boss ran outside the pit and tried to stop me from going.\u00a0 He wanted me to keep playing.\u00a0 They bought that hook, line, and sinker.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t give it too much thought, and then when I was playing in that four-deck game, it came to me that this was the way to outsmart them. <\/b><\/div>\n
I started recruiting people that were interested in blackjack.\u00a0 Some were people I played poker with. \u00a0The first trip I was the big player and I had three teammates.\u00a0 We went to Las Vegas with $8,000 and I remember being in the Stardust betting three hands of $500 on an $8,000 bankroll.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know at the time that I was way over-betting.\u00a0 I got really lucky and in 45 minutes I won $8,000.\u00a0 We did that for about a year.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wow, if you can double your bankroll every 45 minutes, you\u2019re going to get rich quick.\u00a0 What year was this?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: It was 1971.\u00a0 I was sort of on a high at that point.\u00a0 After 45 minutes I signaled to my partners that the play was over.\u00a0 We had originally planned to play three hours, so they were kind of surprised.\u00a0 The pit boss asked me if I wanted lunch and he asked me my name.\u00a0 I gave him the name Frank Fisano.\u00a0 He asked what I did for a living, and I told him I was in real estate.\u00a0 I had lunch, and when I came back out, the pit boss stopped me and said, \u201cHey Frank.\u00a0 I just did some checking on you.\u00a0 There is nobody in the San Francisco area with a real estate license named Frank Fisano.\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cI never told you I had a real estate license.\u00a0 I told you I was in the real estate business.\u00a0 I buy and sell.\u201d\u00a0 It was all bullshit, but he bought the story.\u00a0 About fifteen years later I played at the Stardust again, only it was a hole-card play.\u00a0 We had dealer after dealer with the same weakness, exposing the hole card at first base.\u00a0 I must have played for 24 hours straight.\u00a0 We won about $48,000 and the same pit boss was still there in the pit.\u00a0 Of course he didn\u2019t recognize me after all those years, but I remembered him.<\/div>\n
I was always looking for new people because with three counters the BP didn\u2019t keep busy all the time.\u00a0 It looked like he was waiting for something.\u00a0 If he were betting big all the time, the act looked a lot better.\u00a0 You looked like a raving maniac.\u00a0 Eventually we had six counters and the concept got better.\u00a0 Then I met Ken Uston.\u00a0 We were dating the same girl.\u00a0 She told him he should meet me, so one day he called me up.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did he know how to play at that time?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: No, he was not a winning player at that time.\u00a0 I taught him to count and he started off as a spotter.\u00a0 I had another guy who was one of my best friends that I was using as a BP.\u00a0 I found out he was ripping us off, so I had to get rid of him.\u00a0 I had to replace him and I replaced him with Ken Uston.\u00a0 [Al laughed.]\u00a0 <\/b>I probably should have stayed with the guy who was stealing.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t have written a book about it.\u00a0 All the time Ken worked for me he broke even.\u00a0 All those trips we made, he didn\u2019t win any money.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think he was dishonest.\u00a0 I think he spent so much time trying to put on an act that he lost his edge.\u00a0 The dealers probably ripped him off.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did you know he had plans to write a book?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: Oh no.\u00a0 I had no idea whatsoever.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know about the book until about a week before it hit the bookstores.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When the book hit the stands, the casinos already knew what you guys were doing, didn\u2019t they?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: Not really.\u00a0 To be honest with you, I think Ken wanted to get caught on the last trip we made, because the book was coming out.\u00a0 We were playing at the Sands that particular time, and his publisher was there watching him play.\u00a0 Ken was putting on a big show for him.\u00a0 It was Ken\u2019s play that ended it for us.<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On any given trip there were 22 of us.\u00a0 We had three teams of seven \u2014 six counters and one BP \u2014 and myself as the 22nd person.