1405: Steven Bridges | How a Card Counter Learned to Beat the Odds

1405: Steven Bridges | How a Card Counter Learned to Beat the Odds

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Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people.

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Start doing arithmetic and suddenly you're the problem. Today, professional card counter Steven Bridges takes us inside a job that's less James Bond and more fake teeth, secret signals, and trying not to cry in a casino bathroom. We'll unpack how you can play perfectly and still lose a fortune, what it takes to stay ahead of surveillance and security, and what the casino business reveals about our own capacity to fool ourselves.

If you think being smart makes you immune to getting played, well, this one's for you. Here we go with Steven Bridges. Your team went up about 97 grand in Vegas in two or three days.

Then, before people clap, lost 110 grand from that point. So during one $30,000 losing session, you go into the bathroom, you splash water on your face, and you're like, all right, compose yourself, right? Give yourself a little pep talk.

And security's waiting for you outside the bathroom, which, by the way, creepy move. Sure. Most people would then go, hey, this is the universe telling me to knock it off.

Maybe I should stop doing this. But you're like, all right, this is variance, whatever. Take me into the bathroom.

What happened? How are you pep talking yourself? And then, why do you return to the table after this?

All of these seem like strange choices.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, it's very interesting. I think part of it is that you're so committed already. I'm in some place in Chicago, in this casino that we've flown to, to play in.

I'm sat there, I'm playing.

Jordan Harbinger: There's casinos in Chicago?

Steven Bridges: I think it was Chicago.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Who knows?

Steven Bridges: Illinois. It was somewhere around there. Yeah.

And I'm already committed. I'm doing the job. I think a lot of people say to me, they think it's brave to go in a casino and count cards.

And I'm like, not at all, because every step is just a small step, right? I get to the casino, that's easy. I walk in, that's easy.

I sit down, that's easy. And then before you know it, you're in a situation that might be quite hostile, but you're already in that situation. Yeah, yeah.

So it's kind of similar with this. Our team's getting absolutely destroyed. And we're quite new as a team at this point.

So we'd experienced this amazing high of going to Vegas, winning like 97K. Yeah, we're all going to be rich. Yeah, we're on top of the world.

And at the time, I wasn't super loaded or anything money-wise. So for me, this was like pretty life-changing moment. And then we had the flip, whereas a lot of the time the variance might be you win a bit, then you lose a session, you win a session.

But for us, it felt like we did all the winning and then all the losing. So in that casino in particular, I was on a 30K losing session, which was the worst session I'd had at the time. And I went into the bathroom just to...

Jordan Harbinger: Cry.

Steven Bridges: Yeah. Like, I wish I could have cried some of it out. Put a splash of water on my face, look at myself in the mirror, remind myself that I'm doing the system correctly and this is sort of part of the gig.

But I was feeling really low. And then when I walked out, when you've got a group of security as well, Jordan, it's like the most overkill thing for a guy that's playing cards well.

Jordan Harbinger: That's an intimidation play, I assume.

Steven Bridges: For sure.

Jordan Harbinger: We'll talk more about getting backed off and banned from casinos, but...

Steven Bridges: And I don't know how much you've dealt with security before, but I found there's like quite a big range in how power trippy they are.

Jordan Harbinger: I used to work in security and I'm not big, right? So I had to be like the smart one who talked people down and reasoned with people. But yeah, there were huge guys, small women.

We fired the people who were like, I'm in charge here. It's like, relax. We don't want to get shot, okay?

We want people to respect us, like us, want to calm down. So we actually filtered for smart people. For sure.

Steven Bridges: It's wild to me because the whole job surely, it's like de-escalation, must be like the number one thing because you don't want things to kick up a fuss. But if you ever want to make a card counter or any person feel on edge, surround them with a bunch of people that could beat the crap out of you and you're going to suddenly tensions rise.

Jordan Harbinger: So assume the listeners never played blackjack, although, geez, I probably played on my Apple 2C computer when I was in kindergarten, but in 60 seconds, what are you tracking? How does that sort of change the odds? What are you not doing?

And this is not going to be like intro to card counting, but like this is 30,000 foot overview of card counting.

Steven Bridges: Sure. In essence, all we're doing is keeping track of the cards that have been played in a card game and that gives us an idea of what cards are on the way and then we can use that information against the casino. So in essence, we're waiting to catch a wave where we're more likely to win.

And when that wave is coming along, we place really large bets. We win more of those bets than we lose. And then when the wave goes away, we drop our bet down to small and that's essentially all we're doing.

So we're not memorizing the cards, which is the big misconception that everyone's like, wow.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, you need an eidetic memory to do this.

Steven Bridges: Exactly. Yeah. We're just more keeping track of the cards through some elaborate point system.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So is it sort of like all the twos and threes are gone already out of this deck. So it's not going to be a two or three.

So that raises our probability of winning to 0.6% over 50%. So now we have a slightly higher chance of winning than the casino.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, that's 100% it. In essence, in blackjack, if you get a 10 value card and an ace, you've won in a special way where you get bonus money on top of your bet. So if you've got a hundred bucks, normally you just win a hundred bucks if you win.

But if you've got a blackjack, you get 150. Whereas if the dealer gets a blackjack, they just take your hundred bucks. So if you can imagine a situation where for some weird reason, it was just you get a blackjack as the dealer.

And then the next round I got a blackjack and we went back and forth like that. The player would win more money than the dealer. Right.

So in essence, what we're doing is we're keeping track of the odds of a blackjack coming. We don't. Well, I say we don't care who gets it.

We definitely care. We'd prefer to get it. But we know over time the dealer will get half those blackjacks.

I'll get half those blackjacks, but I'll make the money from that profit. Everything about card counting is based on that one thing and the rest of it is just stuff around it basically.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. So how good is your edge under good conditions?

Steven Bridges: We've basically got about a one to 5% edge over the house.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Okay.

Steven Bridges: Tiny in the scheme of things.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So you have to play for, I don't know, a couple hours and then it's like, hey, we won some money.

Steven Bridges: Oh, way more than a couple of hours. We're talking like a hundred to several hundred hours to be, I say quote unquote guaranteed to be like very likely in profit. It's a very, very volatile.

We've got to stack up hundreds and hundreds of hours. The games vary a bit, right? So sometimes you've got really good blackjack and sometimes the rules are a bit crappy and we can get to that long run quicker.

But yeah, in general we've got to play for hundreds of hours before we're guaranteed.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay. Because watching the videos, I'm like, why were they there for like two, three hours? So are you sitting in a casino for nine hours?

Steven Bridges: If they'll let me.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. If they'll let you.

Steven Bridges: Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the trickiest things, right?

Because especially if I go and play Vegas, what will usually happen because they've got the sharpest surveillance departments in the world, they'll be watching, they'll see the bat changes and then they'll go, oh, he might be counting. They'll watch for a while. They'll count the cards themselves and then they'll conclude and they'll kick me out.

Right. Vegas are really, really sharp. So sometimes I'll get 10 minutes in a casino before they kick me out.

Jordan Harbinger: That's got to be facial recognition though, isn't it?

Steven Bridges: Not even a face rec.

Jordan Harbinger: Really?

Steven Bridges: Like this is just, they see, oh, there's a white guy. He sat down. Oh, and he's buying in for a few couple thousand dollars or whatever, or he's betting black when this is a downtown casino that's not used to a hundred dollar bets, right?

They see that, they start watching, they figure it out, they kick you out, but that might happen quite routinely in Vegas, right? If you get 10 minutes in one casino, 20 minutes in another, maybe an hour, and then one time, just randomly, the stars will align and we'll just get hours and hours and hours. So we're in essence, we're waiting for those sessions that are sort of paying for all of the other sessions, which were kind of crap.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So you're actually gambling on even being able to gamble, really? Yeah.

Very metal. That's funny. You said the surveillance people will say, oh, there's a white guy who bought in.

Is it a benefit to be like a person of color who counts cards because you don't fit the, maybe the stereotype of like nerdy white guy counting cards?

Steven Bridges: A hundred percent. It's essentially all forms of prejudice or discrimination flipped on their head. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. It's wild because also surveillance people that I've chatted to them don't think that women can't count cards or, you know, it's just subconscious bias, subconscious bias.

Yeah, for sure. But they undoubtedly, when we look at the time that they get in, they get average longer sessions before they get kicked out. Same with older people, Asian people.

Jordan Harbinger: I was going to say somewhere there's an Asian guy who's like, I'm just playing cards and I keep getting kicked out of the casino. That happens every now and again.

