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A Professional Card Counter's Chronicle of the Blackjack Wars
Penguin
March 2010
On Sale: March 18, 2010
288 pages
ISBN: 1594202478
EAN: 9781594202476
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
A deliciously wry, edge-of-the-seat memoir of making a
fortune with card counters across a wide swath of blackjack
in America. At twenty-four, Josh Axelrad held down a respectable and
ominously dull job on Wall Street. Adventure was a tuna fish
sandwich instead of the usual turkey for lunch. Then one
night, a stranger at a cocktail party persuaded him to leave
the nine-to-five behind and pursue an unlikely dream: the
jackpot. The stranger was a blackjack card counter, and he
sold Axelrad on the vision of Vegas with all its intrigue,
adventure- and cash. Repeat Until Rich is Axelrad's taut, atmospheric, and
darkly hilarious account of ditching the mundane and
entering the alternative universe of professional blackjack.
Axelrad has one thing in common with his team: Jon Roth, the
leader and a former options trader; Neal Matcha, a
recovering lawyer; Aldous Kaufman, a retired math Ph.D.
candidate. They all thrived in the straight world, found
success boring, and vowed to make life more exotic. Axelrad adopts Roth's philosophy-"repeat until rich"-and
from his strategy and skill spring hasty retreats across
casino floors, high-speed car chases, arrests on dubious
grounds, and the massive cash paydays that make it all
worthwhile. Along the way, he unveils the tactics and
debunks the myths of professional card counters. In team
play, he's either the "big player," who bets the big money,
or the "controller," who subtly coordinates the team's
betting while wagering only the minimum himself. Counting is
not illegal, and it's less intellectually daunting than its
MIT-level mystique suggests. With clarity and wit, Repeat Until Rich proves the old
gambler's maxim that "if you can tip a waiter, you can count
cards." But it also proves how zealous, even forceful,
casino bosses can be in "backing off" counters-seeing past
their undercover methods and banning them from the tables.
Josh soon grows to love all this trouble, and discovers,
more than the money, what he needs most of all is the rush.
Filled with actual bad guys, chase scenes, and high stakes,
Repeat Until Rich offers an intoxicating, unprecedented view
of the dangerous allure of living off the cards and one's wits.
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