\u00a0 I was in the background answering the phone in case things happened, and things did happen often enough.\u00a0 The three teams would be in three different casinos.\u00a0 The BP would stay at the casino for three days but the counters would rotate casinos every day.\u00a0 That way the BP had a new set of counters each day.\u00a0 Just in case the casino started to put it together, the next day it would be totally new faces.\u00a0 This bought us more time.\u00a0 We got away with this for 3\u00bd years.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What were the criteria for people who wanted to join the team?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: The first thing I did was teach them how to count down a deck with the Revere APC, and I would give them basic strategy.\u00a0 I told them to come back and I would test them when they could count down a deck in 30 seconds, and knew basic strategy.\u00a0 If they could pass that test, then I would teach them the rest.\u00a0 Then they had to improve their time to 20 seconds.\u00a0 But to start, if they could get it down in 30 seconds, I knew they were interested and had potential.\u00a0 If they didn\u2019t put forth the effort or call me back, I didn\u2019t worry about it because I had enough people that were interested.\u00a0 Most of my people came from other people on the team.<\/div>\n
Incidentally, I taught a lot of women how to play.\u00a0 We had a lot of women on the team and that may be one of the reasons for our success.\u00a0 Women were not given credit for being able to play blackjack.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When I interviewed Cathy Hulbert for Gambling Wizards<\/i>, she said that the casinos were not used to seeing young women bet $1,000 a hand and they became very suspicious.<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: That\u2019s right, but I just used them as spotters and the casinos never suspected them.<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One time, Ken was playing downtown at the Fremont, and called a session off after 35 minutes because he was up $27,000.\u00a0 One of our BPs, named Bill, was in a casino that only had double decks.\u00a0 We normally didn\u2019t play double decks.\u00a0 The counts didn\u2019t stay hot very long, so you had to jump around too much. So I had six counters that wanted to play, and I sent them over to help Bill.\u00a0 I wanted to oversee it since there were thirteen of my people in there.\u00a0 That kept Bill busy.\u00a0 He was jumping all over the place.\u00a0 There would be three or four people giving him the hot signal at the same time. I saw that Bill was losing and realized that he might run out of money.\u00a0 I walked through the casino and I put my hand on my crotch.\u00a0 Bill saw me and knew I meant he should meet me at the bathroom.\u00a0 I headed for the pay phone and acted like I was making a phone call.\u00a0 I had $15,000 in an envelope and he just knew what I was doing.\u00a0 I hung up the phone and left the envelope just as he walked up.\u00a0 He got the money and resumed play.\u00a0 He saw someone giving him a hot signal at another table.\u00a0 He yelled at the pit boss, \u201cMake three bets over there for me.\u201d\u00a0 He gave the boss some money to do it, and then he saw another hand go up, so he said, \u201cMake three more bets over there for me.\u00a0 What have I got over there?\u201d\u00a0 The boss said, \u201cYou have a 15, a 16 and a 20.\u201d\u00a0 Bill said, \u201cStand, stand, stand.\u201d\u00a0 He could see the dealer\u2019s upcard on that table.\u00a0 Then he yells, \u201cmake three bets over there for me,\u201d pointing at another table,\u00a0 \u201cThree more over there.\u201d\u00a0 It was like watching an orchestra leader.\u00a0 The bosses were running all over the casino making bets for him.\u00a0 It would be nice if he had won, but unfortunately he lost about $30,000.\u00a0 The next day we thought we would have a field day, because they liked his action so much.\u00a0 But the next day they wouldn\u2019t let him play more than one table at a time.\u00a0 The reason they gave was, there were too many opportunities for the dealers to rip off the casino.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s been a long time since I read The Big Player<\/i> (by Ken Uston and Roger Rapoport), but I seem to remember a story like that only Ken was the BP.<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: Ken was constantly taking credit for things he didn\u2019t do.\u00a0 Usually it was for things I did but in this case it was really Bill.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did you play much out of the country?