Steven Bridges: One time my team were playing in East Coast and we were all in the same casino doing like big player spotter play, which is like the movies, all this sort of dramatic stuff with lots of us. And they round us all up to kick us out. And they just picked off some random guy from the table as well that they just thought was part of our group that wasn't.

And he just gets banned from the casino.

Jordan Harbinger: And he's like, this vacation sucks! For sure, right?

God. So when you're going in, can you just pick any table or are you looking for like, oh, there's three players that this one, that's better because I blend in. Maybe you don't want to be the only person playing blackjack with one dealer who only is looking at you.

Steven Bridges: The tricky thing is that what works well at one casino for cover might be a terrible idea at another casino. It just depends on how the surveillance people are thinking about their job. It's not uniform in general.

If we find a table where we're the only player at the table, we'll get faster rounds dealt per hour. We can get the dealer to go really quick. And that is like doubling, tripling, quadrupling our hourly rate.

But as you say, if you're the only person at the table and table games, blackjack, they're more social things. You could have sat down at the other table and joined someone else. Then you look a bit suspicious for being by yourself.

So different card counters will approach this in different ways. It's all kind of depending on what you're going for. You could look like a miserable gambler who just likes to be sat by themselves.

Jordan Harbinger: There was one video where you were almost pretending to be just like a guy in a bad mood is angrily gambling, which is kind of funny because that's an unhealthy person, right? Who's just in there like, I don't care how much money I lose. I want dopamine right now.

Steven Bridges: For sure. Yeah.

And there's probably a lot of those in real life and it's like, I don't want to sit with that guy. Yeah. It's kind of unfortunate because I find that the angry guy at the table is one of the most deceptive forms of cover that you can employ in terms of just social cover and how you're being.

Yeah. I've seen him whenever I've gone neck tattoos for the disguise, slick back my hair, dyed my beard black and just got some gold chains around me and looked kind of like some poor man's mafia.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Steven Bridges: It's always, I get a lot more time looking like that. And maybe it's because people are a bit intimidated or maybe it's just because they think that guy's not a card counter. He doesn't look like a nerd.

Jordan Harbinger: That guy didn't even graduate high school. There's no way he's counting cards. Yeah.

This guy just got out of jail or something. Yeah. You're calculating something called expected value.

And this is, I don't want to get mathy, but can you kind of explain what that is? I mean, that's a, there's got to be a way to do this that somebody like me who became a lawyer to avoid math can understand.

Steven Bridges: In essence, it's just what your hourly rate should be when you're doing what you're doing on average. So as you know, we might win 10 K in one session or lose 10 K in another session and it's all over the place. But that graph overall on average is worth X dollars per hour.

So when we do all our calculations or whatever, we might go, ah, cool. If we bet like this, we'll make 500 bucks per hour. What actually happens could be anything, but over time on average, all of our wins and losses will average out to about $500 in profit per hour.

And that's EV.

Jordan Harbinger: Is that your real profit per hour?

Steven Bridges: That's a pretty good example. Okay. Yeah.

This is a weird thing to say, but we can set our EV to almost anything that we want, provided we've got enough money to endure the volatility and those $110,000 downswings that we've talked about. But yeah, in essence, we can do whatever we like. There's just pros and cons to doing that because if we bet really small and then really big, like $5 to $1,000 in our range, we'll make way more money.

It's way better for us. But then we look way more like we're counting cards. We've got to try and find that sweet spot to not look so obvious, but also make a lot of money.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And then you have to be able to play that number of hours, right? There was the Bahamas videos where it was like, all right, there's two casinos here.

If we screw this up in one, they're going to call the other one or it's going to upload to the database in the other one or the security guy is going to text his friend at the other one and be like, team from the U.S., five of them, whatever, they're this ethnicity. And you're done. You're just flying home.

Like that whole trip is a waste of time. So you've got to be able to do that. And people think, oh, just go to Vegas.

There's a million casinos, but they also share security information, I guess. Is that accurate?

Steven Bridges: Vegas is actually arguably the worst place to play. We like playing in Vegas because it's so casino dense that we can get like an Airbnb and have a fun time basically. But really Vegas, they're so sharp.

And exactly what you said happens, right? You get caught at one casino, that casino will take a screenshot of you on the security. They'll upload that for all of their casinos and maybe they'll share that via email or a database or whatever it is to other casinos in the area.

So we're also tracking how each casino operates and what their procedures are usually. So if I'm going to Vegas, I'll go, well, this casino shares with this one and this one shares with this one. So if I avoid this one and play this one first, we map it out in order that will help us get the most time before our faces are shared.

If I go to the wrong casino first, they could share it everywhere. And then as you say, I might be like, damn, I guess we're off to California or whatever.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, right. So you wouldn't want to go to the one with the sharpest surveillance guys, the most up-to-date AI facial recognition. You want to go to like, I don't know, the Golden Nugget or something where it's like people with oxygen tanks playing slot machines.

Because if they catch you there, then it's like, tell who? And then you go to the Wynn at the end or whatever it is. Right.

There's definitely some sort of a rhyme and reason to that. That's kind of funny. Before we keep going, there's so many security questions I have, but I want to know how the money works.

Because in one video you start by saying, oh, this trip to the Bahamas is super expensive. It's like $10,000. And in order to make money on it, we're going to need to play for like three hours making $4,000 an hour.

And I'm like, I think a lot of people would be satisfied with $4,000 per hour. Granted, you're on a team, but still, what is that? Like $800 per hour per person?

That's a pretty decent wage in 2026. So the problem, of course, again, is getting kicked out. But I don't know.

Are you just saying the trip to the Bahamas was super expensive for your YouTube audience? Because that seems like a peanuts for guys making $4,000 an hour.

Steven Bridges: I guess in that particular situation, it was also very possible that we would hit some roadblock almost immediately.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Steven Bridges: If they spotted and recognized one of us initially because of these surveillance systems or sharing information or just me because of my face being more well-known, then that would have completely killed the whole thing. So yeah, when I'm writing the videos and thinking about it, I am thinking, what are the dramatic elements? But it's always grounded in how I felt at the time.

So if I'm saying something, I could be totally wrong about my assumption, but it's coming from, this is how I felt at the time. And we all went there. We nearly canceled that bit of the trip because it was going to be bankrolled by someone else.

And we were like, great, we have no risk here if he's going to bankroll it. And then he pulled out. And then we'd all sort of wanted to do it anyway in this weird spot where we weren't sure.

Yeah, it could have gone really wrong because we could have got kicked out within 20 minutes. We had no idea what the Bahamas was going to be like. And it was a pretty big, fancy casino.

Jordan Harbinger: With a budget potentially to hire real surveillance and buy tech. Yeah. So is the enemy mostly tech or is the enemy mostly people who know what they're doing?

Steven Bridges: It's a hundred percent surveillance. I won't call them the enemy because I have a lot of respect for surveillance.

Jordan Harbinger: But the people or the people?

Steven Bridges: The people. The software. Okay.

Yeah. They have software. But most of the time, any surveillance guy in Vegas is going to be able to count cards manually themselves.

And in general, that's a lot more efficient. Really? Yeah, it's part of their actual training and their job interview.

They have to count down a deck in front of whoever they're being interviewed with.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, so that they can spot you guys.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, in essence. Yeah. Because it's a lot easier than the software.

The software, funnily enough, is that they have to manually input the card that you have and then the other card that you have and then the dealer's cards. It's very tedious to use, right? There's one time, though, that I used that whole kind of thing against the casino.

And once again, this was a hunch that I had about a casino that I was playing in Colorado. It could have gone horribly wrong. But I developed a strategy that would be quite harmful to my hourly rate because I would be doing the wrong thing.

When the count went up, I'd be betting less. And it was just a very weird strategy. But overall, it was still very profitable.

Jordan Harbinger: Because it got you more time.

Steven Bridges: Well, they ran me down. I know they did because they made the phone call to surveillance. And you can just tell sometimes it's really not subtle.

And then I got several hours there and I went back the next day. And it was purely because I just know this for a fact. The surveillance person looked at me, started assessing, saw that I did a dumb thing and went, well, no card counter is going to bet like that.

But really, if they had run it through software in that case, they would have come out and gone, oh yeah, he's actually profitable. Sure. That was my best session of all time.

It was like a 40k win. It was great. I had a blast.

Jordan Harbinger: Can you make every decision correct and then still lose for like a hundred hours in a row, essentially?

Steven Bridges: Yes, you can. You really, really can. So it's just like any form of investing.

