Casino HEAT Explained: How Blackjack Cheats Avoid Suspicion | Cheating at Blackjack

What is casino heat, and why do blackjack players fear it?
In Episode 11 of Cheating at Blackjack, Kaiser and Dustin Marks explain what "heat" really means inside a casino. They discuss how casino bosses, pit managers, surveillance, and floor supervisors react when players start winning, the superstitions casinos used to employ, and the psychological pressure placed on dealers and players.

The episode includes real stories about surveillance, interrogation by gaming agents, avoiding suspicion, casino "voodoo" rituals, cover play, and how professional teams managed attention while operating inside Las Vegas casinos.

If you've ever wondered how casinos monitor winning players—or what really happens behind the scenes—this episode offers a rare insider perspective.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

The one thing every cheat fears is heat. Heat is that piercing, burning stare the boss gives us. Welcome to Cheating at Blackjack. I'm the Kaiser, and here's our host, Dustin Marks.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Welcome everybody. Well, today's episode is one honestly I wish we didn't have to cover, but it's very important to be a successful cheat, and that is heat and understanding it.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

And better dealing with it, exactly. Heat is pressure from whatever boss is standing behind the game. Back in those days, they used to sweat or worry about all the money that a player is winning. It is part of their job to make it look like they care. And some actually do. They take it personally that a player is winning. Because they have to answer to the higher ups, like you have an answer why this person's winning. They got lucky. So it's a lot of pressure to deal with.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Do you think some casinos, not all, the shift boss, casino manager, et cetera, were on a bonus that if the casino or that pit won so much, they would get a percentage?

SPEAKER_00 1:07

I think at some level, I think from the casino manager on up, yes. So they want to make sure as much money goes in that box as possible. They don't want to give up their paycheck in a sense, for lack of a better word. But yes, I think some of them are from casino manager on up. Below that, not so much. But the casino manager will put a lot of pressure on the floor people to do exactly that. You know, they have all sorts of voodoo rituals to make you lose. So they do sweat that dollar going across the table.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I like to talk about that. Some you probably know more, but the rituals. I mean, I've read where a certain boss would wear a certain colored tie because he thought it was lucky, or he would stand in a certain position. And the best, and I'm sure you can elaborate on this, a lucky dealer. Now, not a cheating dealer, just lucky.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yeah, lucky. They swap out dealers left and right. If they have a dealer that is losing the casino's money, they'll swap in a fresh dealer thinking that that dealer's luck is better and they'll get the money back. And and Dustin is right, there are numerous volumes of voodoos. Uh, you mentioned the tie. I worked with the casino owner, did not wear a tie because at one point of his career the table lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and he was wearing a tie, he got rid of it and never wore one cents. Throwing pennies under the game. My favorite ritual, though, is a lot more with the dice guys. They'll take a matchbook back in the day when we had matchbooks in the pit, they would open up the cover, bend certain matches a certain way, like a divining rod, certain right, and they put it and point it right at the player. So this is supposed to make them lose, or we'll switch dice, or we'll, you know, all sorts of things like that. Switching dice was very common. The matchbook was very common where I worked. Uh, I had one foreman, well, actually, he was the pit boss. He uh he switched the dice and he took the dice he had to them across the table. Or I should say across the casino. They had to go fetch it, but he was pissed. But yes, they have all sorts of rituals, and they're not no two are really the same. Everyone has their special, but my favorite one is the matchbook, the the little tentacles pointing out.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

All that is downtime. When the dice are off the table or the cards are off the table being switched for a new deck, the casino can't win a dime. So it's counterproductive.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Counterproductive. And I forgot about that. They switch out decks. Uh, if the deck is losing and the dealer swap didn't work, they'll switch the cards. Uh, if that doesn't work, they'll switch them again, switch more dealers. Come up and kick the dealer on the ankle or something, or whisper sweet nothings in their ear. It was ridiculous back then. And there are still some casinos today that do the same thing. A lot of them have meddled out, but not all of them.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

