I myself was card-counting in the Sixties in a pretty amateurish way. One aspect of the amateurishness which led to the ‘barring’ with which this review started was that I was hopeless at disguising from the casinos that I was doing it. Caesar’s Palace behaved well by simply banning me from blackjack. The other casinos, once they realised what was happening, cheated; I am talking of the Sixties, remember. The boys in the book were much cleverer. Often one team member would count the cards and another, apparently unconnected, would play. Their counting and their play was perfect, and they were extroverts who chattered away at the table and made friends with the pit boss and other players at the same time as counting and/or playing, thus disguising their expertise. They were doing something else as well, which I suspect accounted for way over half their winnings. They were able to track cards through a dealer’s shuffle, so that they could tell when a good (or bad) run of cards was about to come, and adjust their stakes accordingly. Is that legitimate? I think so, but it is not as clear-cut as in the case of simply counting. In any case it is very clever and way beyond most of us.

The author has published six novels and this, we are told, is his first foray into nonfiction. I am not sure it is entirely nonfiction. You might get the impression that every girl in Las Vegas really had fantastic legs, a skin-tight leather skirt, a lovely bare midriff and gorgeous, even if enhanced, breasts. Perhaps less interestingly, there is something odd about how often very favourable situations arose at the tables. Oh well, it is a pretty good read anyway.

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