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: <\/b>A of couple years after I went to Panama with Revere, I went back with Bill.\u00a0 It was my first really successful trip.\u00a0 We won about $39,000 in three weeks with a maximum bet of $200.\u00a0\u00a0 The game was very good over there. They had surrender and you could resplit aces and then double down.\u00a0 The first card off the 4-deck shoe they would show you and then burn it.\u00a0 Then they would deal the entire 4 decks except the last card and then show you that one.\u00a0 Bill was in training the first few days and I would watch him play for a while, and when there was half a deck left, I would ask him what the count was.\u00a0 He\u2019d tell me, and then I\u2019d count the rest of the shoe to see how accurate he was.\u00a0 He was pin point accurate every time, so he started playing one table and I\u2019d play my own.\u00a0 After a couple of weeks we were playing at one casino spreading to seven hands of $200.\u00a0 We\u2019d play about three hours and then it would be time for a break.\u00a0 The casino knew we were friends but not partners.\u00a0 Anyway, we had been playing about three hours and I thought it was time for a break.\u00a0 I got up and went over to Bill\u2019s table.\u00a0 He had five hands with $200 on each, and he was thinking about what to do.\u00a0 I had more experience than Bill, and I saw that no matter what the count was he couldn\u2019t hit any of the hands.\u00a0 In Panama the dealer doesn\u2019t take a hole card.\u00a0 I said to the dealer, \u201chit your hand\u201d and pointed at the dealer\u2019s face card.\u00a0 The dealer instantly hit himself with an ace.\u00a0 Bill jumped about three feet in the air and said, \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d as the dealer started scooping his money.\u00a0 The dealer pointed at me and said, \u201cHe told me to hit.\u201d\u00a0 Bill said, \u201cThat\u2019s my money.\u201d\u00a0 The pit boss came over, and they loved our business, so the pit boss told the dealer to give the ace to Bill.\u00a0 Bill had all pat hands except one hand with a pair of nines.\u00a0 He split the 9s into the face card, and got the ace on one and a face card on the other.\u00a0 The dealer drew a 7, so Bill won six hands instead of losing five.\u00a0 Bill really knew how to read little situations like that and take advantage of them.<\/div>\n
The Bahamas are just bad news.\u00a0 I heard what happened to Tommy Hyland but that was after my trips there.\u00a0 My first trip was in 1972 or \u201973.\u00a0 I was with Bill and we were on our way home after playing in Panama. We stopped in the Bahamas and saw a headline in the paper.\u00a0 It said something like, \u201c52 murders in the last year, not one arrest.\u201d We played for a short time and lost about $6,000. The game didn\u2019t look beatable so we were going to leave.\u00a0 On the way out we were picked up by casino security.\u00a0 They took us up to our room and claimed that we were cheating them.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Even though you lost?<\/b><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
AF: They claimed we were ahead $6,000, and they wanted their money back.\u00a0 Bill had never been on a trip like this before, and he let me make the decisions on how to handle it.\u00a0 I refused to give in to them even though there were five security guards and a couple of pit bosses in our room.\u00a0 We were outnumbered and at their mercy. They went through our stuff and found a lot of traveler\u2019s checks.\u00a0 Fortunately we didn\u2019t have a lot of cash.\u00a0 I just wouldn\u2019t admit that we had won $6,000 when we had lost.\u00a0 Plus, we weren\u2019t doing anything wrong.\u00a0 We were just counting cards.\u00a0 I told them they should check with the pit boss in the casino, because they had their information wrong.\u00a0 They checked downstairs and then they said it was $3,000 not $6,000, but they wanted the $3,000.\u00a0 We went back and forth and by now it was five o\u2019clock in the morning.\u00a0 Now instead of seven people in our room it was down to three.\u00a0 Eventually they left, but called us on the phone and said they would report us to the IRS.\u00a0 That was good news to me, because it meant we were going to get off the island.\u00a0 An hour later it was time to leave and we had to go to the cashier\u2019s cage where we had a safe deposit box.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t know about the box, but that was where all our cash was.\u00a0 We had to wait about twenty minutes to get in the box.\u00a0 We thought they were stalling for time to have security there when we opened the box, but the way it turned out it was just ineptness on their part.