And as ridiculous as this sounds, and if you're not in the business, you think it's ridiculous, we're being on a square. This actually happened.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

This is an actual mannerism of Florman back then. It was very, very prevalent. They sweat that game. And other than the sweating, they they just stare at you with these evil looks. I mean, you feel the daggers coming through your skull if they're behind you. They are burning you. It's very uncomfortable because they're watching you everything you do. And if it's wrong, your ass is in a sling. I mean, if you turn a car over wrong, you're gonna get yanked, screamed at, yelled, whatever, because you did it wrong, and that's why the table's losing.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Do you think some bosses, not all, but some, literally psychologically thought it was their money?

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Oh, yes. In fact, I'll tell you a story about this. I have a boss or had a boss who was a gambler. He would go out and lose paychecks on paydays. And he was a dice boss, he was a dice player. So if the dice started passing and making more money for the players, he gets pissed off because he's not on the other side of the table to catch that hand. Because when he plays, he always loses. He never catches those monster hands where they win the 10,000, 30,000, 40,000 in a roll. He'd miss all those, but he's watching it on his table. That's his money. He gets very pissed off. And yes, they're they're really like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

He was just part of the game. We had to deal with it. But the best part was the bosses were so damn obvious. They would huddle around the podium like a football team and then look at the dealer or the game, and then the biggest tell, call the eye in the sky. You would have to be blind not to notice that.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

It's interesting you bring it up that way, but it unfolds exactly like that. And again, they don't like to lose. And they, if they are losing, they want to know why they're losing. Well, there's no answer to that, but they want to know why. So now you have your Bob, the foreman. He's dumping, the dealer's dumping, they've done every voodoo trick they know to get it done. Now he goes back over to Sam, who's the backup pit boss. Now Sam's involved, he's watching the game. You got both of them watching the game, and now he's, you know, whatever. Now he walks over to Fred. Fred is the uh the pit boss, he's in charge of the whole pit. Fred's now involved. You got three bodies involved, hierarchy. Then you know you've made the pinnacle because they pick up the phone. The pit boss will pick up the phone and call surveillance. Now surveillance is eyeballing you. So everyone is staring at this game, not for any other reason than to intimidate. And maybe, maybe they'll catch a fish. I don't know. But they like to put all that pressure, and you as a dealer, you feel a ton of bricks on you because they're all watching you, not so much the player, you.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

The good thing was say I'm the dealer, Kaiser's my agent, he could be my eyes, and he could signal me the bosses were watching and giving us heat. The last thing is a deal you want to do is this. Turn away and started looking. You're not looking at your game, that's a big no-no. Big time. And every boss is gonna go, why is he turning around? Very early on, one of the big time cheats, the guy that steal a hot stove, told me, don't ever turn like this on a game. It's suspicious. And your natural inclination is to do that.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Right, you want to know what's going on, but I'm just human nature. So you have to fight human nature not to be curious as to why this is happening, and you're not going to find out an answer if you do look around because they're just gonna be staring at you when you stare at them, and that's not good. You may not have a job at the end of your shift.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

So the best thing is to avoid heat, avoid it completely, and there were a lot of ways to avoid heat. The first way, depending on the casino, we had a threshold that we try not to go over, and that would depend on the casino. Let's just say we thought per session now, if an agent would win a thousand dollars or less, the bosses really wouldn't watch us that much because they had other games to watch.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, if there's nothing going on on one particular game, they'll walk around, watch other games, or they'll stand in the middle of the pit and kind of glance around. They're not as intent as most people think they are. They do watch. I mean, they keep a close eye on what's going on. And if there's big bets coming out, that's gonna draw them in like steel to a magnet. Because A, it's something to watch, and even if there's nothing going on, it gives them something to do to watch. Plus, then again, if money starts going out when he gets that phone call, he can say, Yeah, so-and-so is winning such and such. So he's protecting his ass in the same place.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

