I learned this system in 1939 when casinos couldn't have you thrown in jail-because they were illegal also. I was in Florida, which had wide-open gambling then, when an old card hustler called Shimkey volunteered to teach me his system. Shimkey never worked day in his life. He traveled back and forth across the country from town to town looking for 21 games. Gambling was wide open in the 1920s and 1930s, and for years Shimkey got all the action he could handle. But word spread quickly in the tightly knit gambling business, and as happens with most card hustlers and card sharks, the casino and dealers began wondering why Shimkey always won. The couldn't catch him doing anything, but they figured he must be doing something, so, one by one, the clubs barred Shimkey from the tables. That's why he came to me. I also was hustling cards in those days and our paths crossed several times. He wanted to teach me his count method, and then we would split the winnings.
New Casino
Shimkey approached I five days before a new casino, the Terrace Gardens, was to open on 27th Street in Miami Beach. The casino bosses of the Terrace Gardens knew Shimkey from their other gambling operations, and he knew he wouldn't be allowed to play there. I spent the next five days in Shimkey’s hotel room learning trick and nuance involved in counting. I was scared stiff when I Walked into the club opening night, but after a few hours I had everything under control. When the casino closed that evening, I had won S4SO, which was a pretty good score in those days. By week's end my winnings were $2,500. Shimkey and I got $1,250 each. It was the easiest money I had ever made. At $1,250 a week, it wouldn't be long Wore I would have my own casino. A nice dream, but the next night, which was my eighth night in the club, the top boss came over to a 21 table as I sat down and asked me into his office. "Mike, my boy," he said, "you're a nice lad, but you're a little too lucky in here. We can't nail you doing anything to the cards, but I thing you’d better play somewhere else from now on."
I insisted it was nothing more than a long luck streak and that I really was an unemployed 21 dealer looking for work. "If that's the case, we'd rather have you working for us than playing," the boss said, and hired me on the spot. It was an offer I couldn't refuse: work or leave. That finished my counting career for a while, and almost my dealing career. Police raided the club two weeks later. Fortunately, it was my night off. As for Shimkey, he continued to live very comfortably off his count until 1963, when he died of a bean attack playing golf. He was sixty-eight.
Cheaters Secretes
Many old-time counters and cheaters were very secretive about their techniques and many of them died broke rather than reveal their secretes to a newcomer, as Shimkey did with me. But modern counters don't seem to have any qualms about teaching someone else their Ricks for a piece of the action. With sophisticated anti cheating devices, one-way mirrors in the casinos, and international police cooperation, counters and cheaters must share their knowledge with fresh, unknown faces to survive. Nevada counters were delighted when the University of Nevada opened a Las Vegas campus that has own to several thousand students. The campus gave the blacklisted counters a steady supply of ideal recruits. College students generally have all the requirements of a good potential counter. Their minds are trained for memorizing, they always need money, and they seem willing, almost eager, to try nearly anything, especially ripping off the, big, online casino. I know some blacklisted old-timers who have been operating college-kid count rings for years now.