\u00a0 We finally got in the box with no interference and got on the next plane out of there.<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A year and a half later, Ken Uston and another of our players, named Blair, were in the Bahamas with Bill and me.\u00a0 [An interesting side note \u2013 the \u201cBlair\u201d that Al mentions here is Blair Hull.\u00a0 He went on to become a hugely successful options trader in Chicago, and sold his company to Goldman Sachs for over 500 million dollars.\u00a0 He is featured in the book New Market Wizards<\/i>, by Jack Schwager, He ran for senator in Illinois in 2004, and lost to a young Barak Obama.]\u00a0 <\/b>There were two islands with casinos.\u00a0 One island was okay and the other was bad.\u00a0 We started off in one casino playing hole cards. They were lifting the hole card way up and it was so easy to see \u2014 it was the sloppiest game I\u2019ve seen in my life.\u00a0 Bill won $13,000 and I won $15,000.\u00a0 We were at separate tables.<\/div>\n
After we left that casino they wanted to go to the other casino in the bad part of the Bahamas \u2014 the same casino where Bill and I had been held hostage.\u00a0 I was surprised Bill wanted to go back there.\u00a0 We went, and there were no hole cards to play, so we decided to take the night off.\u00a0 We let our hair down and spent about three hours drinking wine and having a nice dinner.\u00a0 After dinner Ken went over to a blackjack table and started playing $10 a hand.\u00a0 I walked by the table and he was reaching for $10 to double down on a hand and I reached into my jacket pocket and threw him $10,000 on the table and kept on walking.\u00a0 There was no good reason to do it, but I did it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing as it turned out.\u00a0 It might have called attention to me, and that was why they picked me up a few minutes later, or maybe that was one of the reasons they recognized me.\u00a0 On the other hand, when they picked me up, I didn\u2019t have any cash on me.<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 About ten minutes later I was picked up by security.\u00a0 Nobody saw them pick me up.\u00a0 I was in this back room all by myself, and it was three o\u2019clock in the morning.\u00a0 One of the guys flashed some kind of ID really fast, and I asked if I could see it again.\u00a0 He said, \u201cFuck off.\u201d\u00a0 With that kind of remark you don\u2019t know if these guys really are police or security guards or what.\u00a0 I recognized the people from a year and a half earlier that had told me not to come back to the island.\u00a0 I told them I didn\u2019t play, and I had reservations on the first plane out in the morning.\u00a0 They got my wallet and went through all my stuff.\u00a0 They found some names and phone numbers which I didn\u2019t want them to find, like Ken\u2019s and Bill\u2019s.\u00a0 They started leading me out of the office and I saw they weren\u2019t going to let me go.\u00a0 I asked if I could make a phone call.\u00a0 They asked whom I wanted to call.\u00a0 I said I wanted to call my brother in San Francisco.\u00a0 As soon as I said that, three of them picked me up by the belt and whisked me out a side door.\u00a0 They put me in an unmarked station wagon.\u00a0 I remembered that headline about the 52 unsolved murders and my life flashed in front of me.\u00a0 I really thought I was a dead man.\u00a0 Remember that it was three in the morning and none of my friends knew this was happening to me.\u00a0 They took me to my hotel and searched my room.\u00a0 Then they said, \u201cBe on the next plane out of here,\u201d and they let me go.<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bill and I went to France four times, and always had a field day because at that time they didn\u2019t know the game was beatable.\u00a0 We actually broke one casino, which was supposedly the eighth largest casino in France.\u00a0 We beat them for $230,000.\u00a0 Casinos in France are nowhere near as large as in Vegas.\u00a0 They had three blackjack tables and a nice hotel.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t seem like $230,000 would be enough to break them, but it was.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t collect all the money we won, but we got most of it.\u00a0 I still have a check for $20,000 in my files.<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Another time, Blair and Ken were in Monte Carlo, and they knew Bill and I were planning a trip to Europe.\u00a0 They called because they were running low on money.\u00a0 Two days later KP and I are\u00a0 in France.\u00a0 KP was the girl I was dating at the time and a very good counter.\u00a0 We went to Monte Carlo and they had opened a new modern casino, Loews.