“INSIDE THE EDGE – A PROFESSIONAL BLACKJACK ADVENTURE” (2021) – A FILM REVIEW

This 70-minute special documentary (still up on YouTube) covers how one very adventurous professional blackjack player, nicknamed KC, starts his blackjack journey in Las Vegas by playing at select casinos to try to make some winnings. Regrettably, in the act of getting wins, he is backed off from nearly every casino in Las Vegas, and forced to commandeer an RV to extract as much money out of blackjack games out of as much casinos out of the Las Vegas’ boundaries….using his own “professional blackjack tour” across the United States and the Bahamas on the longest road trip of his life.

And he faces more ups and downs on his RV journey, increasing his winnings, losing his winnings, backed off or trespassed out of more casinos (sometimes blacklisted on the Griffin Book), and finally, after his final shoe, he decides to call it quits on blackjack after months of going to so many casinos on that tour.

But this flick does not focus on just KC.

Some of the keenest casino blackjack players speak out about their legal ways of infiltrating casinos through blackjack, including Mark Rubin (who is now in the Blackjack Hall of Fame), who said that about 40 years ago, the game of blackjack was unbeatable. Ditto for Richard Munchkin (who authored “Gambling Wizards), who said it is hard to inflitrate the blackjack game itself to win it all.

KC mentions started his blackjack journey, from his family—at least one of his family members—his father, was a professional gambler—playing backgammon, craps, and of course, blackjack. KC began learning the rules of blackjack as a young kid, and read nearly every book on how to beat the blackjack game, such as the “Blackjack Forum”, and did plenty of computer simulations of blackjack games. Eventually, with a casino blackjack player-friend known only as Thomas B., within a few years of his middle adulthood, he said gradually gained his bankroll, started with low limits, and then later on, added more credit lines, and perfected his blackjack knowledge. Finally, KC started to play some high-risk blackjack in some casinos.

Other blackjack experts then talk about the perks (also known as “comps”) high-roller blackjack players get at casinos, if they can avoid heat. Things like very costly nightclub dances, wrestling fights, jet airfares, even exotic vacation sojourns away from Las Vegas---as well as getting free hotel fares and perks through comps, private spa time, and so forth---attract high-stakes players. Mark Rubin commented that you can get as much as “40 percent of your overall expected earn” if you properly take advantage of the comps.

Sadly, some of the other blackjack players say that even with comps, if you are a blackjack advantage player—you will know when the casinos will get you hard later on (and you don’t know exactly when this will happen) – and when this happens, you find out that casinos not only “not want your action”—they do not want you in the casinos—period! And when that happens, likely all of your comp privileges will be revoked also.

A few other professional blackjack players comment that in especially in Nevada, casinos have the right to kick you out as such a player, or permanently trespass you out (which means you face arrest if you come back to the casinos if you are told not to go there again).

The technique of frustrating advantage players in casinos (especially pro blackjackers) is known as “heat”, and the “backoff” is known as the casinos getting the ultimate frustration at these players---the players finding out they cannot play blackjack indefinitely or permanently at one casino or a chain of casinos, and are forced to play at other casinos they are not yet banned from.

Then, the film focuses on KC’s ultimate blackjack journey. He starts with hitting casinos in one part of Las Vegas, and then another part, trying to use his first disguises, knowing that he was already backed off from some of those places. He gets down winning bets, gets victories, some losses. And sadly, he gets backoffs from the Orleans and Boyd Gaming chain of casinos, and then kicked out of El Cortez and a few more other casinos. Finally, after being booted from Jerry’s Nugget casino for failing to flash ID a second time to security, he realizes he had enough. He now realizes that he is blacklisted from nearly every casino in Las Vegas—can’t play blackjack there at all, and decides to go across the USA at other casinos away from Vegas.

So he gets an RV and starts his own cross-country blackjack tour.

