A Crossroader’s Christmas Treat: Advantage Play expert “Sam Case”
In my travels I have spent time with some of the best cheats in the business. But I have also enjoyed meeting and befriending some of the people who engaged in and pioneered advantage play, or “AP” for short.
Advantage players are some of the smartest people in the gambling world. Starting with Ed Thorp and the development of card counting, these cunning players exploit mathematical probabilities as well as procedural vulnerabilities to change the odds in their favor: from “warp plays” to “shuffle tracking”, inadvertent flashing of hole cards and the fortuitous idiosyncrasies of how playing cards are cut, creating factory-made “sorts” that the players can exploit visually without the knowledge of the casino.
None of these methods are “cheating”. They involve mathematics and simply using your brain or they depend on vulnerabilities in casino procedures and equipment that the player can see without physically doing anything. If the casino does something stupid and you see it, you didn’t commit a crime.
Of course, a casino is a private business, so they can bar you from playing certain games or order you to leave their property. But at the time of the events discussed in this interview, the Eighties, many advantage players didn’t know if what they were doing was illegal — and to be fair neither did the casinos. It felt like cheating and the casinos hunted and back roomed many of these players, adding their mugshots to their records and sharing them with detective agencies like Griffin. So, these guys lived like thieves, practicing in motel rooms and homes, using fake ID, and often wearing disguises, moving from play to play. In fact, one partner of this interview subject who I met many times was the famous blackjack AP expert and author “Arnold Snyder”, and he was always wearing disguises.
This is a fascinating interview but it doesn’t appear in Thieving Bastards because it’s not strictly about cheating. AP sits at the periphery of the cheating world. It’s cheating adjacent, just like magic. As to magic, I had a few magicians seek to be included in my books because they thought they were cheats and I had to politely decline. But that’s a whole different story for another day.
So, throw a log on the fire, pour a generous dram and enjoy this Christmas treat (or whatever holiday you’re celebrating) and read about my good friend “Sam Case”.
An interview with Advantage Play expert “Sam Case”
“Sam Case” was a very successful member of international blackjack advantage play (AP) teams in the 1980s. A mathematical genius, Sam looks like someone who might be a senior engineer at a Silicon Valley giant or a hacker at the NSA.
Sam spent time in blackjack teams employing advanced count strategies and shuffle-tracking techniques. These are mathematical and observational strategies that don’t cross the line into cheating but are still feared by casino executives. Sam was a pioneer of shuffle tracking in addition to working with front-loading strategies and card steering. Sam is the author of several sophisticated count strategies. He is long retired from gaming and is the owner of a major US company. He left the team when members transitioned into cheating strategies and he didn’t want to come along for the ride.
I’ve had the pleasure to hang with Sam and one of his former cohort on the West Coast, “Arnold Snyder”, including late nights at Musso & Frank’s in Hollywood and road trips between various cities. Sam remains at the cutting edge of strategy innovation in the blackjack underworld. This interview was recorded over twenty years ago.
In the interview, Sam mentions cheating techniques his team observed in casinos — “second dealing” and “peeking”. This is where the dealer secretly glimpses the top card and then uses a false dealing technique to hold the card back so he can make or break a hand. Expert “mechanics” who use these techniques while working from the inside are known as “bust-out dealers”, and Thieving Bastards includes a lot of inside information on these classic cheating techniques.
Advantage player extraordinaire “Sam Case” with the author (L) and the late, great “Arnold Snyder” (R), photographed in Los Angeles in 1999.
How did you get started?
The team at first was basically doing advantage play at blackjack. It was in the early eighties. We started out legally card counting and we ran into quite a bit of dealers cheating us especially in the higher stakes games. We kind of figured what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, so we started doing some stuff ourselves that was shadier and shadier.
Basically at some of the clubs there, they’d ring in dealers who would peek and deal seconds whenever it was high stakes play. That was probably the most we saw casinos doing, and it started happening with increasing frequency. In fact, the higher your stakes, the more likely you were to see it.
I’ve also seen it at low stakes where I wonder if it’s just the dealer practicing for the big time. I saw one “catch a hanger” (screw up) one time. There was another one that, after every shuffle and cut, she’d get a blackjack every single time. So, I kind of took it as an interesting lesson to sit there and watch her, and did my minimum bets. In fact, one time she turned over two hole-cards. She had obviously missed the second deal and was rather embarrassed to see the two. Pretty amazing.