If you look at it like that, you know, if people are investing in startups or companies or whatever, you can still have a bad run that is attributed to bad luck. And in essence, if you take a hundred card counters and then they sim their game and make sure they've got a 1% chance of going bankrupt, well, you're still going to have one of that hundred that's going to have a terrible time. You're going to have to flip as well with the other guy that's just made so much money.

But yeah, in essence, a hundred hours is not nearly enough to be guaranteeing your profit. I keep saying guarantee, but there is no guarantee. We are still gambling.

We're just gambling where we have the advantage. And just like the casino in theory could lose loads of money to luck, they're playing so many games for so many hours. They're not worried about that.

They're bankrupt. It would be mathematically so slim. Our odds aren't quite that good, but they're still pretty good.

Jordan Harbinger: What makes one blackjack table countable and another table worthless or uncountable? Is that a thing?

Steven Bridges: For sure. So there's a couple of things in general. The main thing that can harm how good the game is, is how many cards they deal before shuffling. This is quite a weird thing to visualize, but they've got a little bit of plastic that they shove in the shoe of cards.

Jordan Harbinger: I've seen that before. I don't know what that is. What is that thing?

Steven Bridges: It's partly so that they don't run out of cards. If they just keep dealing and they get to the very end, they're like, oh, I see. So that's a reminder to the dealer that they need more cards in the top.

It's just like, okay, great. We've hit that bit of plastic. Play out the rest of that hand and now shuffle the cards and they'll never run out of cards.

But it's also to prevent or deter card counting. If they put that card really near the front, like just one deck from the front on a six deck game, you only play a few hands and then it's a shuffle. So all of the information we're gathering is pretty useless to us.

It gets reset, right? When they do that. Okay.

So where they put that card is it varies quite a bit. And sometimes they'll just put it quite far forward to deter card counters. But really they're shooting themselves in the foot, because every time they shuffle, they're losing money on the time that people aren't gambling.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. I was just going to ask, why don't they just constantly do that then to deter you guys?

Steven Bridges: Someone did the math on it once and it really massively impacts their bottom line to slow down the shuffling procedure, which is why nowadays they have a lot of these machines where they put the cards in the machine, press the button, it shuffles the cards, they take out the other cards and play them.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Steven Bridges: In a bunch of places they have these machines where the cards are being continuously shuffled. We can't count those. But luckily for us, Americans seem to really hate these machines.

They just don't like how it feels to play them.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Steven Bridges: So they're less common.

Jordan Harbinger: That is very interesting because, yeah, that goes to my next question, which is theoretically guys like you should slowly drain casinos, but obviously that's not happening because they're still in business. So what protects casinos more effectively? It seems like the fancy shuffling thing, not really, but is it surveillance?

Is it the limit of your bankroll because you can't, there's only so much you can do? Is it human fatigue because you can only play for a few, nine hours and then you're bleary eyed and you really don't want to be there anymore, right? You're hungry.

Is it fear, greed, the inability to execute perfectly because you guys get emotional? Like why aren't there thousands of card counting teams in casinos just struggling to be profitable?

Steven Bridges: I think one of the things is that a lot of card counters don't take the time to really refine their game. I don't even think that card counting is the most difficult thing in the world. Like I don't have a math background.

I'm not particularly good memory. I'm not that smart. But I can still do it because of practicing for a long period of time and being, I guess quite open to when I'm wrong.

I've always got to be aware that maybe I'm losing my edge.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

Steven Bridges: I'll keep testing and getting friends to test me, make sure that I'm good at the game. So a lot of card counters will get really excited. They'll learn the counting bit and then they won't figure out the bankroll management stuff and they'll just blow through their money or they'll be making more errors than they realize.

A really good example of this is you know how if you're driving drunk that's obviously really bad?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Steven Bridges: But if you're driving really tired that's also really dangerous. That's right. People don't think of those things as the same thing.

So if you imagine that on a card counting level if people are playing a long session and they're tired or they're jet lagged they might be thinking well I'm still playing with an edge but maybe they're making more errors than they can afford to and because we only have a tiny advantage over the house we win only just over half of the time. We have a load of losing sessions. So if we're too tired or drunk or whatever it's going to be then yeah the errors could be gone.

Really in the scheme of the casino's bottom line there just aren't that many card counters or at least the damage we're doing isn't going to be as much as say dealers that might be stealing or trying to skim chips or people that are trying to cheat in other ways. So it's just one small thing amongst all of the millions of slot machines they have and the money they take in we're an inconvenience to them at most.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Is the casino's greatest edge the math, or is it human nature, where, like, look, you might have that edge, but sometimes, like you said, you're going to be drunk, you're going to be like, I know I shouldn't do this, but I just have a feeling. Oh, that was a bad idea. Is there just enough of that where they always win?

Steven Bridges: There's two kind of things at play, right? You've got the natural edge built into the game, that every game, they have an advantage, and either they pay you not enough for what you would be paid mathematically or whatever. Basically, they have the advantage in every game, so more time playing that game, the more likely people are to lose money. But then there is that other human component too, where the very way that they build out the culture of gambling isn't that you just go there, place one bet on red, win, and then leave the casino. It's that you keep playing. So most of the time, even if people win, they psychologically treat that money as, like, bonus money, and then they'll keep playing. And inevitably, the vast majority of people will just keep going until they lose. So there's, like, those two components happening. Really, it is the math of the games, but then also human nature, where people will just keep playing until they lose all the money.

Jordan Harbinger: Nothing says VIP like spending a hundred grand to get a free buffet. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by AT&T. If you've done my free Six-Minute Networking course, you know I'm big on keeping in touch. It doesn't have to be a whole production. Send somebody a quick text, share a photo that reminds you of them. That's part of digging the well before you're thirsty, building relationships through little everyday conversations so you're not only reaching out when you need a favor. And AT&T has a deal to keep those connections going. Right now at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with eligible trade-in. It has the ultimate pro camera system and a big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Share a photo, check in on an old friend, follow up on something they told you last time you talked. You don't need a big reason to reach out. Just remembering what's going on in someone's life is a pretty good one. Learn how you can trade in your phone for the new iPhone 18 Pro at AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Required trade-in of $230 or more on an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. Visit an AT&T store for details. This episode is brought to you by Xero. That's zero with an X. Running a small business means there's always something competing for your attention. Managing your finances shouldn't make your day more complicated. Xero brings accounting, payments, payroll, and analytics together in one connected platform, so you spend less time piecing together the numbers and more time actually building your business. We've been using Xero for nearly a decade now, and honestly, we don't know what we'd do without it at this point. That's meant clear reports, dashboards we can actually read, forecasts, and AI-powered insights that help us understand our own cash flow and see how the business is really doing. It was simple and easy to use from day one, and it still is. In fact, 91% of customers surveyed agree that Xero is easy to use, and when you choose Xero, you're joining 5 million customers worldwide, including us. That's Xero with an X at Xero.com. The 91% claim is based on a 2024 Xero survey conducted in the US, UK, and Australia. Use our code. It's a win-win. You get a great deal, and you help keep the show going strong. Thank you for your support. Now, back to Steven Bridges. What about people think, like, oh, I should do this? Initially, when we were talking, hey, does a person of color have an advantage? And I don't need to be good at math. So a bunch of my listeners are like, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm a female person of color who's not good at math. I want to be a card counter. But the reality is what? Nine hours a day in a casino, if you're lucky, and then do it again the next day? That sounds miserable, by the way.

Steven Bridges: Nine hours would be great. We'd be over the moon with nine hours. Yeah, in general, I don't recommend card counting to people. It's one of those things where people think about the identity of the job as the thing that they get. So with acting, for example, acting is cool and all that, but those actors are on set, especially for TV and movies, doing the same lines again and again and again. I think for most people, even if they find the idea of acting appealing, the reality is going to be pretty boring, and they're not going to enjoy it, right? It's the same thing with counting. There was one trip I did where I counted up the hours I spent driving versus the hours I spent playing, and there was a perfect one hour of play to one hour of driving ratio. So people don't think about the fact that I might have to drive six hours to some casino in the middle of nowhere to then get there, walk inside, and someone go, hey, Steve, how's it going? You can't play blackjack here. And then that's so demoralizing. The hours are awful. Often, we play at night. You get a little bit better conditions at night. Why? Surveillance just don't seem to be trying as hard at night. They're tired. Same with the pit bosses. I don't know what it is. We seem to get a bit more time on average at night, but then you're playing night shift, and that's awful in itself. And then you've got the swings, the wins, the losses, all of it. And because of loss aversion, you probably have more negative experiences than you do positive anyway, right? Right, yeah. So in general, I just don't recommend it because it's a pretty brutal way of making money. But for some people that feel drawn to it, even when I've said all of that, it's those people that might be right for it, if they're okay with that adventure.

Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense. Loss aversion, I have that pretty bad. It's one of the reasons I don't gamble, is when I win, I go, oh, okay, I won. That's bound to happen sometimes. And when I lose, I go, I'm so stupid. Of course I lost. It's gambling. Why would I...? You're going to lose more than you win. And so I might win, like, a hundred bucks, and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And then I lose 30, and I'm like, idiot.

Steven Bridges: It's awful, right?

Jordan Harbinger: And then I'm like, wait, why am I doing this? I'm going to go see a show and buy a meal. And, oh, wait, the meal's free because I won that. Well, that's kind of nice. But then it's like, I didn't have fun doing that, necessarily. So the only time I gambled was probably at those bachelor parties because everyone else was doing it. And it's like, do you just not want to hang out with us for the next seven hours, however long we were there, and talk? Because it's like, well, no, I'll do this with you guys, but I'm not going to go on my own. I'm not going to bring my family there. I'm not going to do that with my friends if I have a choice about what we're doing anywhere in Vegas. It's not for me.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, two things on that. One thing is that it's exceptionally rare for me to see anybody in the casino that is genuinely having a really fun time. Anybody at all. It's rare enough that when I see it, I'm kind of enamored by these people because I'm like, you're just here losing money and genuinely having fun. It's not their money. Got to be. Well, maybe, yeah. But there are occasionally these people that are just having a good time gambling, and the very fact that I say that with such novelty shows you how most people are kidding themselves that this is an enjoyable pastime. Maybe they go there if they're a bit lonely. There's a bit of a social element to table games, that kind of thing. But overall, people in general aren't having a fun time at the casino. That's one thing. And then what you were saying before about how it feels when you're losing that money, if you lose $30 one time but win $100 another time, imagine just taking a $10 bill and ripping it up into pieces. You feel so awful, not because you've lost $10, but because you've wasted it so purely. And that's how gambling feels when you lose it. And the whole thing would maybe make sense if it was, like, a couple of cents a bet, or, like, a dollar a bet. But when they're forcing you, because of the minimums and how they construct everything, to bet $25 a hand or whatever it is, that's a really expensive hobby. And I'm blown away sometimes when I go to these smaller casinos in maybe poorer areas, and there's people playing these $25 tables because that's all they have, or even $10 tables. I'm like, how many bets do you have to lose before you've lost a significant amount of your money?

Jordan Harbinger: Not many. No, that's a really good point. I know some wealthy people that gamble. I don't know what they're betting, but I assume it's a ton, because it's like, they'll invite us to their New Year's party, and it's like, oh, you can eat lobster and shrimp, and oh, the hotels are comped, and it's at the Wynn. And, oh, yeah, well, how are you guys getting there? Well, they're sending a jet for us, but you guys can get some Southwest flights, and the meals are all free, the rooms are all free. They're the nicest rooms in the hotel. They're flying you. Like, how much are you losing? So I asked one of my friends, I was like, what do you think they're spending? And he's like, over two days, three days, $100,000. You could buy a hell of a vacation for $100,000.

Steven Bridges: And sometimes they'll give these millionaires loss rebates or free bets, basically. They'll give them this free extra bet, and you can actually, this is a thing I'm like, should I say this? I can say this. It doesn't really massively matter. Sometimes those little discounts, as they call them, can lead to a profitable situation if you know what you're doing, because they can give you more money back than the house edge in certain things. But you know that these gamblers will take that and go, great, I got $20,000 back. Where's that $20,000 going? Straight back into the casino until it's gone. For being a professional gambler, I really detest the way that casinos operate. I'm pro the idea of gambling if it were regulated properly, but if they were regulating these casinos in a way that was actually reasonably preventing harm, I don't know if they would stay in business, because their whole business model is people that have, I'll say, an unhealthy relationship to gambling, because I don't know if it's just pure addict, but there's a huge component of it. You see people like that, and I see them at the blackjack table all the time, telling me this story about why this makes sense for them, and I can just see that they're trying to alleviate that horrible feeling they have. And it's just, these people have gambling problems, and no one's helping them, and it sucks.

Jordan Harbinger: There was one man at your table who was so drunk or something, high, whatever, that he couldn't even stack his chips. How are you allowed to continue playing when you're just meshing things into the corner and falling off your chair? I mean, what the heck? Come on.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, I mean, you're not allowed, I'm pretty sure, as a casino, to let that person play, but there's a certain look-the-other-way mentality. And this was a really small casino in Washington State. It made me really angry. I was sat there, my blood was boiling, because this guy just couldn't put his chips in a neat pile on the table, and it was just hundreds and hundreds of dollars at this kind of small, relatively low-end casino, right? So the guy's not, as far as I can tell, super rich. He's definitely hammered, really drunk. And I say to the dealer, I make, like, eye contact, and I just kind of go, is he okay? And the dealer completely just fobs it off. Of course, the dealer is getting a tip every hand, no matter what's happening, so the dealer doesn't super care. And then 20 minutes later or whatever, the pit boss comes over and asks me to stop playing for my way smaller bets that I'm winning. It's wild. It's really exploitive. There's another situation too, where there was this woman in the casino next to me, and this was one of the situations I handled it so terribly.

Jordan Harbinger: I saw this video. I know where you're going with this.

Steven Bridges: Exactly. I still put it on YouTube because I really want to show the reality of what's happening, not just, like, a polished, look how great I am. But there was this woman that was 77 years old next to me, this lovely elderly Asian woman. She was really, really nice. And then her friend sat down at some point and just mentioned that she'd been there for over 24 hours. And then this woman, she almost bragged when she said, no eat, no sleep, as if, like, yeah, I've been here for a long time. 24 hours, that old, without eating or sleeping, is definitely not cool. So I casually try and mention this to the dealer. The dealer fobs it off, like, oh, yeah, that's just whatever name, it's all fine.

Jordan Harbinger: Annie's crazy. She doesn't eat, and she barely pees. What's happening right now?

Steven Bridges: They could easily time her out at any point. And in the UK, we've got, our gambling situation is by no means perfect in the UK, but if I go into a casino in the UK, well, when I could, and if I lost, like, a couple grand, they would genuinely take me to one side, sit me down, and go, Mr. Bridges, we just wanted to check. How you doing? You've lost quite a little bit of money today.

Jordan Harbinger: Feeling okay?

Steven Bridges: And sometimes, I had a friend that played for, like, a 24-hour span. He was a card counter. They timed him out. They were like, you can't be playing this long. So there's at least a little bit more safety put in place. But to me, in the spirit of people having a good time, she's still going to be a regular customer. You could just say, that's enough for now. Get some food on us. She's definitely paid for it. Go home, have a sleep, and then come back. We'd love to see you tomorrow. I would just take them so little. But I spoke to the dealer, a pit boss, another pit boss. I mean, you saw, I wasn't being great about how I was handling this.

Jordan Harbinger: You guys should care more. Sure. Everyone watching is like, yeah, they should care more. Imagine you're related to this person. You'd be like, Grandma, stop gambling.

Steven Bridges: Well, actually, I got a lot of pushback for that situation, because people were really saying that this is America. She has the right to gamble. This is the freedom thing, which I get as a concept, but it's also really funny to me how much these situations are manufactured. Just to reference your own show, I heard that Skeptical Sunday episode you did about alcohol. I thought that was really interesting, how much architecture there was in planning to try and make this a thing that people did. And it's very much like that with gambling. People think, well, I just want to be able to gamble. Yeah, sure. I get that maybe that's an element of human nature that's fun, but in this environment, in this way, how it's constructed, nothing's natural about this. You only want this because of all of the marketing that's being pushed at you to do this thing. Yes. It's very hard balanced with the whole freedom thing versus the actual responsibility by the casinos to not be predatory.

Jordan Harbinger: It's kind of like, oh, well, this is America. We want freedom. And it's like, you have freedom, but you also realize that your free will is being deliberately hijacked by this multi-billion dollar organization, right? That's the idea.