\u00a0 Normally, because of jet lag, I don\u2019t even consider playing the first day I arrive.\u00a0 This time we went straight to Loews and when I walked in the casino, Ken was jumping around from table to table back-counting.\u00a0 Blair was sitting down at a table by himself.\u00a0 They were both betting up to two hands of $500, because they only had about $25,000 with them.\u00a0 When I came I had $125,000 with me.\u00a0 KP sat down and right away had a hot deck so she called me over.\u00a0 I started playing seven hands of $500.\u00a0 Ken saw me so he started calling me into his table.\u00a0 Then Blair started calling me in.\u00a0 Ken and Blair were betting two hands of $500, and I\u2019d bet the other five spots of $500.\u00a0 We got up $29,000 in under two hours and the pit boss threw his hands up in the air and said, \u201cThat\u2019s it.\u00a0 If you want to continue playing, you have to start making big bets off the top of the shoe.\u201d\u00a0 My comment was, \u201cCash me in.\u201d<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That sounds like a pretty sharp pit boss for that time.<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: Yes.\u00a0 The following morning we knew we weren\u2019t going to play there anymore, so when KP and I went down to eat we saw Ken and Blair having breakfast.\u00a0 Two tables away there were five pit bosses eating.\u00a0 We walked straight over to Ken and Blair\u2019s table and sat down, letting the pit bosses know we were all together.\u00a0 I had never done anything like that before, but I knew we weren\u2019t going to play another hand in that casino, so I felt like rubbing it in their face.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You went there with $125,000.\u00a0 Were you worried about carrying such a large amount of money?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: A good portion was always in traveler\u2019s checks.\u00a0 Those are easy to cash.\u00a0 But carrying cash is just part of the problem of the game.\u00a0 It\u2019s something you have to contend with.\u00a0 It was really a problem in Korea.\u00a0 In Korea you aren\u2019t allowed to take more than $10,000 out of the country.\u00a0 Bill and I played there.\u00a0 After about a day I noticed that the dealer was marking the cards, but not intentionally.\u00a0 Every time the dealer had a face card or ace as her upcard, she would peek to see if she had blackjack.\u00a0 She would snap the corner of the card trying to protect the hole card from anyone behind her trying to see it.\u00a0 Evidently, a few weeks before there had been a team in there spooking, so they were making a great effort to protect the hole card.\u00a0 [Spooking is a move where a spotter, known as a \u201cspook,\u201d is positioned across the pit from a dealer that lifts his hole card too high when checking for a blackjack.\u00a0 The value of that card is signaled to a player sitting on that dealer\u2019s table.\u00a0 This move has been thwarted since the \u201980s, when casinos either stopped checking the hole card, or started using mirrored or electronic card readers.\u00a0 There is an entertaining scene involving a spooking play at the beginning of the movie Casino<\/i>.]<\/b>\u00a0 While they were protecting the hole card, they were bending all the tens and aces in the corner.\u00a0 Later, when that card was the dealer\u2019s hole card, I could identify it as a face card or an ace with 100% accuracy.\u00a0 The deck stayed in play for 24 hours, so it didn\u2019t take long for the whole deck to be marked.\u00a0 When I noticed that, I started signaling Bill.\u00a0 He was playing and I was looking for the marks.\u00a0 I was signaling him when to hit and stand.\u00a0 He didn’t understand why I was making some odd plays.\u00a0 Eventually we took a break, and back in the room I told Bill what was going on.\u00a0 We got out Thorp\u2019s book and there was the complete playing strategy, given this information.\u00a0 Two hours later we were back in the casino betting seven hands of the limit, which was only $100.\u00a0 We played for eight hours and won $51,800.<\/div>\n
