They’d parked in the most out of the way corner of the casino’s open lot and James sat in the back seat watching Kazakov walking past the lines of bleeping slot machines, searching for blackjack tables.
The Wagon Wheel was known as a locals’ joint. It didn’t have ten thousand rooms or a model of the Sphinx in the lobby like the big casinos on the Strip, but according to James’ book it did have some of the best two-deck blackjack tables in Vegas.
Playing with two decks instead of six to eight meant you had a bigger advantage when the cards were in your favour. It was also easier to see how many cards were left because the dealer held the decks in hand, rather than having them hidden inside a card shoe.
‘This one?’ Kazakov mumbled in Russian, as he turned to face a table.
Under Nevada law every gaming table has to clearly display all the rules and table limits. Casinos have a reputation for sneaking in extra rules that turn the odds even further in their own favour. After scanning the rules quickly, James pressed the laptop’s F5 key twice to activate the vibrating receiver under Kazakov’s watch and indicate that it was OK to sit down.
The centre stool was taken, so Kazakov sat one place to the left. The three other gamblers were elderly women. Kazakov played the table minimum, $10, just to get a feel for things as one of the old timers told him that she loved his accent and had a cousin who’d worked as a diplomat in Odessa. Distractions at the table are one of the most difficult things for a card counter to deal with, but Kazakov didn’t have this problem because James was doing the difficult part of the job for him.
Back in the parking lot, James sat in the back seat behind the tinted glass with Kazakov’s mini laptop drawing power from the cigarette lighter socket. The cards were fairly easy to watch and banter between the three women and the dealer slowed the game down.
Kazakov played solid basic blackjack strategy and won his first three hands, but James was disappointed to see lots of high cards flying across the table. The count quickly dropped to minus five, stacking the odds heavily in favour of the casino. Kazakov varied his bet between ten and twenty dollars, but the casino’s edge steadily took its toll and by the time the last cards were dealt Kazakov had lost his early gains and was down eighty dollars.
A cowboy joined the table and the dealer took his break and got replaced by a woman. There were now a minimum of twelve cards to count per hand and the new dealer dropped the banter and moved faster than her predecessor. But this time the count swung in Kazakov’s favour and James hit the F5 key twice, indicating to Kazakov that he should up the bet.
The odds were now in the players’ favour. Kazakov upped his bets to between thirty and fifty dollars per hand, but the cards didn’t fall his way. Counting cards and upping your bet when the count is in your favour gives the player edge over the casino, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll win any particular hand and Kazakov wasn’t getting the right cards.
When the dealer shuffled the decks to start again, Kazakov was down close to four hundred dollars, while the cowboy on his left had won two hundred playing a supposedly suicidal strategy of following his hunches.
James couldn’t see Kazakov’s face, but the instructor was fidgeting and clenching his knuckles. A pretty waitress handed a complimentary orange juice to Kazakov and a bourbon for the cowboy. Shortly afterwards the three elderly women headed off with smiles and a twenty-dollar tip for the dealer.
With just two players at the table Kazakov moved on to the centre stool so that there was space between them. He drew blackjack – a perfect twenty-one that pays odds of three for two – on the first hand bet of forty dollars. Kazakov won a couple more hands on smaller bets of ten and twenty dollars and for the second time the count swung in the players’ favour.
Kazakov upped his bet to the fifty-dollar table maximum and won seven hands out of the next eight. The count dropped back into the casino’s favour as more cards were dealt, but Kazakov rode his luck and by the time the dealer reached the end of their second run through the cards their losses had been wiped out and Kazakov was looking at a three-hundred-dollar profit.
‘It’s working,’ Kazakov mumbled in Russian for James’ benefit.
Over the next hour and a quarter, Kazakov kept playing and stacked up steady profits. Sometimes the count went against and Kazakov lost slightly or trod water, but when the count swung in their favour he upped his bet and the winnings piled up. His three thousand dollars of chips had turned into four thousand seven hundred and the pit boss – who was in charge of all the tables in that section of the casino – sanctioned Kazakov’s request to up the table limit from fifty to a hundred dollars.