Anyway we had a team together, it was about five active players, plus some financiers behind it.
We found that you develop a real commonality, a bond with each other. Again, this started as a counting team but ended up as a cheating team.
You’d get up in the morning and the table was covered with cash. I mean cash and chips. So much you’d have to shove ‘em out of the way in order to make room to eat breakfast. We all really trusted each other to an extremely high level because especially as we felt if one guy opened his mouth we could all wind up in jail. And everybody understood that. So if you were ever back roomed and they said, well we’re not after you, we want the big guy behind it, or your friend already turned, we’ll go nicer on you, you’d just sit there and play dumb because you know your partners aren’t going to do that to you.
What was cool was everybody had one mind at the tables. The sole goal was to take off as much money as possible. When we did our counting one of the things we did was back counting, where you’d send in about three or four people, looking at the six deck shoes and you kind of try to catch a shuffle as it starts and you wander on over and count down the whole shoe. If the shoe started to get good you started signaling a player, a big player, to come in and bet. It was fairly low tech at this point. The signal was, as the table got hot you’d put one hand in your back pocket. And that was the signal to the big player that the deck was warming up. When it got to whatever level the count needed to be at, you’d put your other hand in the other back pocket, wait about three heartbeats, turn and walk away. Your partner, the big player, would be walking up and you’d just say to him what count you were at, so he could walk up to the table when it favored the player and he’d be able to bet and know the exact count. He’d play until it would go bad and then he’d look for the other spotters. It’s called the Big Player Routine.
We had bunches of signals besides that. End of session was, you’d walk up and ask what time it was and scratch your nose. It was just a way to communicate and that was a signal meaning, “end of session - big player’s leaving”. The other back counters would mill around and try to see if, after the big player left, the pit boss would talk about him at all.
Well one time the guy had signaled in the big player. He’s turned, he’s walking away and the big player’s coming in and he didn’t hear the count. When you’re in this game you don’t want to miss anything, so the big player realized he had to get the guy to speak again. So without thinking he just turned to the guy and said, “Do you have the time?” and he said this without the nose scratch signal. So it was just a way of re-establishing the communication. The other guy — completely unplanned — realized that the only reason the big player would stop and talk was that he didn’t hear it. So he looks at the watch and says, “Thirty two!” to tell him what the count was.
Completely unplanned but everyone was just focused on the one deal.
What we got into later is what is now called “card steering”. This is where, by various techniques, players steer good cards to themselves and a big player at the table, and steer garbage to the dealer and so on. Technically, if you look at the words of the law there’s nothing that precludes it, because there are certain conditions that have to be met, like for it to be cheating. Officially you have to interfere with the outcomes of the game. But steering is random enough that maybe that wouldn’t hold up in court. Anyway, in Nevada you’re gonna wind up losing, so.
That’s what we got into and typically we’d go take over a whole table and do our little card steering moves. We’d have to be real careful which table we picked because camera angles were critical. We didn’t want anything going on that people could notice. There were only certain tables in certain casinos that we could play at. One of the things we’d do is, the lower players, the ones who were doing the watching of the cards and signaling, they’d go there first and get the table taken over and then the big player would come in.
Well sometimes it’s tough to get people to leave a table. We kind of thought, “This is work, we gotta get these guys out of there.” So one time I’m there and I’m sitting next to a lady and I thought, you know what would get rid of me is somebody blowing smoke in my face. Especially cigar smoke. So I went over to the gift shop and bought the cheapest, biggest cigar I could find, because I wanted it to be really rank. I didn’t smoke but I was willing to do it just to get rid of this lady. So I bring this thing back and pop it into my mouth and fire it up and I’m wafting smoke right into her face and she’s not flinching. This is goin’ on for about ten, fifteen minutes and I start to get green around the gills. It got to a point where I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Finally she reaches over, grabs her purse and puts it in her lap, so I think she’s leaving. But no! She opens her purse, pulls out a cigar herself and starts puffing away. I was sick to my stomach. I had used the complete wrong technique to try to get rid of her.
Another time there was a guy at the table and I wanted to get rid of him. He looked, by his posture and stuff, like he was going nowhere fast. So I thought, what would get rid of me? And I’m not going to try the cigar again. So I started coming on to the guy. If some guy came on to me, I’d just leave, right? I wouldn’t want to make a scene or anything.