Steven Bridges: I actually wouldn't even say that, like, that's a good way of looking at the other side. But I think that gambling addictions, based off what I've read about it, seem to be pretty harmful to the people around. Oh, for sure. Yeah, of course. You know, when someone's got an addiction, when they're that far gone, they're not thinking about these things through the way that we would logically think about it. So if someone's truly addicted to, like, some class A drug, they're going to steal money to buy the drug. The addiction is the number one, I'd say, priority, but it's beyond that. Yeah, yeah. But it's the same with gambling. So people might lie to their spouse. They might be borrowing money from a friend. They might, all sorts of things. And whenever you put a casino, I wish I had the stat off the top of my head, but if you put a casino in a city, the general kind of metrics of happiness or financial stability, they go down in that city. Like, yeah, it just affects everything.

Jordan Harbinger: So before casinos, you're a street magician, actually, right?

Steven Bridges: Yeah, my background was doing magic. I grew up just being really interested in magic, and then I moved to London, started gigging, but then found street performing, which I actually preferred. Gave me a lot of freedom.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So you have this London three card Monty video, which is funny. I've seen that in real life in New York in the '90s, where I went to Times Square, and guys were actually running three card Monty. I mean, this is like watching a movie, right? You roll in, you're like, wow, there's a guy with a folding table and cards, and when the cops walk by, they fold it up and put it up. Like, what? That's real? Intelligent people convince themselves they can beat these kinds of games.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, and actually, it's just like a regular magic trick. Magicians can be fooled by a magic trick just as much as regular non-magicians, right? Because if you want to fool a magician, you just build a trick that's based off assumptions that the magician will make, and you use those assumptions against them, right? So anybody can be taken in by a scam. I don't think it's really an intelligence thing. I think it's more of, like, a planning thing by the scammer. If they know everything about you, they can find a nice way of doing that. And obviously, with these games like three card Monty, they're going for a mass market.

Jordan Harbinger: Where's the ethical line between misdirection from a magician, it's entertainment, and then misdirection to conceal essentially fraud?

Steven Bridges: Well, I think anytime that... It's interesting, because a lot of magicians will do this thing where they are doing pseudo skills. So one of the big ones is mind readers pretending that they're doing body language reading.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, right. I know people like this.

Steven Bridges: Exactly, right? If it changes your beliefs about the world, that's when I think it's a problem, right? When you have these people that are doing the medium stuff, or they're connecting you with people that have passed away, or any of these kind of things, that stuff can really shift someone's whole life. I agree with you. But that law of attraction, it's like, well, they're just thinking positive. Yeah, but those beliefs could lead them to beating themselves up about something. And you know all this stuff. I'm just preaching to the...

Jordan Harbinger: No, it's good to hear on the show, the law of attraction thing. Like, oh, you just didn't believe hard enough. And it's like, no, no, no, you just can't do the thing that you were led to believe you could do based off of positive thinking. All right, back to card counting. It's a team thing. You're not just in there doing this all on your own. So you've got cool nicknames because you have to, right? Enigma, Syntax, Ultimate, Irish AP. What's an AP? It could be anything. I don't want to ask. Advantage player. Oh, got it. Okay, so what role does each person perform? And their identities are concealed because you'd get kicked out ten times when you already do, right?

Steven Bridges: Yeah, for sure. It's just that whole classic, like, you don't want to have your first name, last name on the internet where the casinos could look it up. So we have usernames. There are two ways of doing card counting, basically. You can do it solo. You go in, you change your bet sizes when the count goes up, you make money. But the big thing which gives you away as a card counter is that the thing you can't avoid as a solo player is, when you have an advantage, when you catch a good wave, you've got to bet big, right? When you don't have an advantage, you've got to bet small. Most players at the blackjack table, let's say they're betting a hundred dollars a hand if they're at that level of whatever. Maybe if they are feeling lucky, they'll bet 200 a hand, maybe 300, but that's about the range. They're not going to go crazy. But card counters will go from 100 to a thousand without batting an eye if the count calls for it. So that is the main tell that we have that we cannot run away from, that surveillance are looking for. So this whole concept of team play was to solve that problem. The idea is basically, what if, instead of having one person do all of the roles of a card counter, we split those roles up and divide them amongst the group? So the way that we would do it, you go in this casino, we have, let's say, five of us, go to different tables and sit down and start playing. So we're all playing at a different table, and all we're doing all night is betting the minimum, keeping the count, and trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Exactly, right? That's all we're doing.

Jordan Harbinger: And you can't even pee, though, because you lose track of stuff. Somebody could take your spot.

Steven Bridges: Well, it depends on the casino, but we have a, what we call a spotter at each table. And the job of the spotter is just to sit there, count the cards, and bet the minimum the whole night. When the count goes up, normally they would bet big, but instead of them doing it, they'll do some kind of secret signal, and then that will call over what we call the big player. The big player is just the rich person that's wandering around the casino, impulse betting whenever they want. So the big player sees some secret signal that's being done. Maybe someone's sipping a drink or whatever it's going to be. They come over to the table, and then the spotter will tell the big player what the count is through some kind of a code word. Oh, wow. That's the most common way. So maybe the big player comes over and says to the table, hey, everyone, how's the table going? And then the spotter might reply, oh, it's really crap. The phrase "really crap" might indicate that the count is 12 or whatever it is. So we just memorize a bunch of these things, and then the big player comes in, bets big, and then when the count drops, they leave. And to the casino, it doesn't look like he or she has been counting, because they didn't watch the whole shoe. They just got there, right? So that's essentially what it is. And we've experimented with different ways of doing this. Maybe we won't use code words. We'll use gestures and stuff like that to direct the big player what to do without them really knowing. Well, they know why they're doing it, but they might not know the count at all. They're just following instructions.

Jordan Harbinger: There's like 12 limousines outside, and it's hot. It's like 108 degrees.

Steven Bridges: Exactly. Well, yeah, you better believe that the first version of our communication system was pretty bad.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, man. Did you see those 17 and a half women out there wearing dresses that were all red? Red.

Steven Bridges: One time when I was being, like, tested in a casino, when I first, like, learned to just count in general, we actually had a card counter come and just watch me play to see if I was doing it right. And he said that he would casually ask me questions, and I would answer with number-based answers. It wasn't very subtle. He didn't really care. It was really small stakes. It was fine. So he might be like, oh, how many hours are you here? And I'd say, two hours or whatever. And at one point, he asks me, so after not saying anything for ages, just, like, quiet for 10 minutes, he goes, so how many bananas do you think you could fit in your mouth? And I have to say 17.

Jordan Harbinger: 17. I've tried. What kind of personality makes a really good counter but just a crap teammate?

Steven Bridges: Well, the biggest thing that we have to deal with when we consider adding a teammate is trust. It would be so easy to just lie and under-report your wins or over-report your losses.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, of course. No one's going to be able to check that ever. I mean, oh, yeah, you just get a guy who skims a thousand bucks every time he plays and wins.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, exactly. And there's occasionally a story will come out where a card counter will have caught a teammate stealing or something weird like that, or they'll have sent someone in the casino to, like, watch them play and then catch them in the act. But in general, trust is, like, the number one currency of doing this. I tend to believe that there's a chance that some people skim money. Not on my team. I just mean, I really trust everybody on my team with my life. Like, I've no concerns of that. But I'm just aware that sometimes people cheat a little bit. It's that whole study that I'm sure you're aware of, where they gave people test answers. They would use the test answers a little bit, but no one would use the whole sheet of test answers, right? People are comfortable with something, a little bit of sneakiness, but not too much. So I can conceive of situations where maybe some card counters feel like, well, actually, this contract for our arrangement is actually really unfair, and I, you know, I had to wait around. So maybe they would do little things, or they misreport time or something like that, right? But I imagine if it's happening, it's on quite a small basis, and it's not a thing I worry about on my team. But yeah, trust is, like, one of the huge things. If it's not a hell yes from everybody, we just don't do it.

Jordan Harbinger: Secret signals, code words and a guy who just wants fries. It's Ocean's 11 with low blood sugar. We'll be right back.

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Now, back to Steven Bridges. Don't you guys stay at the same Airbnb? So it's not like after you play and you're not talking to each other, you just go your separate ways.

You guys have to hang out or at least be around each other. So you get somebody who's just annoying or bad hygiene or bad attitude. It's like, I don't want them sleeping in the same house as me and then I've got to deal with them for a week at a time on this trip to Europe.

I mean, that just sounds miserable, right?

Steven Bridges: It's really funny actually because our team is made up of such a weird bunch of people that would never be friends in real life, but it's weird how actually just the game itself and the mission that we have where we're trying to accomplish this thing brings us all together and we're really, really tight knit. I think that's because of just you go through these ups and downs together and you have to trust people constantly. It's just a reminder that you can be friends with a lot of people even if you don't agree with them on a lot of things.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's interesting. That's a really good point. How do you pay the team?