James watched as the pit boss and a colleague began to hover over the table, paying attention to Kazakov’s mounting pile of chips. Blackjack dealers and senior casino staff are trained to spot card counters. Every table is viewed from above by surveillance cameras and after ninety minutes and a profit of several thousand dollars Kazakov knew someone would be in the security room paying careful attention to every move he made.
If he upped his bets every time the count moved in his favour he’d arouse suspicion and be asked to leave the casino. So Kazakov had to make the odd wrong move to throw the casino staff off the scent, but of course these deliberate mistakes all cost money.
After two and a quarter hours James began to notice the pit boss getting agitated. He changed the dealer and brought in new cards, then reduced the table limit back to fifty dollars per hand to put a cap on Kazakov’s winnings.
James didn’t want to push their luck on a first outing and after two and a quarter hours his eyes ached from being fixed on the tiny laptop screen. His brain was fuzzy and he needed food and a toilet break so he sent through the long signal to tell Kazakov to get out.
After tipping the dealer fifty dollars, Kazakov headed for the casino cage to cash out his chips. James rubbed his eyes and downed half a bottle of water before looking back at the screen. The cage had huge gold bars across the front and the host poured Kazakov’s piles of twenty- and fifty-dollar chips into an automatic counting machine.
The total flashed up on a blue illuminated display: $8,670.
‘You have a good day sir,’ the teller said brightly. ‘And be sure to put that money somewhere safe just as soon as you can.’
GOLD
James had almost shat himself, risking all of his personal savings and putting his CHERUB career on the line, but now they’d won he was buzzing. His one-third share of $8,760 was $2,920, meaning he’d almost trebled his money. Kazakov’s $5,840 share meant he’d made back the $3,000 he’d lost at the Reef casino a few nights earlier.
James and Kazakov acted like best buddies as they drove the last few miles into the centre of Vegas, swapping stories about car-park security guards, evil stares from the pit boss and how James lost the count during a sneezing fit.
James turned the Ford on to the eight lanes of the Las Vegas Strip. The sun was setting behind the Stratosphere Tower at the north end of the Strip, the neon was starting to glow and an advertisement for an Elton John concert came out of a fifty-metre-high video wall.
‘I hear the all-you-can-eat buffets here are pretty special,’ Kazakov said.
James was shocked: hearing Kazakov complimenting something American was like turning up at your local KFC and finding the royal family tucking into a twelve-piece bargain bucket.
‘Bellagio has the best buffet in Vegas,’ James smiled. ‘Thirty bucks a head, all you can eat. We were gonna go the other day, but Kerry and Rat didn’t have enough cash left.’
The Bellagio was in the middle of the Strip, an upscale joint famous for the giant lake and fountains out front. Like all the main casinos it was vast and by the time they reached the buffet they’d walked through a vast parking structure and a casino the size of several football fields. Everything in Vegas is designed so that you have a long and tempting walk across a casino before you can get anywhere.
The marble-floored corridors and plush-carpeted playing areas thronged with pasty men in smart casual clothing. Thick glasses and greasy hair were abundant.
‘What is this?’ Kazakov asked, as they joined a fifty-strong line to get inside the buffet. ‘Some kind of acne sufferers’ convention?’
The three men ahead in the queue were spewing words about handwriting recognition software, which enabled James to make the link to some billboards he’d seen across town.
‘Compufest 2008,’ James grinned, as they shuffled forwards two paces. ‘It’s a whole massive conference for the computer industry.’
‘Geekfest, more like,’ Kazakov sneered. ‘Give me six weeks and I’d make real men out of them.’
‘They might not have the looks, but they’ve got the money,’ James said. ‘I wondered why there were so many Mercs and Bentleys in the parking lot.’
The buffet was worth the queue and James made a complete pig of himself, stuffing his plate with a dozen slices of roast meat, then going back for fish and pasta before finishing off with half a dozen miniature dessert pastries.
‘So,’ Kazakov said, when they were both too stuffed to eat another mouthful. ‘Feel up to another session of blackjack? That fifty-dollar maximum really cut our edge. How about we try a high-stakes table?’