So I start the old, “Where you from? How long you in town, whatcha doin’ here?”, and then I put my hand on his thigh. Right there in the casino, my hand’s on his thigh and he shows no reaction at all. It’s as if I’m not doin’ it! And I continue to carry on about a fifteen-minute conversation with this guy with my hand on his thigh in the middle of a crowded casino and he’s not movin’. Finally two friends of his came by and he got up and left. Then the big player walks up and sits down and says, “You should have done something to get rid of him.” And I says, “You won’t believe what I tried to do.”
Did you think he was gay, or maybe he was also counting?
Maybe he was counting and the deck was good. Or maybe he liked it! But he had two beautiful women with him. Still, I kept my hand there the whole time. They showed up and looked down and then looked at me kind of funny. They’re still talking to him and stuff and they say, we want to leave and he’s like oh, okay. But he never acknowledged it — it was as if it wasn’t happening. I’d never felt so bizarre, sitting there with my hand on a strange guy’s thigh. But you gotta do anything to take over the table and get the mission accomplished.
You mentioned steering cards – how did that work?
Card steering is a technique we used to do. You can’t do it now in major casinos anywhere in the US. This is back when they’d offer you a deck of cards to cut. For multiple deck shoes, you’d always be given a cut card to shove in. But for single deck shoes they’d put the cut card down and you could manually lift cards up and set them on the cut card. But they changed the rules, because during that time we were also doing stuff to flash cards to other people so we’d know where certain cards were. Based on whether it was good, we’d try to give it to the big player and if it was bad we’d try to give it to the dealer. After this got exposed, it was basically no longer feasible and the casinos all changed the rules — they don’t let you cut like that anymore. It’s kind of satisfying to know that you made a major mark on Las Vegas history by getting them to change the rules.
We hit it pretty hard. Then we heard that somebody was going to publish the basics of the techniques in a magazine. So even after the team had split up we called back all the players to run it as hard as we could — almost twenty-four hours a day with multiple teams out there. What we’d do is we’d take over a table with three players and you’d have to dominate all the hands, because you’re constantly adjusting whether you want the players to play three hands or four hands or five hands or seven, depending on where you want the card to go. It was really orchestrated. You’d have signals, like there was a spotter who’d find out what the card was, and the signal was you’d sit there and just riffle your chips on the table. If it was a ten you’d bring your hand back to the rail. If it was an ace you’d put it on your face. So you’d be sitting there riffling your chips and see an ace and you’d grab your beer, take a big swig so your hand would go up. Suddenly the big player would throw out three hands to the table maximum and the place would go crazy with people running out of the woodwork and surrounding the table. It was over before they knew it. At that point they’re all staring and peeking around.
Other teams had found out that we were up to something, because they sat three people at a table just by coincidence. And at that time, when three people took over a table, casinos would go nuts. So the casinos checked out this other team and figured they weren’t doing anything and said, “Oh there’s this cheat team in here doing some stuff.” So we’re playing one time and we had easily half a dozen casino people in the centre of the pit and we had the other team surrounding us trying to figure out what we were doing. I mean, it was a circus. It was great fun.
Nobody ever got us — we got away with it. Because of the changes in the procedures it doesn’t work too well these days, but it was fun while it lasted.
What was it like being a team member?
Teams like this: it was your life. Whatever your move was or your technique, you’d basically practice eight hours a day and then go play eight hours a night and just reap the thing.
I know some guys that know multiple moves, but I know one guy that just does a hop — that’s his move. I know another guy who just does deck switches — that’s all he does. They can do some other things but they tend to specialize in one bread and butter move.
We were kind of set up the other way. If we didn’t find a good table for doing the card steering, we’d go and kind of research, look for other dealers that you could “spook”. That’s where you try and get behind them and peek between their elbow and their body when they’re looking at their down cards. They don’t look at down cards during the play anymore so that’s no longer good, but it used to be pretty profitable. It’s kind of this endless game — you figure it out and then they figure out what you’re doing and go and change the rules. It goes around and around but there’s always someone pulling something somewhere.
How did you get the balls to do this stuff?