So Kaiser brings up a good point. If there was big money on a game across the pit, we knew the bosses and the eye would be looking and we wouldn't have any heat. So we'd love it when there was big money on a different game. So if Kaiser's coming in, not only is he going to my game, but he's as he passes the other games, he's looking to see if there's big money. Then he'll give me a signal like, hey, we've probably got a free ride here, at least for a while.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Yeah, until something subsides across the pit. You know, they're always gonna be drawn to where the action is at. And there's nothing going on in the pit, then they'll just stand in the middle of the pit and do their job. They look around, take their notes, whatever they do. But if there's action, they're gonna gravitate to it. Surveillance, although you're still on the camera, you're still being filmed, most of the focus is gonna be on that game. So no one, you can get away with uh putting a hot stove on the table. No, no one.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

And cooking soup.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

And cooking soup. Clam job, because I like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

So a couple ways we avoided heat was I was saying, let's say it's a thousand dollars. Well, when you have the keys to the candy store, it's kind of hard not to eat a lot of candy. So, what the agents would do is go south with some of their chips, put them in their pocket, which is totally legal. So then, as you know, when the boss looks, agent doesn't have a lot of chips. What does he think?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

See now the bosses they do keep track of what's in the racks, they know what's going out, what's coming in, they have a good handle on what's going on. That's their job, they're very good at it. So if you're standing in the middle of the pit, just kind of glancing over the tables, the first thing you're gonna draw to is a stack of checks or chips in front of somebody. And you're gonna say, Self? Why does he have all that money? And you're gonna gravitate to that game. Now you're gonna pay attention to find out why or what's he doing, or is he winning streaks? Is he betting large? Is he chunking? Is he you gotta have an answer? So when your boss calls and says, Why is that guy wedding? Say, Wow, he's getting lucky, chunks out there, catches it, and whatever. So he has a reason, he's doing his job. So we put that money in our pocket. So when he's out in the middle of the pit just grazing, he looks over, he doesn't see a bunch of money in front of us, so he doesn't pay attention to that particular table. It's all psychological play.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

And then, of course, when the agent goes to cash out, he doesn't cash out all his chips because that would be a discrepancy if he did.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

I'm not sure the procedure is back there as far as cage goes, but uh it can't be much different than it is now. Any amount of well, now the regulations really require. But back then, if you have a big cash out, they want to know where you came from, where'd you get it from, how you got it, more or less. And so they will call the cage or whatever. So if you don't put a whole shitload on that window there, you're just breezing under. So let's bring it in with us the next time you play.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

So, which is even better because now we walk up with chips a little bit here, a little bit. If we start running low, we'll bring some more out, and we just in and out. It's just one constant game of in and out with the chips.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

And the boss then would think, oh, he was playing somewhere else. Might be craps, might be keynote, who knows?

SPEAKER_00 12:15

You know, he'll come over if he sees if you come up the game with black.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Uh, they'll come over and check the rack, see what's in there, and uh basically judge what you have. That way, when you're playing, they can kind of keep track of where you're at. Again, he goes back into his pit, goes into his slumber land, and occasionally looks over. And if he sees no more black over here, then things are cool. Not knowing you've got 20, you know, $2,000 stuffed in your pocket. He won't know that until you leave when he comes over and checks the rack and goes, Oh my god, they're gone. What happened? Another thing we did, and I thought this was brilliant, is if we did it, it was brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

When the agent comes in, he doesn't just play against me. Like when Kaiser came in, he played against different dealers, so it looked like he's just playing.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Well, that is right. We didn't play just solely on him and then boogied home to our happy and happy gold life. What was great about one of the casinos he worked, he knew his rotation. Then he would call me up, say, Hey, look, uh, let me do this. I love this. This is a this is great.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