‘You’ve got whipped cream on the end of your nose,’ James said, as he picked his coffee cup out of its saucer. ‘I looked on the Internet when we were staying at the Reef and for high stakes there are apparently two deck games with low penetration and high table limits at the Vancouver casino. It’s at the south end of the Strip.’
‘What are we waiting for?’ Kazakov asked.
James shrugged. ‘The only thing is, the Vancouver is a new casino so they’ll have top-notch security systems and the higher the stakes, the more closely the table will be watched. I think we rode our luck a bit this afternoon at the Wagon Wheel. We should have taken the hint the minute the pit boss put the table limit back down to fifty.’
‘OK,’ Kazakov said. ‘We turned three grand into nine this afternoon. If we triple our money again, we’re looking at close to thirty grand.’
James smiled. ‘Actually, the initial stake doesn’t matter – as long as you don’t hit a big losing streak and get wiped out. If you’re betting five hundred dollars a hand instead of fifty, your potential winnings are ten times greater.’
‘A hundred thousand dollars,’ Kazakov said, pounding his fist jubilantly on his chest. ‘I could go for some of that.’
‘Wouldn’t mind some myself,’ James said. ‘My share should be good for a nice Harley-Davidson.’
*
The Vancouver was one of Las Vegas’ newest casinos and situated at the southernmost extreme of the Strip. Its sixty-storey hotel tower was the tallest in town and its modern white décor was aimed at a hipper crowd than the marble and heavy pattern carpets in the older casinos.
James had now seen most of the big hotel casinos and despite their elaborate attempts to differentiate with themes and attractions he found that they were all pretty much the same beneath a thin veneer: big multi-storey car parks, a few thousand hotel rooms, some swanky restaurants and a massive casino at the heart of it all.
Still bloated from the buffet, James sat in the back of the car and watched the viewpoint from Kazakov’s scarf on the laptop screen. He was excited at the prospect of more winnings and confident after their success at the Wagon Wheel.
Compufest delegates were thick on the ground as Kazakov moved briskly down miles of corridors and over a spectacular glass-floored bridge that spanned the hotel’s pool complex. The bridge opened out into banks of escalators that led down to the casino floor.
No part of the mega casinos was more similar than the windowless gambling floors. The slot machines and tables were all licensed by the state of Nevada and the result was near identical machines, flashing coloured lights and bleeping identical tunes and jingles.
As Kazakov passed a Nissan pick-up truck mounted on a plinth and up for grabs by suckers feeding the slot machines surrounding it, James’ screen dropped out and the words no signal flashed up.
The picture came back a few seconds later, but the image was heavily pixelated and the sound kept breaking up. The picture stabilised momentarily, but as Kazakov sighted the high stakes area of the casino the video signal faltered for a second time.
James feared interference from a signal jamming device inside the casino, but he opened up the onscreen control panel for the video monitoring software and saw that the signal strength was way down in the red zone. He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and called Kazakov.
‘Whaddya mean no signal?’ Kazakov said irritably. ‘You’re a kilometre away at most. We were getting six times that coverage at Fort Reagan. Are you sure you’ve got it set up right?’
‘I’m sure,’ James said. ‘Fort Reagan’s open country. You might not be far away, but I’ve got three layers full of cars parked on top of me and you’re underneath a sixty-storey hotel tower.’
‘Damn,’ Kazakov growled. ‘A signal booster would probably do the trick, but I only brought what I thought I’d need inside Fort Reagan.’
‘We could try another one of the smaller casinos,’ James suggested. ‘Or the old casinos on Freemont Street.’
‘There must be another way,’ Kazakov said. ‘You need to get closer. A toilet cubicle or something.’
James tutted with frustration. ‘The casinos have guards and video cameras everywhere. Come back to the car, we’ll drive back out to one of the smaller joints.’
‘Let me think a minute,’ Kazakov said. ‘I’ll call you back.’
James threw his mobile down on the empty seat beside him and sighed. He was the brains behind the operation, but at times Kazakov was treating him like a kid.
He watched the screen for a few more seconds, but as Kazakov moved deeper into the casino the signal dropped out completely. Almost ten minutes passed before James’ mobile rang.