It was mainly motivated out of anger, out of being cheated ourselves. We had a couple of guys on the team who were very bright at figuring advantages. We explored on diamond back Bee cards how, if they’re not cut exactly right, some edges have thicker diamonds than others. So we actually developed moves for reorienting cards without it being noticeable, as a method of beating Baccarat.
We didn’t find a shuffle that was beatable because they were all doing that little spin move of half the deck that would take out the work, but we were on the lookout for it. As far as the card steering stuff goes, in Peter Griffin’s book The Theory of Blackjack, he’s got a table that says, “If you know one of your cards is this value, here’s your advantage.” We looked and said, well if we’re steering the cards around and we know which one is gonna hit, in some cases, it gave us a very huge edge.
So we were annoyed at being cheated, you know? You’d go out and try to play an honest game. And if they knew you were card counting they’d throw you out and treat you like criminals. And then they’d bring in their own guys to cheat you! And you’d figure, well, what the heck, you know? It’s only fair.
We were pulled up one time. We were working the table, doing our normal stuff, and the session leader, who was doing the big player bit, looked up and saw a security guy kind of hiding in this slot machine area. Let’s say at twelve o’clock. And at two o’clock there was another couple of guys. He looked around and realized that we were being surrounded. And he said, “Well I think I’ve had enough — you guys want to go get something to eat?” So we said, sure and we all stood up, and we were pounced on. We were just positively surrounded and they flashed badges. It was easily a dozen or more guys, there were multiple guys to each team member. I think they were afraid we’d get up and run or something. So, we all got hauled into the back and we’re sitting there cooling our heels and they’re kind of doing the good guy/bad guy thing.
The police sitting in with us pretended to be sympathetic, “Oh the guys up stairs are crazy, they think you’re up to something. But I don’t think so: these guys pull people in here every day.” As if we’re buying any of this.
They had us there and the big player was actually sweating because he had a fake ID on him using a name that he shared with another cheat, which was published in the Griffin books. He was sweating a lot more than we were because we figured we’d play dumb and get out. And sure enough one of the senior guys in the casino came down and started quizzing us and we acted dumb like, “Huh? What? Why would we do that?” Until he stormed off.
We were detained probably about an hour all up. Finally, they said, “Sorry, you’re welcome to play more.”
But the security guy told us on the side, you know, they wanted to figure out what we were up to. Word was to let us play as long as we wanted but not to let us leave. So they were all camped out, all watching us, trying to see what we were doing. When we stood up, that’s what brought ‘em out of the woodwork.
Anyway, it got real hot and any time three people sat at a table the casino would go nuts. So we did a little variation of it — it was the funniest thing. We’d have the main player who was a guy and he’d have his girlfriend just hanging with him. Another guy was sitting at the table and the other position was a woman seated with another woman behind her and the one at the table was wearing a pillow under her shirt to look pregnant. We figured if she was suspected they probably wouldn’t be hauling her in the back for fear of law suits. It’s funny — even though there’s three people sitting down, playing, the casino looked and saw five people and no alarm bells went off. But if three innocent people sat down the place would go nuts. So you’d just do that little switch — okay we won’t have three at a table we’ll have five even though three are playing. So, we’d get away with it, it was incredible.
You trusted these guys with your lives, literally, because any one of them could put you in jail. Here’s guys you might know only a few weeks and you wouldn’t think anything of leaving your wallet out full of cash or whatever. It was an amazing level of trust. You know they say there’s no honor among thieves. But well, you know, there is. If you haven’t done something like that, you really don’t understand it. Of course in any business there’s guys who are gonna scam and rip others off, but there are true cheating professionals out there who treat it that way. And all they’ve got is their moves and their reputation. So if you start doing stuff, you wind up frozen out.
Tell me about meeting crossroaders and scufflers.
I’ve met a number of these guys who hustled for a living and there’s almost a dance you do when you’re meeting them. Two guys in particular were both hesitant about saying anything and would do a lot more questioning of you to see who you were before talking. I’d say, come on, I heard about your move, let me see, and it’s no, no, no. Well after four or five hours of talking they’ll bust out the moves.
There are some guys who are like that just because it is kind of a private thing and you don’t know how people are gonna react. Do they know to keep their mouths shut, and so on? And in some cases you’re not even real proud of what you did. So when you find someone who really knows what’s going on, then you start swapping. There is a bit of a dance and I can see why that’s frustrating, especially for magicians who might be interested in this shit.