So Kaiser said I would know what game I'm gonna be on at what time after my first game I went to. So let's say it's 7 p.m. I go up to the payphone, no cell phones back then, and I call Kaiser. Now, just in case anybody's listening, I disguise it as a racquetball show, which I was literally playing back then. Yeah, so I'd pick up that payphone. It's one of my favorite things. I'd say, let's play a little racquetball. I have court six at 10 a.m. tomorrow. What did that mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 13:49

That means that uh he'll be on that court or that table at that time and I would be there.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

So but 10 p.m. not at 10 p.m.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Yeah. That night. Yeah, so it was reversed. I mean, it's an old cold, but I knew I was gonna be there, he'd be there at 10 o'clock. So I could be there whenever I get there and sit and wait. I knew he would be coming to me. I'm not going to him. This establishes that fact that I am playing, I'm seeing playing other dealers. I'm a you know, in the casino's eye, a flea. The guy comes in constantly and plays a degenerate. Exactly. So all I do is come in and play. He comes to me. I don't go seeking him out. I'm not always playing against him. I'm playing against all the dealers that come to me because I'm already established on that chair for two hours or so, whatever it takes for him to get there, because he's gonna rotate into me. It was the best. I didn't have to seek him out. He sought me out. I would chat with the bosses all the time. I just let them know I'm there and they can survey the situation. You know, I'm playing nothing and talking with the dealers or whoever would talk to me. So I was I was one of those outgoing ones, and so they didn't know when I was in the pit, and they didn't associate with the dealer per se, but they were always different dealers because I was sitting there for a couple hours.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Then I'd come in, we'd rip and tear for 45 minutes, win a lot of money. Then I would go back on break, but Kaiser would stay.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

I would stay and do some more cover play because I got a pocket full of money. I can afford to play, you know, basic strategy at best. Very weak county, but I wouldn't I'm not a counter, so it was very weak. But basic strategy would stretch out my time, then I'd pick up and leave. I mean, there was one night uh we got done playing, had an extra 50 bucks, and on the way to the cage, I stopped off at a dead 21 table, put my 50 bucks in there. Bing bam boom, I had $500 more to go to the cage. So it does happen.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

So the boss would see you play at least three different dealers, so it there's no pattern for they're not looking for a pattern.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

But when I do happen, when they do see chunks of money come our way, and I'm playing other dealers, they don't connect the dots. The pressure you feel as a dealer and the heat that is being pounded upon you is real, it's a real feeling, and you just feel like crumbling. And by the way, casinos catch every single cheat.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Really? You see any cuff marks on my wrist?

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Exactly. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Now, as much as we tried not to have heat, as many plays as we did, we did have some real heat.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yes, we had the you feel the pressure. I felt it a couple of times, and I know you had some on you as well. So go ahead, fire it out. What do you got, one?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Well, I'm fairly new at cheating, and I'm on a big team out of town play at this casino. It went on for several weeks. Team whittle down just myself and my mentor, who I think was the best card cheater who ever lived. He was coming in playing me about three, four times a week, and we were winning a ton of money. One night he's in there, everybody's watching out. The sky, the bosses, big crowd would farm, the other players.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

We rip and tear. That's an audience. Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah, I didn't realize that.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

We're ripping and tearing, relief dealer comes, I start walking to the break room, as you well know. I get another tap on my back. I turn around to three gaming control agents. Now, the gaming control board is the policing agency for the state of Nevada. And they say, Yes, they said, follow us. I followed him to a small room. They said, set. Yeah, really. I want to treat after this. First thing they said is, Do you know Mr. C C? That's the name I'll use. I said, No. But he's in here a lot. He talks. Well, I don't know him. Then they asked me, Did you ever work at XYZ Casino? I had not worked at that casino ever. And I knew what they were trying to do. They're trying to establish a connection between us. And there wasn't any on paper. So I felt good about this. But then they made a fatal mistake, at least in my mind. They cracked out a turn.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Cracked out a turn. Oh, yeah. Gotta love that.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