‘I’ve found your spot,’ Kazakov said. ‘Bring the laptop and meet me at the business centre.’
‘Business centre?’ James said, mystified.
James found it close to reception after a five-minute walk. The glass-fronted area contained several dozen desks, surrounded on three sides with privacy screens. There were also banks of fax machines, laser printers and a few more obscure machines like laminators and binders.
‘Hey, miss,’ Kazakov said, smiling to a smartly dressed receptionist standing behind a counter as James approached. ‘Here’s my boy. He needs a desk to get this history project done and I know if I leave him upstairs in the room, he’ll be watching TV, playing Nintendo and stuffing his fat face from the mini-bar.’
The receptionist gave James a smile. ‘Homework gets you down, doesn’t it?’ she said.
‘If he wants a good college place, he needs to pull his finger out,’ Kazakov growled.
‘OK then,’ the receptionist said cheerfully. ‘The business centre is forty dollars for the first hour, twenty-five after that. Service includes desk, Internet access, printing, faxing and telephone calls. Overseas calls and colour printing are extra.’
Kazakov paid for three hours with cash. ‘Do your work,’ he said firmly as the receptionist led James into the business centre. ‘No MSN.’
‘Good luck at the tables, sir,’ the receptionist said sweetly.
LIMITS
The receptionist smiled warmly as James picked out a desk in the farthest corner of the deserted office suite.
‘Surprised it’s not busier with the big computer conference in town,’ James noted.
‘They’re all way in advance of us,’ she said. ‘They have their Blackberries and smart phones. I get quite a lot of jobs printing and binding contracts, but nobody uses the desks during Compufest.’
James flipped up the lid of the laptop as the receptionist walked away.
Once the computer was plugged in and booted up he opened the surveillance software. The signal strength was on nine bars out of ten. The picture was bright and the sound clear, but he almost flew up out of his seat as the receptionist put a tray with jugs of coffee and orange juice and a small plate of biscuits on the table beside him.
‘Brain food,’ she smiled. ‘Let me know if you need any help using the printers or anything.’
‘Cheers,’ James said. ‘I really just need to be left alone. You know, get my head down and get the homework over with.’
He felt slightly uncomfortable as he watched Kazakov on screen. The Ukrainian bought eight thousand dollars’ worth of chips from the cage before heading into the high-stakes gaming area.
One of the main ways James had justified his criminal activity up to now was by the fact that while Kazakov was running the risks inside the casino he’d be in a parking lot hundreds of metres away and the chances he’d get caught were practically zero.
But now he was in the casino too, and while Kazakov only had a discreet camera and a vibrating signal device stuck to the back of his watch, James had a wireless receiver unit, a laptop loaded with surveillance software and images from a blackjack table on the eleven-inch screen right in front of him.
The high-stakes area was guarded with a velvet rope, although money was the only criterion for entry. Fixtures were more luxurious than the rest of the casino and the staff more attentive, but the slot machines and tables were identical Nevada-state-regulated stock.
As Kazakov sought out blackjack tables, James was astonished to glimpse a man with his credit card plugged into a slot machine, losing fifty dollars as fast as the spinning cherries and melons would let him. Casinos liked to call gambling gaming and portray it as a sophisticated activity for James Bond types in dinner jackets and bow ties, but in a modern casino like the Vancouver eighty per cent of the floor space and ninety per cent of the profits came from jangling slots.
High-stakes areas were usually the emptiest parts of a casino, but Compufest had brought a lot of wealthy people into town and delegates were throwing thousands of dollars across the tables and tipping good-looking waitresses fifty dollars in return for smiles and a free drink.
Kazakov realised this was ideal: casinos only cared about the bottom line and pit bosses and dealers would pay less attention to him winning while they had a dozen other punters losing money like it was going out of style. James checked the table rules and buzzed the vibrating receiver to indicate that Kazakov should take a seat.
‘Evening gentlemen,’ Kazakov said, taking the middle stool and planting four thousand in chips on the table.
The dealer was a beautiful Asian woman in a strapless white evening dress with the Vancouver casino logo embroidered on the back. The table had a $100 minimum and a generous $2,000 ceiling, but the computer geeks were showing off their cash, constantly betting the table maximum and making a point not to care when they lost.
