Heat in the Vegas Night

Give this man a movie deal.  

I loved this story of small-town athletes who took on the casinos in the 1980s, using an illegal mirror “gaff” to peek at the blackjack dealers’ hole card.  It’s billed as the true account of the author’s exploits when he was in his twenties, although there’s little evidence produced and the recreated dialogue is sometimes stilted.  But accurate or not, the story is fabulous.

Jerry Reedy had nowhere else to go when he got a fateful call from a friend offering him a chance to become a professional blackjack player.  Just out of college, a baseball player who wasn’t quite good enough to get signed, he took the chance, only later to learn that the offer was actually to become a professional blackjack cheat.   

What a wild ride.  The book takes the reader in and out of casinos in three states, exploring the group’s  adventures and motivations.  Some were driven by a hatred of the casinos, some by loyalty to others in the group, some because they had no other options.  Reedy skillfully describes the way the group’s leader exploited competition and insecurities to make members work harder and more cohesively, sometimes by pitting members against each other to drive them to excel, sometimes by manipulating the stakes so they could not succeed without each other.

It’s very exciting, and you don’t need to know about blackjack in order to appreciate the tension as the group preps for a weekend spree; exhaustion while they try to glimpse the card, throw a signal, and sense danger before the heat comes down; fear when they are chased, threatened, and caught; exhilaration when they get away.  Reedy is also unsparing in describing some of the consequences of his lifestyle:  the anxiety, the loneliness, the disconnection from normal life and values.

Perhaps thanks to the author’s research partner, Skookum Maguire, an Oregon novelist, the book also provides a wealth of information about old Vegas, with a mordant twist.  

It’s not a perfect book.  There are editing errors and omissions, as when the author tells us twice in two paragraphs that he’s heading into the Mint casino.  Sometimes the voice slips, and it sounds less like a memoir and more like a research paper.  There are some issues with word choice.  Someone is always giggling in this book.  

Still, this is an exciting book, with more than enough capers for the feature, the sequel, and the prequel.  

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Blackjack is really the simplest of card games. The aim is to hold two or more cards with a value of twenty one points (or as close to this number as possible) without exceeding that number. If you can achieve this more successfully than the card dealer you win. As it’s played at casinos in Nevada, the house dealer always deals a card to themselves face down whereas players at the table have all their cards dealt face up. The key to gaining an advantage over the dealer is to somehow find out the value of the hidden card. In this book a real life card cheat tells of how he and a gang of associates managed to achieve this and run with their scam through a period of some ten years. But it certainly wasn’t all plain sailing, there were plenty of scares when the casino security staff spotted what they were up to. It’s a wild ride and plenty of fun to read about.

The team consisted of a group of young men who used a piece of a mirror they called a ‘gaff’. Essentially one player would hold the gaff on the playing table hidden by a combination of their hand and a drink they’d strategically place nearby. Using the mirror, the player would catch just a glimpse of the card as it was placed on the table or briefly lifted but thanks to hours of training this proved to be sufficient. Through much study it was then possible to mentally calculate the odds of beating the dealer. By using hand signals a second player would then receive instructions and place large bets on the cards they were dealt. Other members of the team stood by to help shield the two from view and to watch for signs that the scam had been rumbled. 

If you enjoy tales of derring-do then this book might just work for you. There’s a constant stream of action as the group visit casinos in Las Vegas and other parts of Nevada. Many are the times they get rumbled and have to run out of the casino with staff, and often police, in hot pursuit. They sometimes get caught in the act and dragged into a back room, fearing that a one way drive out into the desert may be their next and final trip. It’s a full-on adrenaline rush for all of the team and the rewards are significant, but the risks they take are huge too.

The writing itself is pretty average and the action does feel a little repetitive at times but I have to say that I really enjoyed this book. It’s hard to imagine how the team managed to keep going for so long when the casinos had caught on to their methodology at an early stage. It certainly took some nerve!

What an excellent book! Kept me on the edge of my seat. Very informative, learned a great deal about the casino industry. Recommend to anyone interested in gambling