House of Games. Yes. They asked me or told me or accused me of giving up the whole card to Mr. CC, which was a common cheating method back then. In the 80s, if you had a tenor Ace up, you'd look at your whole card. If you had a blackjack, you turn it over, the round was over. Right. Well, we weren't doing that for two reasons. One, it was a known cheating move.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Yes, very weak as well.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Number two, it was too weak compared to what we were doing. Yes. So I didn't say a thing. A few minutes later, they got up and left. I didn't get arrested. I didn't even get fired. So that was my story with heat. I played it off right, but imagine, you know, first time you're in a big team with the best whoever lived, and you get pulled up like that.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

First time out, you get with the big boys, you get busted. Well, not busted, just uh it got heat. It got heat. A lot of it. And that is when you have the you know the police interrogating you, uh, it's very nerve-wracking. I mean, you just a lot of people will crush. It's not fun. Make you cry.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Now, I wasn't the only one who experienced real heat.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

I had a couple episodes with heat, and let me start with the easy one first. Uh, I was involved in a computer computer cooler to where I would stack up the deck and I would leave the table, let the incoming dealer deal the game. Casino manager comes to me and says, uh, oddly enough, he says, Was that on the square? I go, Well, yeah, I I wasn't even on the table. I don't even know what you're talking about, but whatever you're talking about, I was on the square. He goes, Okay. And so, fast forward a couple weeks, it was a great brainchild to say, Let's do that again.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

With unbelievably the same players.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Same players. Now, not good. When the first one went down and the money is going across the table, they got pictures of the big P. I mean, the big player, and all the little people, too. They got pictures and footage and all the pretty stuff of them. Of course, they all come back and sit in the same spots on a different table doing the exact same thing. So they're down. We're getting ready to record the shoe, and all of a sudden, I can see across the casino to another pit. And bosses are like bumblebees. They're just very dormant. All of a sudden, when they got something to do, they start buzzing around. So I see them walking and looking at me, walking, looking at me. Here comes the assistant casino manager. He looks at me, talks to the thugs over there, looks at me again, talks to some more thugs. Here comes the boss, the casino manager, the guy in charge of all godly things. He comes down, he didn't look at me, he stared at me.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

And I saw him staring at me. I just go about my business, shaking in my boots. I know this is not good. Then he goes to the phone, makes a phone call. That's not good. So then Dustin was the captain of this thing. He comes through, gives us the you know the heat move.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

The scrub, let's get the hell out there.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

So let's get out of here. So my players all went. And that was the end of that. Until three hours later was the end of the day shift, was it six o'clock? The casino manager pulls me into the casino. I'm out to the bar over here, and he goes, Did you know those guys? Who? He says, was that all on the square? I said it was on my end. I don't know what you're talking about. He goes, All right, you can go. Within a couple of minutes, I was fired.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

But that old adage, never crack out of two. Never crack out of two. That's what he did, and that's good.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

He was drilling. He knew something was going down, and he pretty much knew I was involved in it one way or another. And so he can't accuse me. He was gonna fire me anyway. He just wondered if I would crack, if I would give up the whole thing. But that was the first one. I got much more sophisticated as my time went on. So fast forward to another casino, uh, not in town, single deck, which was really stuff. So the team gets set up. For this to work, we have to have control of the table. So we have a team that comes in and basically locks down the table. They're all the team, they take up all six spots and they play the cards. We have another person off the table who's recording on a literally a PC strapped to his back. All the hands that come out, it would convert it into winning hands for one player to bet up between one and three hands. Okay, so once this is a single deck, so it goes very quick. Oh, yeah. We got lucky and we ran it down as deep as we could go. Now I'm supposed to deal twice, then shuffle. Well, that doesn't fit my criteria, so I managed to squeeze out an extra hand, which was wrong. So now the cards are recorded, they're set. Now I have to do a false shuffle, and you know, Dustin demonstrated exactly how we do it. Strip, shuffle, strip, cut. Bingo, no problem. Once I had that done, a big player comes up, sits down, flops out. Our limit was 2,000. That's why we hit this place. It's $2,000 limit. Puts out cash, $2,000 a spot. Three hands, $2,000 a piece. The person sitting in the center spot, we get up and leave, he would slide right in. He would make some chatter with him, says, Hey, I want to bet these three hands. Now the good thing is they're not gonna play, but they don't get up. They lock down the table. Period. So now he's got three spots to himself. He's got three hands of $2,000 a pop. We fire out the first round. Well, surprising enough, he wins all three hands at $6,000. That was more black than I had in the rack.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