Personality is something I’ve found common amongst the hustlers. The successful guys. They’re some of the most likable people you’ll ever come across. I don’t think there’s any asshole cheaters out there because at some point something embarrassing is going to happen to you and your moves and what’s gonna keep your butt out of the hospital is how you can talk your way out of it and so on. So they do tend to be silver-tongued and personable. And the best ones get to the point where other people they’ve been cheating will defend them. “He’s a great guy, he wouldn’t do anything.”
So why did you quit it?
Why did we stop? Actually, our team busted out. We had the team captain, who will remain nameless and who was the issue.
Some days were on, some days were off. We’d get up and we had a regulation table set up in our apartment and we’d sit there and practice and then go out and play. And we started having sessions where the guy doing the moves was off, he was missing things, and other guys were missing things — it just wasn’t working.
Players at the table would say hey that’s it, we’re not on tonight, let’s call it a day. And the session leader – there’s always a session leader in every one of these teams who called the shots — he was the captain. He said, no we’re playing, even though everything was missing. It actually got to a point one night where it was so bad that the entire team got up and walked out, leaving the team captain there. We were surprised because he didn’t return until the next morning. He figured, if we’re not doing our steering stuff, I’ll just card count, and proceeded to lose about half the bank roll that night. It was a very unfortunate lack of discipline by the team captain.
They all got into some other stuff later. They got into using video cameras and one of the first ways it was employed was they had it pointing out of the belt buckle. So the person would come up and stand by the table and as the dealer dealt and tucked the down card it would be picked up on the video camera. It was beamed outside, where they had a van with a large satellite dish in it that they had to lop off to fit inside the van. They would capture the video, back it up very quickly to see what the card was that was tucked under the dealer’s up card and then they’d radio it back to the guy at the table, who had buzzers in his shoes and they’d signal him the value of the card.
So it was basically as if he was playing blackjack with both cards exposed. Blackjack with normal rules but with both cards exposed — a huge edge. Because, if you know the dealer’s got a twenty, you’re gonna keep hitting whatever until you either meet it or beat it. They got it down to where it was fast enough they could do it and not interfere with the play. If you’ve ever seen Vegas dealers do it, that’s fast.
Pretty expensive equipment. They put this all in place. Their maiden night they went out and of all nights they picked April first. Well, somebody went and called in a bomb threat to the casino they were in, so they sent the security guards out and said look for anything suspicious. Sure enough, they found this van outside and talked to the guy in it. He was in the back and couldn’t quite explain what he was doing. They took a peek inside and saw the video equipment and nailed the whole group. Before they had a chance to get the equipment paid off! So that kind of ended that little scam.
Hey, it probably would have been extremely profitable. But instead they never quite got the equipment paid off. They plea-bargained out – they were all looking at felonies and they kind of cut them a deal.
I never went back to it. Now I play poker and I play totally legit. The thing is I couldn’t cheat a table full of people — I’d feel terrible. I just don’t have that in me. I like beating the pants off them honestly, that’s great fun. But I can’t cheat them.
Whereas a casino, especially when they cheat you, it was very easy to cross the line. Looking back at it, it’s pretty stupid because I could have gone to jail and stuff. In fact I’ve spoken to other retired advantage players and cheats who all say it was an exciting life, but it was kind of stupid in hindsight. You get older and smarter, you know? There’s a lot more peace of mind in knowing you’re not gonna have to share a five by eight cell with somebody, or worse.
The casinos don’t break bones and they’re not gonna kill you these days. In a home game you just never know. The private stuff is scary.
The casino is a big corporation and they stack all the games against the player, so it was a big thrill in beating them at their own game. Even with all of their own procedures and stuff, to walk in there and destroy them was great fun. And it’s an ego boost when you know they’re trying to figure out what you’re doing and they have no clue. You’d feel infinitely superior and for many nights after you’d go out drinking and laugh and say, “It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it!”
Thieving Bastards: True Confessions of the World’s Greatest Cheats
If you enjoyed this small glimpse into the world of professional gambling thieves, then you are in for a real treat. Thieving Bastards, the book I have been researching and writing for thirty years is being published in March 2026.
These historic interviews give you a ringside seat to the action, explaining in detail the motivations, the crooked techniques and the cold-blooded psychology that separate the professional cheater from the honest player.
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