When we went to Korea we didn\u2019t know how long we were going to stay, so we only had a five-day visa.\u00a0 We had to leave the next day to renew our visas, and we had to figure out how to get all that cash out of Korea.\u00a0 We had to deal with the black market to change the money into dollars.\u00a0 You never know what you\u2019re getting into when you deal with the black market, but it\u2019s just one of those things you have to deal with as a blackjack player.\u00a0 Then we had to take the money out.\u00a0 If they caught us they would confiscate the money, and we could go to prison for ten years.\u00a0 We decided to put the money in our shoes.\u00a0 We both had $10,000 in each shoe.\u00a0 We walked right through the airport, and we were both an inch taller that day.\u00a0 They searched us pretty thoroughly, but they didn\u2019t look in our shoes.<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We went to Japan to renew our visas, and then went back to Korea, thinking we were really going to clean up.\u00a0 When we got back, the first time the dealer had a ten as an upcard she did the same move, bending the corner.\u00a0 Then the pit boss gave her a mean look.\u00a0 She picked up the face card and straightened out the corner.\u00a0 Next time, she kinked the card again, the pit boss gave her the look again, and she straightened it out.\u00a0 We started just counting and they started shuffling up on us, so we left Korea.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What year did you start the Big Player concept?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: I came up with the idea in \u201971 or \u201972 and I probably met Ken in \u201973.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When did it become exposed?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: That probably happened in 1975.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Didn\u2019t you continue to play with Ken after that?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: We were friends after that.\u00a0 He was doing a lot of hole-carding after that.\u00a0 [Hole-carding means seeing the dealer\u2019s hole card through various methods.\u00a0 I mentioned earlier that this could be done by spooking, or by \u201cfirst basing,\u201d which is seeing the card from the first seat at the table when the dealer checks for blackjack.\u00a0 A third method, called \u201cfront loading,\u201d is to spot the hole card when the dealer tucks it underneath the upcard.\u00a0 Any of these methods provide a much bigger edge than counting cards, but spooking and first basing are almost non-existent, since most casinos don\u2019t manually check the hole card anymore.] <\/b><\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So you didn\u2019t hold a grudge against Ken for blowing the Big Player concept?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: I should have, but I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 All the people on the team were pissed off at him except Bill.\u00a0 They became very close, but everyone else hated Ken with a passion.\u00a0 They were having the time of their lives and making good money and Ken ruined it for them.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When did you play with the hidden computers?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: That was probably two years later.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How did that project come about?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: Ken Uston introduced me to Keith Taft, who lived in Sunnyvale at the time.\u00a0 He was an extremely religious guy and he was ingenious.\u00a0 He came up with this idea of putting a computer in your shoes.\u00a0 He was looking for someone to run a team for him, and Ken thought I\u2019d be the right guy.\u00a0 Keith and I hooked up and I was retired at the time, but I liked the idea.\u00a0 I started teaching people how to use these computers operated in their shoes.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How did it work?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: We were inputting the exact value of the card but the suit was immaterial. There were two switches in each shoe.\u00a0 They were on the top and bottom of our big toes.\u00a0 With those four switches you could input any card.\u00a0 The four switches had values of 1, 2, 4, and 8, so by combining switch 8 with switch 2 you could make a 10. <\/b>\u00a0If you were playing heads-up, you saw your first two cards and you would input those two.\u00a0 Then you would input the dealer\u2019s upcard, and the computer would tell you how to play the hand.\u00a0 The feedback was a buzzer on the ball of your foot.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t make any noise but you felt a little vibration.\u00a0 A buzz would mean hit and buzz-buzz would mean stand, and so on.\u00a0 We had various signals telling us what to do in any situation \u2014 double down, surrender, raise your bet, and lower your bet.<\/div>\n
We had a house in Reno for about three months.\u00a0 When we first started out there was always something going wrong.\u00a0 Wires would break, the shoes would fall apart, the batteries would fall out of the heel, and you needed someone to maintain the equipment all the time.<\/div>\n