It can't just be based on how much you all win because that's not up to you really.

Steven Bridges: Love this question and that's a really good insight because people instinctively think that well, if you win more, you get paid more. No, that wouldn't make sense at all for what you're doing. Yeah, there's a few different ways of doing it.

The most common structure is... To count cards, you need a ton of money to justify the bets that you're doing. Sure.

Some people are putting money in. Those are investors. That's just to oversimplify.

50% of the winnings go to the investors proportionately based on what they put in. 50% go to the players based on the hours that they played. That makes more sense.

Now, if we're getting really into the weeds of it, then some games are better than others. A game that might be worth $500 an hour. Another game might be worth $600.

You can pay people based off the quality of the games they're playing. You can give bonuses based off things. Sometimes there's manager cuts, that kind of stuff.

But in general, it's usually like a roughly 50-50 between the players and the investors and then it's based off just what you brought to the table, whether that's money or time played.

Jordan Harbinger: Your investors are people from your team that just have money now though, right? You don't have to go borrow money from some dude's uncle to do this anymore.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, when I started, it's just like a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. When I started, I didn't really know how I was going to get any money together. I kind of thought that my mentor, Colin, that was sort of teaching me this stuff would give me $10K to play with or something.

He's like, are you crazy? I've seen you gamble. I'm not giving you any money.

Right, exactly. But then a friend of mine was helping me move house one day and we were just catching up and I was telling him about all the card counting stuff and then after I got home or whatever, he just shot me a message saying, hey, can I put in like 10 grand, 20 grand or whatever it was? And then I was like, if you want, sure.

We talked about it. And then later he upped that to 200,000 pounds, which is like a quarter of a million dollars.

Jordan Harbinger: That is insane. What the hell?

Steven Bridges: It gets way worse because he isn't loaded. That was his mortgage money. So this is money he cannot afford to lose.

And the number one rule of professional gambling is that you have your bankroll that is separate from your life expenses. That is your asset that you can afford to lose. You should be able to lose it all and not be like the end of the world.

And this was a situation where if he'd lost that, it would have been life ruining. Not only that, this is once again, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. I misunderstood the long run math of card counting where I thought that the amount of time we needed to play to be quote unquote guaranteed to be in profit was way shorter than it actually was.

So really that whole thing was like a terrible idea. I mean luckily we ended up in a small amount of profit with that and then we stopped doing that. But to answer your initial question, nowadays it tends to be the players putting the money in.

Jordan Harbinger: That makes more sense because you don't want outside investors in any business if you can avoid it.

Steven Bridges: The other funny thing is that the asset that we need is cash. Physical dollars.

And that is a lot harder these days than just digital. So if someone's like, oh I could wire you 50k, it's not actually that useful because withdrawing 50k from the bank, once again when you're still going to have to have that weird conversation with the bank that you've just done there.

Jordan Harbinger: Can I get that in an aluminum briefcase? Do you have one of those handy back there? And maybe some handcuffs so I don't get mugged on the way to the casino.

Yeah, banks hate people that withdraw and deposit large amounts of cash. Of course. They really hate it.

Steven Bridges: And you have to report it. For sure. And when I take money back from the US to the UK, I've got to convert it to pounds when I go to the cash conversion place.

Once again, all these checks, I can't prove where the money is from most of the time because casinos aren't giving me a receipt, or more accurately, if they were going to give me a receipt, I'd have to give them my ID. And there's this whole other thing about counting what you don't want to really give over your personal...

Jordan Harbinger: We're going to get into that, yeah.

That's a good point. And you have like FinCEN, you have like anti-money laundering stuff where you can't just go, hey I've got 25k, can I drop this in a bank? No, I'd have to like give a bunch to other people on this flight with me that are hopefully friends and bring it to the UK.

Oh, and by the way, it's illegal to do that because it's called structuring. Right. Yeah, so we'll get into a little bit of that.

How do you decide where to go? Because it's like, oh, the Bahamas seems nice, but it's actually a terrible idea. There's two casinos, you get made instantly and you've got to fly out there from London or whatever.

I assume you're also not going to Moldova to gamble at a casino with a bunch of people paying five bucks in like another language and you're the only Americans.

Steven Bridges: There's definitely a bit of a strategy to it. So, card counters are much like the casinos. They have their own database. We have our own databases where we write down what the game conditions are of a game in a casino.

So it's kind of crowd-sourced information to a degree. So that gives us a bit of an idea. Now, of course, with crowd-sourced info, not everybody's going to want to share accurate information.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, you don't want to share the good stuff and there's probably red herrings in there, right? Like, I want to send everybody to this crappy place.

Steven Bridges: There's been a couple of times where it's more the other way around. There'll be like a really good place that someone will report, oh, I got kicked out in five minutes, the game was crap, but really it's like this honey pot of amazing game. But in general, that's kind of our starting point and then networking, keeping in touch with other card counters will give us an idea where to go.

But it's funny that you touched on playing elsewhere outside of the US because that's when things become really tricky because there are a, fewer European card counters, b, Europe is a totally different ball game, and c, most importantly, European casinos aren't all legit. There's actually cheating that happens in some of these casinos.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, we're definitely talking about this.

Steven Bridges: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: So you said it's a different ball game. Why?

Besides the cheating, which we'll get into.

Steven Bridges: The games themselves are slightly different rules, but then the way that currency operates is very different and the amounts that you can buy in for before they like stop you just based off like money laundering checks and things like that, right? I see.

In England, as I mentioned before, we've got so much regulation around gambling, which I think in general is a good thing. Yeah. But as a card counter, it makes it difficult.

When I was playing full time in the UK, my source of money was gambling and you try telling a casino that you're okay betting 650 pounds a hand, like 800 bucks.

Jordan Harbinger: Don't worry. This is my job. Yeah, exactly.

Get out of here. Yeah.

Steven Bridges: 100%, right? So really, you get a bunch of different things. Europe, there's less information about the casinos because there's not as many European card counters.

The information that does exist, they are way more cautious about sharing it. The games seem a little bit more fragile. There's all these kind of weird little differences I could get into, but the main thing that I worry about that I never thought was a thing and I would have bet money that it wasn't a thing in modern day time is that a lot of these casinos, well, enough for it to be a problem, do cheat at the game.

It's crazy that there's more regulation, but oh, also, it's rigged. England's chill. I don't think there's any rigged games in England, but in certain countries.

So there was this one time that a friend of mine who is a really good card counter, I really, really respect him, he told me that he lost quite a lot of money playing this one game in this European casino. So long story short, a few of us go to this casino to check it out and, you know, the thing is, in essence, we play and I'm watching the game and what I realize is happening is that the casino is cheating by doing something called second dealing. They're using sleight of hand.

We call them out, which is the dumbest idea of all time, by the way.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I wouldn't have done that. Okay. Yeah.

Hey, we're cheating, which means we probably have organized crime connections, but hey, I'm going to make a scene here.

Steven Bridges: Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: What are you doing?

Steven Bridges: They held their own in this conflict. It was a small casino.

It was only one or two people there. We ended up leaving the casino. We tried going back another day.

We're banned on arrival. They're like, oh, you can't come in here and that kind of thing. But I had this footage and I was like, this is going to make an amazing video.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Steven Bridges: To expose a casino cheating is going to be crazy. Yeah, I had this little thought in my brain where I thought maybe, maybe I should try and find out who owns this casino. So I get in touch with a PI.

He looks into it. In a couple of weeks comes back and basically there were mafia connections with the casino and someone was murdered by this mafia and it just made the whole thing like, oh, this is too close to being potentially a problem. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Odds are it would have been fine, but it's also like a dumb thing to be. The upside is minimal to expose this place and the downside is, oh, yeah, we were walking around and then someone shot Steven in the head. Exactly.

Steven Bridges: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Which wouldn't be a great afternoon. No, terrible. Okay.

You ever run into another card counter at the, I don't even mean somebody who recognizes you from YouTube, which does happen, but just somebody else where you're like, that guy's doing the exact same thing as me. He's got to be counting. This is not a coincidence, right?

Because if you're counting and your bets go from 100 to a thousand and someone else is doing that, that's got to be pretty noticeable for you.

Steven Bridges: For sure. Yeah. Weirdly, we have a bit of a sixth sense about it where you can just look at a person and go, maybe they're a card counter. There's just something about it. They're paying more attention than most people are or gambling.