So we have to get a fill from the cage. They bring out the fill almost as quickly as I could say fill. I mean, it was there instantly. I guess they anticipated it. Yeah. Now, the procedure is this when I get a fill at the table, the cards in my hand have to be discarded. I would not do that. I'm holding on the deck, saying, I need the fill. I need the fill. And then security guards going, you gotta put the cards away. You have to put the cards up. I said, No, give me the money. I gotta pay a bet. Give me the money. Which is brilliant on his part. So I wouldn't cough up the check, and I'm being authorized. I said, give me the, I gotta pay a bet. Give me the bet. So he he puts it on there, we break it all down. I pay the bets. Fine. We screw up the cards. He gets another three-hander. You know, the computer would say one, two, or three hands. Lucky for us, it was another three hands, he's gonna win. So we whip it out there again. Guess what? I don't have enough money. So we go through the whole process again to bring out the checks. Now, mind you, I have every foreman in the joint, surveillance, and probably their uncles watching this game because this is serious cash. Limit plays three hands, that's six thousand dollars. He gets it, and now we fight over that. Fine, we get the money, I pay the guy. Next round, he gets two double downs. One of them is a 12. He wants to double down on a hard 12. Now, protocol says that card has to be face up because if he busts, they want their money. So he says, Oh, I want it face up, and I go, I turn to the bosses. He wants his you know, his double on the 12 face up. They go, Yeah, go ahead, do it. So we deal it face up. Of course, he didn't bust. We go on, and he wins again, all three hands. So basically, in those three hands, I think he pulled in, was it 3618 plus the two doubles is another six thousand, twenty-four thousand dollars in three hands of twenty one. And when they came over, I said, Boy, that was that was strange. I said, Yeah, but it was really weird. He doubled down on 12. That was weird. He goes, Yeah, that was really weird. And nothing, no one even breathed a word to me about it, no suspicion at all. But I broke every rule I could break, and I didn't get in any trouble whatsoever. That is the strange part.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

That was fantastic, and the bosses were focusing on the player and the double down on 12.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Double on 12, which was brilliant. Who in the right man, right mind, with $2,000 bet with a up card of a 10 is gonna double on 12. Who? My player.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Oh, I know who.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Of course, he won it. So $24,000 in that short period of time. And talk about pressure. I was under more pressure than I've ever felt before because not only just have a flunkies watching me, I've got everybody breathing down my back. Anyone with power, you know, you had the owners that they were in the pit because one was a casino manager, he was always in the pit, and the other owner came down to watch this, and plus, you got all the flunky foreman all watching this. Then the crowd people who are watching this are watching this. It's a lot of pressure, they're just waiting for something to happen. And when it was all done, I was shocked. No one said a word to me. When they asked, one little thing, I I focused on the 12. Why would you double on 12? That's four thousand dollars into a made hand, a twelve. Why? So I you know, I was playing it off, but no way that was more pressure than I've been under ever. Ever. Here are some great stories from our past. What do we got today? I got a good one. I don't know if I ever told you this one. Oh, this will be good.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Me and another partner, we want to make a fool out of somebody. Back in the 80s, of course, no internet, they ran ads in the paper, local paper, how to beat the casinos. Oh my god. Oh, yeah. And this one guy had a way, supposedly, of beating craps. Oh. So we knew he was gonna be full of it. So we went in there. I'm pretty sure we were wired up. I don't think I have the recording. But we're talking to this guy about beating craps, and his system was a joke. But then we started asking about card counting, and honest to God, this guy went insane going, card counting. That's three years, Jack. That's no probation, that's no trial, that's no parole. And I had to walk away. I was laughing so hard because this guy had no clue what he was talking about, and yet he was totally convinced of what he was saying.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Well, that's the dangerous type right there. Stupid and convinced. Something that's easy to do. You can fool your friends and your mothers too. I just lost it. No, I'm just kidding. I actually have complete control of everything. So take this shuffle deck of cards, somewhat shuffled, that I screwed up on, cut it into three separate piles.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Well, you know what? Let me just do a shuffle. Alright, that sounds good.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Fair enough? I think that's fair. Now, how many piles? Just three piles.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

