The Gambler's Toolbox: How to Become a Highly Skilled Gambler

The Gambler’s Toolbox

How to Become a

Highly Skilled Gambler

Joe Raccuia

Copyright © 2009 by Joe Raccuia.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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CONTENTS

How I Got Started in Casino Gambling

Now on to blackjack and my winning tools with

JERSEYJOE’S SUPER SYSTEM FOR BLACKJACK

Betting the Pass Line or Betting Right

Betting the Don’t Pass Line or Betting Wrong

Additional Information All About Gambling

How to Increase Your Ratings and Get Better Comps

Tax Tips

Recap

How I Got Started in Casino Gambling

WELL, IT WAS in or around 1976 when I was teaching a vocational school class in East Brunswick adult evening school, and someone brought up the matter of the vote coming up, which was to decide if gambling would be allowed in Atlantic City. I had been reading a lot about it, and I was definitely progambling. After all, I had been gambling since about the age of six years old. Let me tell you about my early years first.

You see, we had moved out of New York City the year before and moved into one of my grandmother’s houses in Old Bridge Township, New Jersey. (This was my mother’s side of the family.) That was when I got to experience all of the aunts and uncles coming over every weekend for the weekend poker marathon! The limit was 5¢ to 25¢, and by the second day, it was up to 50¢ and $1. You may not think that is a lot of money, but remember this was around 1956. Of course, we stood around and watched in amazement and soon started our own little game for pennies among the cousins who came. I got to be pretty good, and as I got older and went to high school, I learned how to pitch quarters and play a slim version of craps. All I knew was 7 or 11 won on the first roll, and 2, 3, or 12 lost on the first roll, and if you made a number, it had to repeat before a 7 came out to win. We probably learned that much from an old Abbott and Costello movie! As I grew older, I played more poker with friends and relatives, and besides all of the crazy board games, we played a home version of blackjack as well.

When I turned eighteen, I went into the service, US Navy, and after boot camp, I went through various schools and finally ended up in a naval air force squadron in a flying rate (anti-submarine warfare). All through navy schools and in my squadron I played poker and expanded my knowledge of the crazy board games. Sometimes I would win, and sometimes I would lose. Then one day, a chief petty officer in my squadron, whose name was Jack Evans, came to the barracks in the evening and played poker with us. He won almost all of the money that evening. The next day he called me into his office and said, "Joe, I can see that you are a pretty intelligent fellow, but your poker-playing skills suck. You play far too many hands far longer than you should. You lose much more money than you should, and with the guys you are playing with, you should win much more often. You also have an ability or an intuition to read the other players. I didn’t know what he meant to read the other players, but I did know that my intuition was pretty good. Then, he said, Joe, I’m gonna do you a favor. I have a collection of books I want you to read, and then I am going to teach you a few other things to become a better poker player. There is one catch though. Nothing is for nothing, and if you agree to let me teach you, then you must pay me 25 percent of everything you win, and when you lose, there will be no commission to me until you even out the loss." It sounded pretty good to me, so I agreed. The thing that did not sound so good to me, even at that young age, was that he told me I could not reveal our secret to anyone. I asked him why, and of course, he had an explanation. He said if people knew he was coaching me because of how good a poker player he was, we would not get enough action to make it worthwhile. I knew he was full of baloney, especially after I got a lot better at poker. He wasn’t as good as he made me seem. I believe he had the same deal with two or three other players in our squadron because there were a few guys that were hard to beat because they played almost exactly the way I did. It didn’t matter to me though because he did make me a better player, and I did win a lot more. The other thing that made me believe this was that he warned me not to try to beat him out of his share on a win, which I would never have done anyway, because he said he had eyes and ears all over and would know. He also continually asked me who won each and every night and how much. Now he was slick, but he wasn’t that swift, so I figured he was playing us all.

I did keep my word and did not discuss our deal with anyone. My father always taught me that when someone says that what you discuss is between him and you, and you agree, only someone who is not a real man or not a real woman would break that trust. That bit of advice always stuck and has only been good for me and my reputation in all parts of my life.