Like if you're just looking at their eyes, even that, they're not going to miss a single card. There's been a few times, and it's always funny when it happens where you sit down and start playing and then the count goes up and then both me and another player raise their bet at the same time. Sometimes we'll just immediately know and there'll be a little bit of eye contact.

Normally the polite thing to do is whoever's got to the table most recently leaves because much like what you said, as soon as you're both raising and lowering your bet at the same time, if there's one thing that looks obvious, it's that.

Jordan Harbinger: It's like a spy movie. Uh-oh, Bond is here, but so is that other agent from the CIA. So like one of us has to get out of here.

We'll blow each other's cover. Yeah. Yeah.

This is like a Casino Royale, right? Where Jeffrey Wright's like, look man, I can't hang in this card game. You need to handle it.

CIA's got the backing for you. We'll fund the whole thing. Yeah.

Oh my God. I think one dead giveaway that you've experienced is, oh man, are you that guy from YouTube? Oh, I love watching your videos.

I watch them all the time. And then it's like, yeah, okay, shut your face. We're going to get trespassed from this casino.

Steven Bridges: Yeah. The worst example of that that happened to me wasn't even that long ago. And this story isn't on YouTube yet.

We still have a few seasons of content behind. Sure. But I go to this casino and I really put effort into changing my look.

And I go into this casino, I'm in the high limit room and I'm playing. There's only two tables that are open and one is opposite me. And there's this guy sat down.

At one point he just comes over to me and just goes, what's the count? What a dick. I couldn't believe it.

He's clearly not a card guy. So he's obviously just watched the videos because presumably he likes them. He's recognized me through the disguise.

And he just wants to ruin your night, slash your whole run. It was wild. So I just was like, well, I don't know, I guess nothing because we're shuffling.

And then he left and the dealer was like, what was that about? I'm like, yeah, maybe it's because I'm losing. He's mocking me or something.

And then he sends his son over to basically make the same joke again later on in the session. It really bothered me because I thought, don't you realize that for me this casino is the big drive away. I've got here.

I've done this whole plan. I've got this one chance to really utilize this appearance. And as soon as it gets caught, they're going to share it around.

And then I'm going to have to fly to a different state or something.

Jordan Harbinger: And also they've just potentially cut your time either to zero or way in half because if they suspected that you were counting and somebody had previously made a joke, what's the count? It's like, okay, there's something going on as opposed to like, huh, he could be counting, but I don't know, let him play for another hour. Let's see what happens.

They basically cut your runway way down by trying to be funny. That's like somebody screaming over me recording a podcast and they're like, hey, I'm going to ruin Jordan's show because I want attention from him or something.

Steven Bridges: That's irritating. Yeah. I was quite lucky in that situation because I was losing money.

And even though pit bosses and surveillance know that you can be losing money as a card counter, there is something psychologically disarming about the losing player. It just seemed as less of a threat. I think if I was winning, then the dealer really would have perked up and been like, whoa, what's going on here?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it was just a total dick move. Dick move, man. You bring up a good point.

There's a lot of social engineering going on here, playing dumb, maybe like I should raise my bet, but I think they're getting suspicious, so I'm going to actually not do it this time. And then if surveillance is watching because the pit boss just made a phone call, he's going to see that I should have raised my bet, but I didn't and maybe that will throw him off. You're thinking of this too, right?

Steven Bridges: The problem is that we never know what our opponent is thinking. What strategy works well at one casino might not work. I mentioned before that I did this strategy where I was betting funny, but then betting correctly later on or whatever.

Profitable, but I took a bit of a hit money wise to get longevity. I've since tried that strategy with a teammate, I've gone use this in this casino, give it a go and they got backed off in 10 minutes. So it's just what works sometimes might not work another time.

I never underestimate surveillance, they're very smart, they're very good at their jobs, but I also don't assume that they care and maybe they are on Angry Birds on their phone in that moment. You just don't know. Maybe they're having a bad day, maybe they're hung over.

A lot of the time if I get time in, I don't assume that I've outsmarted surveillance, I just assume that they're busy. They might be looking at this drunk guy that's been harassing some woman and that's their main priority right now.

Jordan Harbinger: There's got to be surveillance guys who go, this place underpays me, my boss is a total dick, I have to pee, they're not letting me eat, the other guy called in for the 80th time in a row but he's shagging the manager so he's never going to get in trouble for that. And they're just sitting there and they're like, this card counter, I'm rooting for him, I'm going to let him count until I can't ignore it anymore or the pit boss sees it. And if anybody asks me, oh well, I was watching camera 6 because...

Steven Bridges: It definitely happens. One time I got an email when I got backed off from a casino and it was just, hey, I'm in surveillance from this casino, I let you play as long as I could, I'm sorry man, when he called me I had to run you down.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh wow, that's funny. So you had a fan on the inside, inside fan.

Steven Bridges: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Do you ever like spill something, ask the dealer dumb newbie questions to throw them off or is that too obvious?

Steven Bridges: Sometimes the thing that we'll do is a lot of talking and then it's basically assumed that you can't talk whilst counting but much like anything, if you do it for long enough you get the hang of... Multitasking isn't so much a thing most of the time, right? You're like rapidly task switching.

Jordan Harbinger: It just requires less brain power to keep track of it.

Steven Bridges: Right, yeah. It's like riding a bike. There is a tipping point where my brain is like updating this tally of numbers and I'm saying words and I can do both those things at the same time.

So sometimes I will make a point of talking a lot just so that the pit boss maybe thinks, oh, he can't be a card counter because he's talking or they never have the thought that maybe I'm a card counter. Because we have two things that can happen, right? Either surveillance are watching or it's the pit boss and then maybe they make a phone call to surveillance and go, hey, can you check this guy?

So there'll be little things like that. For me, my number one priority is to not look like Steven Bridges when I go in the casino. So I'll go with a lot of disguises and what I found to be really effective for me sometimes is if I'm really trying to stand out instead of blending in.

It's like a weird paradoxical thing. I think it's that if I was trying to hide, why would I be so extroverted?

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. You're in a chicken suit or something like that at the blackjack table. Clearly I'm not trying to blend in like a card counter because I'm a drunk guy in a chicken suit.

So casinos comp people who win and you're winning, do they ever go like, hey, how about a free room and some food? Do you take that or are you like, nah, it's okay, I got an Airbnb?

Steven Bridges: Well, we try and not give over our ID whenever we can.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, right. And they're going to want some ID if you check into the hotel.

Steven Bridges: 100%. It's like the comps, they're conditional. You can have it if you get a player's card because once you've got a player's card, they can track you, they can hit you with offers.

You're more monetizable to them. So they really want you to have a player's card. The long story short in casinos is that in most situations, you actually don't legally need to give over your ID.

People just assume that you do. There are some exceptions to that. So in general, we try and never give over our ID.

There's a tongue twister. But if we want the comps, then we have to. I have experimented with giving over ID in situations where I know that they don't have the database to track my name.

And it is nice when you get the free hotels. That's pretty good. I do take that stuff sometimes.

In general, most card counters will say, you shouldn't do it, but I also know a bunch of very, very proficient women card counters that are getting so many free things that they never get caught. And partly, when you are playing with a player's card, because it's a thing that you shouldn't do as a card counter, you're giving up your ID so freely, they can see that you're logged in on the table, they can see your name. So then they just think, oh, probably not a card counter.

So it can give you a bit of time, but once again, once you get caught, you then screw it.

Jordan Harbinger: Then it screws you up. Yeah, okay. The disguise thing is worth double-clicking on, right?

Because you've got some ridiculous disguises. Wigs, okay, fine. Accent training, I never thought about until you brought it up in a video, which totally makes sense, right?

Because if you're in Vegas, well, okay, you're not just a white American dude from Montana, you're a white British dude, so now it's like, oh, wait, okay, much more recognizable by a factor of, you know, whatever, a multiple, that's not good. Fake tats, all of them, really tacky. Chest tats, neck tats, dyed facial hair, you could probably sweat that onto your face, that wouldn't be a good look.

My favorite was the movie-quality fake teeth that, like, changed your jawline. I would assume those are thousands of dollars, right?

Steven Bridges: Luckily, I got this during pandemic time, so they did me a really good deal, it was a few hundred pounds. The fake teeth market was struggling during the pandemic.

Jordan Harbinger: The fake teeth market.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, no, I put a lot of effort into the disguises. One of my favorite ones that isn't in this YouTube stuff yet, but has happened, is that, once again, blending in by standing out, I got a bunch of bruise tattoos. It's the same place that does the tattoos I wear, they're like movie studio tattoos, right?