For the next hour James sat in the business centre, squinting at the laptop screen and counting cards while Kazakov played with complete anonymity. The pit boss – along with half a dozen bystanders and hangers-on – had his eye on a game of baccarat across the room where an Indian businessman was betting up to a hundred thousand dollars per hand.
Kazakov’s cards weren’t as generous as they’d been at the Wagon Wheel and the count kept moving against him, but card counting is about playing the odds.
The odds are slightly against a regular blackjack player, guaranteeing that the casino will always win in the long run. A good card counter has a similar edge over the casino and can expect to make an average of one per cent per hand.
It doesn’t sound like much, but a dealer can lay down sixty hands an hour, so on average a good card counter can double their money every ninety minutes. Even a careful card counter, who makes deliberate mistakes to throw the dealer and pit boss off the scent, can still expect to double their money for every four hours spent at the tables.
Kazakov was barely two thousand up after an hour, but then he hit a lucky streak: James signalled that the count had moved heavily in his favour at the same time as the other four players left the table. This meant that Kazakov got dealt all of the remaining cards in the deck, with odds leaning heavily in his favour.
Betting two thousand a hand, Kazakov won three in a row, then lost a hand, split a pair of aces and won with both of those hands before drawing a blackjack which pays odds of three for two.
James sat in the business centre, keeping a wary eye on the receptionist, who was running a batch of photocopying, and trying not to let his excitement show. Kazakov had won over ten thousand dollars in six minutes.
‘I seem to be having a good night,’ Kazakov said, lowering his sunglasses and giving the dealer a rare smile. ‘Do you think it might be possible to up the table limit to five thousand per hand?’
The pit boss came over briskly and gave the dealer the briefest of nods before turning away. He had several busy tables and didn’t much care that Kazakov was up more than thirty thousand dollars. A dozen other high-stakes gamblers were filling up the casino’s coffers, including the Indian baccarat player who was in the hole for over half a million dollars.
James glanced at his watch and saw he had less than forty-five minutes until his three hours in the business centre were up. Nobody else was doing business this late, and the receptionist was emptying waste baskets and switching off the copiers. James had positioned himself so that she couldn’t see the laptop screen, but she was clearly waiting for him to leave so that she could shut up shop and he felt increasingly conspicuous.
Kazakov celebrated the raised table limit with a five-thousand-dollar bet on the first hand with the freshly shuffled decks. The dealer won and James stuttered as he realised that he’d just lost a year’s pocket money on the turn of a playing card.
On the next hand Kazakov only bet two thousand, but lost again. Ten thousand up one minute, seven thousand lost two minutes later. James’ eyes were getting bleary after watching cards for more than two hours. In his head he knew that the maths of card counting were identical whether the bet was ten dollars or a million, but his nerves struggled with Kazakov betting the price of a second-hand car on each hand.
But probability always wins out and Kazakov kept listening to James’ signals to raise or cut the bet when the odds were in their favour. James got a grip on himself and Kazakov won a couple of hands. More people joined the table again, but they were betting between two and five hundred a hand, which wasn’t good because it made Kazakov’s larger bets the centre of attention.
The count went nowhere, but Kazakov rode his luck and came out a few thousand up. James checked his watch when the dealer shuffled and realised this would be their final run through the decks. The count moved their way and Kazakov started betting the five-thousand table limit every hand.
Kazakov won eight out of ten, including one blackjack: thirty-two and a half thousand dollars in eight heart-pumping minutes.
‘I’m closing up and heading home,’ the receptionist said. ‘If you want your homework printed out or anything, you need to do it now.’
James was so enraptured by their sudden run of luck, that he’d not noticed the receptionist come up behind and look over his shoulder.
‘Oh, right …’ James stuttered, looking back anxiously while trying to keep one eye on the cards. ‘I’m practically done. Don’t worry, I can print the work in my room when I get home.’
‘What have you got up there?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Doesn’t look like homework.’