By the way, in my life, people that I like can usually get over on me once, but I learned a long time ago to trust my instinct, intuition, and street smarts. You should always trust your first intuition as well. If you really like someone, that is hard because you don’t want to believe your bad thoughts about that person. That’s okay; just make sure you keep them as much at arm’s length as possible so you don’t get hurt too bad. And you can believe me, you will get stung occasionally.

Anyway, I read the books that Chief Evans gave me, and for the first time, I learned that there was far more to playing poker than what I thought. Then the chief taught me a few other things, which helped me conserve my money better so I could last until it was my turn for the run. He also taught me the importance of knowing when to quit! This was the real beginning of my gambling career.

I gambled a lot until my wife was pregnant with our first child. Then, I had to work a few jobs and use all of my bankroll money to take care of my family. It was quite a few years until I began to gamble again. That’s what brings us up to 1976 when the gambling law was passed in New Jersey. Up to this point, I had never gambled in a casino, and I had little knowledge of the casino games. Sure, I did play some street craps and blackjack, but until I got into a casino, I didn’t realize how limited my knowledge was about these games.

Anyway, the gambling law was passed, and I began reading about blackjack. All I knew about the game was that you needed to get as close to 21 as you could, and you had to beat the dealer. Blackjack was an automatic win if the dealer didn’t have one too. There was no such thing as one-half times your bet for blackjack in the makeshift games we played when we were kids. And there was a whole covey of basic rules I needed to learn. I took my time and learned the basic rules. Then, it was off to the casino. I took a hundred dollars with me and was ready to go. The first time there, I won about $50, and man, was I excited. This was real easy, I thought. The next five times I lost the whole $100. Man, this gambling did not seem to be such a great thing after all.

Soon I got hold of Kenny Uston’s book on basic blackjack strategy and card counting. I began to study card counting. I soon was ringing the praises of card counting, and I began to go to Resorts Casino three times a week with a bankroll of $100 and played five-dollar blackjack and counted cards with a basic count. (Resorts was the only casino in, Atlantic City, in the beginning.) As soon as I was up $100, I quit and left, even if I was only there for fifteen minutes. I was averaging $300 to $500 a week in the casino and $500 a week at my job. Life was great, even though my wife was ready to divorce me because I was never home.

It was then that I met a man who was a real professional gambler. He would come into the casino with a goal to win a set amount (usually one-half of his bankroll) and would quit and leave immediately when he hit his mark or lost his bankroll. I saw him time after time, and we became somewhat friends. However, he really wasn’t interested in making new friends.

He explained that he had started just as I did, with a $100 bankroll, and when he got it up to $2,500, he switched to $25 minimum bets. Then each and every time he got to one hundred times the next minimum bet (example: $5,000 for a $50 minimum bet), he would increase to the next minimum bet. He would come in with twenty times his minimum bet as his daily bankroll (example: $500 for $25 minimum bet), and if he lost it he would leave. If he won one-half his bankroll (example: $250 for $25 minimum bet), he would leave. Each time his overall bankroll dropped to less than one hundred times his minimum bet, he would decrease his minimum bet to whatever equaled one-hundredth of what was left of his overall bankroll.

When I last saw him, he would come in with $10,000 and make $500 bets. I don’t remember if he was a card counter, but I am pretty sure he was. He told me he worked five days a week with the intention of staying for eight hours a day, unless he won an amount equal to one-half his bankroll. If he lost his bankroll or won an amount equal to one-half his bankroll, he would leave immediately. If he noticed the signs that indicated his luck was bad for that day and his timing was not right, he didn’t hang around to lose his whole bankroll but rather opted to cut his losses and return on another day. He said he owned his house free and clear, and he already had enough money saved to pay for his two son’s college at any major school. I don’t know about that, but he was driving a new Mercedes, and he dressed very well.