Our idea was to play single-deck, and flat bet.\u00a0 At that time the casinos were very paranoid about counters.\u00a0 We thought that if we flat bet we would get away with it forever.\u00a0 But the shoes we put the computers in were a little on the bulky side.\u00a0 We had some comments from the pit bosses about the size of our shoes.\u00a0 One of our players told the boss that he had a big toe problem, and these were the only shoes he could fit into.<\/div>\n
One time, one of our players was walking across Las Vegas Boulevard thinking about what had happened to him in the Desert Inn on a play.\u00a0 As he was walking across the street, a car hit him and knocked him right out of his shoes.\u00a0 I happened to be coming across the street and saw the whole thing.\u00a0 But he was okay.\u00a0 He was just wrapped up in his play and oblivious to the traffic on that street.<\/div>\n
Most of the players that I trained were new to the game of blackjack.\u00a0 Our training took six or eight weeks and I had to start at ground zero, because most of these people had never played before.\u00a0 Some of them were not even gamblers.\u00a0 The biggest bet they had made in their life might have been $5, but in short order I had them out betting a hundred or two hundred dollars.\u00a0 We probably had an edge of 1\u00bd%, but if you run across a dealer who\u2019s cheating you, that can evaporate quickly.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s what happened to us a few times.<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We played for nine months, but we didn\u2019t make any money.\u00a0 I think we tried to do too much, and flat betting might not have been aggressive enough.\u00a0 We lost about $75,000 altogether between Keith\u2019s work and our losses.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a big deal, just nine months of our time.\u00a0 Not one person was arrested or pulled up.\u00a0 At that time computers were not illegal.<\/div>\n
I\u2019ve always been able to come up with new ideas.\u00a0 I hit the casino with an idea they haven\u2019t seen before, so I\u2019m able to take advantage of it.\u00a0 They have no idea how they\u2019re getting beat.\u00a0 Another concept I played was called \u201cthe drop.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019d play single-deck, and when I cut the cards I would lift the top of the deck and tilt it toward someone at the next table who would spot the card.\u00a0 Then I would drop four or five cards back onto the deck and cut.\u00a0 When the dealer completes the cut, I know either the fourth or fifth card down.\u00a0 Depending on what that card is you know how many hands to play to either get the card for yourself or give it to the dealer.\u00a0 The skill you had to master was knowing exactly how many cards you dropped.\u00a0 I could do that with 95% accuracy.\u00a0 I\u2019d generally play three hands of $500 off the top.\u00a0 The casinos thought they had a big edge because you\u2019re starting off with a zero count, but I had an average edge of 16%.\u00a0 I played that for about six months, but it was the type of idea that couldn\u2019t be used a lot because you needed perfect conditions. It was usually a three-man concept.\u00a0 You needed a table to yourself.\u00a0 Then you needed someone at the next table who could see that card when you flashed it to him.\u00a0 Then you needed another person across the pit who would relay a signal to you letting you know whether it was a big card or a small card. Those conditions were hard to find.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I suppose that is why they did away with letting people cut by hand.<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: Right.\u00a0 That and there was another team that was cutting to aces which may have had more to do with them introducing the plastic cut card.\u00a0 I was arrested for playing the drop at Fitzgerald\u2019s in Reno.\u00a0 To this day they don\u2019t know what I was doing.\u00a0 They knew I was doing something, but they couldn\u2019t figure it out.\u00a0 I had to hire an attorney, but after a while they just dropped it.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Do you think that was cheating?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: The drop concept was tainted.\u00a0 Some people would say it\u2019s dishonest, but if it was dishonest I don\u2019t give a damn.\u00a0 I know how many times I was mistreated or cheated by the casinos and I was getting even with them. Hole-carding is not dishonest; it\u2019s been tested in the courts.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How did your wives handle this gambling?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: I got into playing blackjack at the tail end of my first marriage.