James hastily pushed down the lid. ‘It’s private,’ he babbled. ‘Internet, web cam …’
This sounded horribly suspicious, but James wasn’t sure how much the receptionist had seen. Had she just caught a glimpse and realised that he wasn’t typing a history essay, or had she seen enough to realise that he had a camera trained on a blackjack table?
The receptionist wasn’t huge and James considered knocking her out to ensure she didn’t snitch. But she didn’t look flustered as she backed off and walked across the carpet to switch off the last of the laser printers.
James grabbed his phone and called Kazakov. ‘Cash your chips, get the car,’ he whispered quickly. ‘I’m probably being paranoid, but the receptionist might have seen something and I don’t want to chance it.’
‘Where do you want me to meet you?’
‘Just get the car and get out,’ James said nervously, as he looked over his shoulder and saw to his horror that the receptionist was back out front, speaking into a telephone. ‘I’ll tell you where to meet me once I’m sure nobody’s on my tail.’
RAILS
James stuffed the laptop in his backpack and smiled at the receptionist as he headed briskly out of the business centre. He’d followed his training: donning a pair of sunglasses and a blue Nike baseball cap and looking down to make sure he didn’t get picked up by security cameras.
‘Thanks for your help, miss.’
Still on the phone, she looked up and nodded at him, her expression unreadable.
James’ head spun: maybe the receptionist had barely glimpsed, or maybe she’d seen everything. Maybe she’d called casino security to grass him up, or maybe she’d called her boyfriend to tell him that she couldn’t knock off early because she was waiting for some dumb kid to finish his history homework.
Whatever the truth, James couldn’t risk hanging around to find out. They’d entered the casino from the parking lot at the rear and Kazakov would need a good ten minutes to go to the cage and turn his casino chips back into dollars, plus another five or six to get to the car.
Even if casino security had been informed, it would take longer than that to watch the surveillance footage from earlier in the evening and match Kazakov to the description given by the receptionist. Even if they caught Kazakov he’d have ditched the camera and signalling device long before, making it impossible to pin anything on him.
In most hotels reception is next to the main entrance, but Las Vegas has its own rules and casinos maximise gambling opportunities rather than convenience. James stopped by a sign with arrows pointing towards theatres, parking, attractions, restaurants, health spas and various hotel towers, but there was nothing so obvious as a sign pointing the way out.
So James relied upon instinct. They’d arrived from the parking lot out back, so if he headed in the opposite direction he’d eventually reach the Strip.
He passed a line of restaurants crammed with computer-industry delegates and the odd tourist. After this came a spectacular indoor courtyard with a huge granite fountain set beneath a glass dome. Couples strolled arm in arm, a casino employee played an accordion and a couple of little kids stood on the fountain’s edge throwing in coins and splashing their hands.
The next set of signs pointed left to a shopping mall and right to head back into a different section of the vast casino, but as James rounded the fountain he saw a set of sloped travelators and a sign saying 3D Cinema and the Strip.
James looked around casually, pretending to admire the fountain. There was no sign of anyone following and he gasped a sigh of relief and decided that he’d just been paranoid. After a huge buffet meal and nearly three hours cooped up in the business centre, James spotted a toilet sign and moved in to take a badly needed piss.
It was an opulent bathroom with more than fifty urinals. There was blue neon lighting above each bowl and individual towels stacked up on stainless-steel bowls between the sinks. James soaked a cloth with warm water and used it to rub eyeballs that ached after three hours of intensely studying an eleven-inch laptop screen. He dried off with another and headed down a hallway back towards the fountain.
Three men stood at the end of the hallway: casino name tags, black suits and radios. They didn’t look James’ way, and he told himself not to sweat it as he looked back to see if there was a fire exit behind him. But as he passed the first two men the third stepped into his path.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. He was elderly, but quite tough looking and his nametag said Joseph – Security Officer.
‘Me?’ James said innocently, trying to smile as sweat beaded up on his neck.
The laptop in his backpack was loaded with evidence. They’d need Kazakov’s password to log into the machine, but that wouldn’t be a problem for anyone who knew what they were doing. They’d quickly find the surveillance software and although James hadn’t set the video to record, there would almost certainly be several seconds of blackjack footage that would be recoverable from the computer’s cache.