He starts his first hit-run across America starting in the Southeast region, at the Big Easy—New Orleans. Starting at Harrah’s in New Orleans, he gets 3 sessions in and card-counts, gets big bets, and sadly, is ousted before he got his 4^th session. He then goes to Treasure Island Casino in New Orleans, thinking he was not going to be watched by casinos all over New Orleans---but just before he enters the first blackjack table, he is stopped by security, and security “Griffen-ed” KC out of the casino. After he gets in a special car after being trespassed, a cop comes in to stop his car, and forces KC to flash ID. He says no, but sadly, with some force, the cops force him to surrender his ID, and fortunately, though not arrested, he realized that it was Griffin who did this bad thing to him. Yes, that dreaded black book casinos use to find out cheats, card counters, and anyone else who are advantage players, and work to back all of these casino players off from their establishments.

AJ now realizes that to cut back on further backoffs or heat, he changes his garb, and even the way he wears his hat. He changes his beard, and hair, and uses glasses to cut back on facial recognition software. He also realizes that he has to change the frequency of shoe and session times at the casinos—vary them—or most of the time, “make it short”, he says. He gets more big bets down, and gets lots of thousands of dollars of winnings. He even tries other techniques besides card counting—or in addition to card counting—as additional countermeasures to casinos trying to back him off, or slap “heat” on him.

He even explains some of the secrets of blackjack advantage players that he and other pro players do— to get their winning edge at the game----not just card counting, but also ace sequencing (where you predict where the aces will land the shuffle area into the card playing field, where you then do maximum bets), and hold carding (where you take advantage of a croupier’s weak shuffle or shuffles and change your strategy quickly to gain an edge over the casino, exploting the dealer’s weakness in the shuffles, and also do a table-maximum bet at that point). KC said by using additional techniques to card counting, you can reduce the risk of getting “heat” or a “backoff” than just simply counting alone.

Then he moves from the Southeast region and hits places like San Diego, and even Reno, Nevada. And then north towards California into the Northwest Region, and then, he goes east towards the midwest after getting a lot more winnings there, although he was backed off a few more times.

Then, hitting the Midwest to do hit-runs on more casinos, he gets maximum bets, and even more, but then, gets backed off from more casinos in the process---kicked out, or even worse, thrown out without being able to cash your chips just before you have to leave. He had to do some workarounds to get the cash-ins in a few casinos that kicked him out.

The backoffs forced him to cut back his loneliness in the RV by purchasing a few dogs for companionship on his casino journeys.

Then, he gets hit with major security trouble at the Four Winds Casino at Dogawiac, MI, owned by the Potawatomi Indians, after getting heat from them. After being trespassed out, he argues with casino security about Indian sovereignty of casino property, and sadly, through a lawyer who had put some casinos on trial for mistreating advantage players, that KC realized that at Indian-reservation-owned casinos, you get no help at all from even police, because it is their very strict chaings sandboxes. So it sends a warning to advantage players like KC—try your best to avoid backoffs at these casino chains—if you want to do card counting or anything like that in blackjack there—make it short, don’t bet big, and don’t make it way too obvious that you are an advantage player, and you will never be confronted by staff or security at these chains of casinos in the first place.

KC also realized that Griffin had detected his casino activity in the Midwest, and banned KC from every casinos he was trespassed out from, and likely will mean future backoffs in that area, so KC decides not to go single-state jumping—but jumping to a few states—skipping a few states to go to New York and the Northeast to frustrate Griffin people, BOLO goons, and anyone else who wants to block KC from going to future casinos in the Northeast.

He also gets hit with major losses even on winning bets that also failed them (probably because some of these casinos have rules that he did not like or go in his favor), and realized that his bankroll is going down to close to 0.

So he moves to Florida and other areas of the southeast, and gets to fly to the Bahamas to go to a few casinos to get his winnings back in his future blackjack plays—but slowly getting back some of his big losses in his payroll mid-tour.

Finally, going back to the United States, he finally goes West and realizes that he cannot tour to play blackjack forever, so he goes to about 10 or a bit more casinos with his father who joins up with him, before KC decides to call it quits on his final session at his last casino.

KC then tells us that he did his best as a blackjack player on the tour. He got wins, he got maximum bets, he got heat, he got trespasses or backoffs, but that is the cost that all advantage players—including blackjackers—face at the casinos. He realizes that his already-great blackjack skills in the casinos can be a transferable skill to other endeavors, and says at the end that he will not do any more casino blackjack indefintiely. He is ready to move on to things other than blackjack—like probably instructing people on how to do casino blackjack, or something.