About even. Yeah, however you want to do that. That's okay. So you shuffled. Yeah. It should be totally impossible for me to know anything about this. Right. But I'm going to take a stab at guessing these cards. Okay. This would be the seven of diamonds. This would be the seven seven of diamonds. Seven of diamonds. This will be the four of diamonds. Okay, seven, four diamonds. That's easy. And this one here, the ten of clubs. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Do you remember what we said? The four diamonds, seven of diamonds, and the ten of clubs.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Ten of clubs, all three there.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

From a shuffled unmarked deck.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

It's an unmarked deck, completely random. It's a very easy thing to do. It's uh what do you call this? I guess good. Damn good. That's a damn good tool. Hey, you know what? I learned this. I learned this a thousand and six years ago. And I don't know what it's called. I think it was shown to me by uh another random magician saying, Hey, take a look at this. I thought that was kind of cool. It's a great throwaway.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

And it's a very well-known principle to card magicians and mentalists.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Right. It's a it's it's not new, it's been around for uh forever, but it's a very effective way to do a quickie. Someone asks you to do a card trick. This is one I usually do.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

And you can do it with their cards.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

With their cards, any any card you got. It doesn't have to be a complete deck. That's the other thing. It could be a half a deck, and you can still do it. It's a very solid, quick piece of magic if you just want to show off your wares a little bit. I use it all the time. So look in the description, it'll be a link to a three three-pile prediction. That's it. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Well, we presented a lot of information today. Why don't we do a quick recap of what we talked about?

SPEAKER_00 31:33

That's a good idea because this was a very important subject. It's more of the psychological what it's like to be under a lot of pressure to do what we were doing, be it the coolers, which was a lot of pressure on both of us, or the flash or the stack. You're always being watched. That pressure, that heat that's come in.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Well, we were aware of the heat. Of course, we wanted to avoid it. We went over ways we tried to avoid it, but we also told you some stories where we definitely felt it and were under scrutiny.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Yeah, we're not we're not immune to it. We felt it and we felt it uh at times immense heat. And you just you just go through it. You just do what you know how to do and barrel through it.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

And we did not crack out a turn.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

We did not crack out a turn. We both stayed our grounds when we asked if we cheated. No, we didn't. Well, kind of. When you were out there, even in the square world, avoid the heat because if you start goofing off, that heat will find you. Uh, casinos take their games very seriously, so avoid the heat, which is tough to do in Vegas of 110 frames.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Well, any of our listeners that make any kind of comment about heat will have a download for you. If you're a magician, you're gonna like this. It's 103 tips and resources for magicians. Be completely free. All you need to do is make a comment.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Even if you're not a magician, you can become a magician to learn his 103 tips and resources. You definitely want to know it. It's good information.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

The easiest way to follow us is to subscribe.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Definitely subscribe and to hit notifications. That way you don't miss a single episode. You'll catch us every single week, which is important to sustaining life. And continuity. Hey, continuity. Take it away. Don't be a square. Share. See you next week.