It was then that he explained to me that 97 percent of the people in the world did not have his self-control necessary to be a true professional gambler. He told me that if I thought about being a professional gambler and making a living out of it, I needed to have the same self-discipline and control, or I would experience great rises and falls in income and would most likely meet with disaster. He explained that the green-eyed monster called greed would eventually rear its ugly head, and then I would be hooked on the gambling drug for life, or until I came to my senses. He also explained that most people who succumb to this greed never seem to kick the habit and end up forever chasing the big win! Or even worse, I would become a compulsive gambler, not at all interested in a win, but only the action. At that time, I was young and foolish and lacked the common sense to heed his warning. So I just listened to his methods and disregarded his warnings, thinking I knew better.

Well, I was doing pretty good, and then I had a few great wins, where I was immediately up two times my bankroll, and instead of quitting, I kept on playing and won a few thousand on my measly $100 bankroll. I thought, Man, that guy was a great guy, but he didn’t know anything about when to leave. I figured he was just too conservative. Why leave when there was still much more easy money to be won? Soon my bankroll was up to $10,000, and I was afraid to keep it in my apartment any more. I went to deposit in the bank, and one of my friends told me I was nuts because the IRS would surely audit me to find out where the money was coming from. That’s when I learned about the safe-deposit box.

Now here I was with $10,000, and I was still afraid to go up to $100 bets, so I stayed at $50 bets. I remember I went to Resorts, and I had played about three hours, and I was getting tired. I was down about $500 out of my $1,000 bankroll, and then I had a run and won back the $500 plus $800 more. When I lost $200 back, I cashed in the $600 win and put $500 in my pocket.

I had heard people screaming at the crap table, and so I decided to take $100 of the $600 win and give the crap table a try. I went to a table and bet $5 on the pass line. I lost five times in a row and quit that table. Then I turned around to the one behind me and decided to play that one. I was standing on the end with the box man on the right and the stickman on the left, and there was one player to my right (on the hook). The guy on my right was from Texas, and they were calling him Mr. Whatever his name was. He was betting $500 on the pass line, and he had a number of other bets ranging from $100 to $300 out there—none of which I understood. He didn’t seem too happy. I put $5 on the pass line, and the person on the other end of the table had the dice. I remember that he sevened right out, and we all lost. The guy from Texas was grumbling again. We began talking, and he was telling me that he was down about $70,000. No wonder he was so mad. Remember, this was 1978. Seventy thousand dollars was worth a lot more then.

Next he got the dice. I bet $5 on the pass line, and he made the point. I won. I did this a few more times and noticed how he was winning a hell of a lot of money, so I watched what he did. If he threw money on numbers (4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10), then I did too. I remember the box man having to instruct me on how to bet the numbers. As long as I bet 4, 5, 9, or 10, $5 was okay. When it came to 6 and 8, I got yelled, One dollar more please. Okay, I felt foolish but kept going. I remember that I won about $50, and then he sevened out. Now the dice came to me.

I picked up the dice and immediately got yelled at One hand on the dice please. Okay, I’m sorry, I said. Then I began to shake the dice (as I had seen in a movie somewhere). Once again, I got yelled, Keep the dice over the table please. Now I rolled the dice. I got yelled at again. Hit the back wall with both dice please. Sorry, I said. This is my first time rolling the dice. What! the guy from Texas yelled. Then he increased all of his bets. I started to roll, and I remember making a lot of numbers and then the point. This time, I noticed that the guy from Texas was putting money behind his pass-line bet and getting paid at some amount higher than what he bet. I still had no idea what the odds were yet, so I placed $15 behind my $5 pass-line bet and was immediately yelled at by the stickman again! Double odds only, sir. Huh? was my answer. He then took his stick and pushed $5 off my odds bet, and I was good to go!

I remember that I was making so many numbers that the guy from Texas was adding money to all my bets. The bottom line was that when I was done, the guy from Texas had won back his $70,000 plus about another