\u00a0 I was married the second time to a Venezuelan girl and she knew about my blackjack.\u00a0 She took it pretty well.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Are you still playing blackjack?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: I went back to blackjack again in the \u201990s when Arnold [Snyder] put together a team called CRAPS.\u00a0 We started as a straight count team.\u00a0 We had great people on the team, but for some reason we didn\u2019t make any money.\u00a0 After about a year we threw in the towel, but at that time I came up with the idea for an ace-sequencing team.\u00a0 It took me about six months to put together the concept.\u00a0 I played around with four or five different ideas on how to memorize these sequences of cards.\u00a0 Some of the ideas weren\u2019t very good.\u00a0 I finally came up with one that worked extremely well.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did you read memory books?<\/b><\/div>\n
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AF: I read every book I could find about memory and had eight hours of tapes I studied.\u00a0 I can\u2019t do it now because I\u2019m out of practice, but one time I played an eight-deck game where I memorized 24 sequences and was able to recall all 24.\u00a0 Most of the time you play a six-deck game and you might see 12 or 13 that you memorize.\u00a0 I taught a number of people and we did very well with it.<\/div>\n
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RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What are you working on now?<\/b><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
AF:\u00a0 At the moment I\u2019m on the other side of the table in a way.\u00a0 I\u2019m involved in a banking operation here in California.\u00a0 These card rooms can\u2019t accept bets from customers.\u00a0 The bets have to be between players.\u00a0 If one customer wants to bet $1,000 and there is no one at the table who wants to bet that much, then he can\u2019t make that bet.\u00a0 That\u2019s where I come in.\u00a0 I supply someone at the table who accepts all bets.\u00a0 We have bankers in a bunch of casinos, so it is like being on the other side right now.\u00a0 I never thought I\u2019d be in this position.\u00a0 I\u2019m still not the casino, I\u2019m sort of a middle man.<\/div>\n
I\u2019m also involved in horse racing.\u00a0 I\u2019ve tried to beat the horses on and off for over 20 years.\u00a0 The first time I tried with my three brothers.\u00a0 We spent $45,000, twenty years ago, gathering data from all the California and New York tracks.\u00a0 We had a guy named Bill Quirin help gather all this data, and he ended up writing a book about our study \u2014 without our okay [Winning at the Races,<\/i> by William Quirin, 1979].<\/b>\u00a0 He was just like Ken Uston.\u00a0 It was a very successful book. It was the best book on horse racing at that time.\u00a0 We thought we had some winning systems at that time, but they didn\u2019t hold up.\u00a0 About four years ago we started playing the Pick 6 and we hit a few.\u00a0 We think we have a winning system right now, but we haven\u2019t played long enough to know for sure.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
RWM:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No blackjack?<\/b><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
AF:\u00a0 I think blackjack is behind me now.\u00a0 I may not play another hand of blackjack in my life, but I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 [Al stopped to think for a moment.] <\/b>\u00a0I did come up with another concept about two years ago\u2026<\/div>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al Francesco is one of the original 7 people voted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. He hasn\u2019t written any books, but Al is one of the first people to apply the theory to the tables, and take the cash out of the casinos. In my book, Gambling Wizards, Bill Walters told me, \u201cIf you\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,2,3,1,206],"tags":[374,504,208,704,49,705,283,396,578,715,703,707,574,711,259,710,701,247,98,245,112,708,692,709,713,642,712,577,153,349,706,714,702],"yoast_head":"\nAl Francesco Interview - Gambling With An Edge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/al-francesco-interview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Al Francesco Interview - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Al Francesco is one of the original 7 people voted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. He hasn\u2019t written any books, but Al is one of the first people to apply the theory to the tables, and take the cash out of the casinos. 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