So those tattoos are a bit faded, they look quite realistic, but they also do bruises. I shave my beard and everything like that, and I put loads of these bruises on, I put like a cat tattoo, that kind of thing, black eye. I got a sling, and I put on this beanie as well that I just pulled back in a weird way where I looked so rough.

I looked like I'd been beaten the crap out of. And I walked through Durango Casino in Vegas, and someone went, dude, what happened to you, man? So it was that kind of look.

It was so satisfying, because, once again, once that look got caught, I could never use it again. But first, it's like, they don't want to mention that you look awful. They're avoiding it, and they just think you wouldn't look like that.

Jordan Harbinger: Also, oh, darn, I can never use this look again where I look like a complete, like a person who just got out of prison, got their butt kicked on the way out. Okay, I guess I'll pick a different look. It's not like, oh, man, I have to shave my beard forever.

Steven Bridges: Yes, exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: Right? It's a completely, you're not married to looking like a fake...

Steven Bridges: They look like real tattoos.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, yeah, exactly.

Gosh. People are going to wonder how they don't just immediately catch you with facial recognition software. That stuff's really good these days, isn't it?

Steven Bridges: Yes, it is. It's quite a complicated thing, but it comes down to budget, money.

Jordan Harbinger: Casinos are famously struggling for money.

Steven Bridges: Well, but they're cheap, you know?

Jordan Harbinger: They're really cheap themselves. That makes sense.

Steven Bridges: You ask surveillance people what their experience is like, they're not treated very well, and there's a lot of corners that are cut behind the scenes. I didn't realize that. That makes sense, of course.

Surveillance people, maybe it's changing these days, I wouldn't really know, but definitely back in the 80s or whatever, they were treated like bottom of the barrel. They couldn't come to the office parties or anything like that because they didn't want collusion between the surveillance and the table dealers, which makes sense.

Jordan Harbinger: That does make sense.

Steven Bridges: But they didn't need to treat them like crap either, and they really get underappreciated. They're running game protection for the whole casino, but the casino sees game protection and catching people stealing or whatever it is as kind of a bit of an annoying expense, to be honest. Right, sure.

A lot of casinos just don't want to spend the money on the subscription service that it is to have that face recognition software.

Jordan Harbinger: You wouldn't think that would even be expensive. My Ring camera can do that in my garage.

Steven Bridges: It's wild, isn't it? It does really confuse me, but casinos are cheap and they don't want to spend more money on something like game protection when they can spend more money on getting customers and all that stuff. So that's one of the things.

Some of the face rec technology, they have to take a screenshot of you, then upload that, and then scan it, whereas some of it automatically scans. Yeah, you would think that's... Yeah.

If I walk into Caesars casinos in Vegas, they will greet me at the door because their face rec will go, ping! But in general, most casinos don't use face rec. It's not that great some of the time, and then with the right disguises, you can maybe block some of it.

It really just depends. It's definitely a problem. Right now, it's not so much of a problem that it stops us doing what we're doing.

It's just a bit annoying.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm so curious. Not that you'd know the answer to this, but they have a database of criminals, they have a database of card counters, I wonder if they have a database of like, oh, this rich guy just walked in, we want to make sure he's treated extra well. Or like, oh, there's a celebrity that maybe nobody working here has recognized right away, but they're actually like a B-list person.

We want them to be treated well, so they don't leave.

Steven Bridges: I'm pretty sure that with VIPs, they do use the, I think, I don't want to start saying stuff that I don't know to be true, but I have heard that somewhere, that with VIPs, they'll be using the face rec. With VIPs, right, they will have, if you're a real high roller, and you're in town, they'll have the table that you like reserved for you with the dealer there for the whole 24-hour period, constantly whilst you're there. No one else can play that table, just in case you walk in.

And yeah, I think that they use face rec for those people to give them a better customer experience. And as much as I find face rec annoying and maybe a bit invasive, I know that they use it and it's very effective against, like, some human trafficking stuff, but for me, there's a thing about it which makes me a little bit uncomfortable, just in terms of like a civil liberties thing.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Your time, though, doing this has to be somewhat limited with this technology out, right? Like, oh, they're too cheap.

Okay, what when it's basically free? The camera system that they have is just built in, it's 25 bucks a year to use this, or it's a thousand dollars a year. It's essentially going to be whatever that impulse buy level is.

Or it's just included when the thing is purchased and turned down in the first place, because why wouldn't you have this?

Steven Bridges: For sure, and I think a lot about AI and how I don't see why that's not killed counting already, because for me, it doesn't seem hard to just read the cards, read the bet size, correlate those two things, chuck in some face rec there as well, and then you could back off a card counter instantly.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Steven Bridges: With no issue and no human, well, I guess human approval maybe, but be a breeze.

Jordan Harbinger: What do you think the casinos, has any sympathetic security person told you what your file looks like in casinos, or is it just here's his face? Or do they have like 50 disguises that are also you?

Steven Bridges: They do have 50 disguises that are also me.

It is really nice that surveillance people do send me this stuff relatively routinely, and it's so funny, some of the notes that I see on the account as well, and some of the stuff I can't talk about in videos because they specifically asked me not to.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, it'll give away who sent the thing.

Steven Bridges: But it's very funny when sometimes, I think I can say this because it's vague enough, there'll be a disguise, and they'll be like, we don't know who this person is. And then eventually they'll figure it out, and then they'll update the profile to say, oh, well, Steve Bridges appears to be wearing a disguise. Yeah, no shit show, like you didn't realise that before, you can't arrogantly write that as if it was a poor effort when you didn't know.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, like, oh, it took us four hours to find him, but oh, he's wearing a disguise. A lame one, I might add, that fooled us for most of my shift.

Steven Bridges: Yeah. But that stuff's super useful because if I then know, oh, this casino has got me in this photo, and they've sent that photo around, burn that disguise, switch it. Or, if I know that this casino doesn't talk to this casino, use that disguise in this casino, wait until that's done, now I switch look entirely, and he's kind of doing waves.

We once did, like, a bachelor party set up.

Jordan Harbinger: I saw that, yeah.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, we all got t-shirts, and these pink t-shirts, and we went in as these rowdy English guys, that was really fun and quite effective. It was more just for fun than anything else, but yeah, blending in by standing out.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, and then it's like, you have to take the wig and sunglasses off, why, it's part of our thing, like, well, you're in a casino, and we have surveillance and stuff, and that might not continue to work for us. Yeah, it's smart, though. People might be wondering if this is legal or not, and, well, is it legal?

Steven Bridges: Yeah, card counting is fully legal. Okay. And there's a real distinction between card counting and advantage play, which is the umbrella term that card counting falls under, and cheating, because we're only using information that everybody else has access to.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Steven Bridges: We're just looking at cards, tracking those cards, and using that information. The way I always describe it would be, imagine that you're playing at high-level chess, and you're in a chess tournament, and then the chess organizer comes up to you, and they go, excuse me, Jordan, we've noticed that you're playing, and you're thinking four moves ahead, but actually the limit is thinking three moves ahead.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, right.

Steven Bridges: You'd be like, what the hell are you talking about? I'm just doing the game better. Sorry, I'm playing better than other people here, yeah.

Sure, we're using the information in an unconventional way. You ask any blackjack player that plays recreationally, and they're trying to catch a wave, or they're seeing that a load of big cards came out, so maybe some small ones are on the way, and they're not doing that precisely enough to get an advantage, but the spirit of that's there, we're just doing it well. There's actually a couple of states where it is illegal for them to ban a card counter from playing, because they've just deemed it unfair to stop someone playing a game skillfully.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's interesting. How come you don't just go there and play all the time?

Steven Bridges: Well, they get around it by coming up to you at the table, and they'll do one of two things. They'll say, hey everybody, we're just changing the table maximum, instead of it being $5,000, it's now going to be $5. So now we can't, that big anyway, it becomes pointless.

Or, they'll demand that the dealer shuffles every single round, and they'll just do that kind of thing. Which is really funny, because both of those measures will affect their revenue probably more than us being there.

Jordan Harbinger: Like, you could let me win money, and just keep taking all of these people's money.

Steven Bridges: It can't do it.

Jordan Harbinger: It's against their, I don't know, principles. We want to rob everyone, including ourselves. Yeah, that's crazy to me.

So even team play and all that stuff is legit.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, team play is maybe a little bit more up for debate, depending on the actual way it's done. Long story short, as far as I'm aware, because you're playing a game where you're allowed to communicate with other players, if you communicate secretly, then that's not illegal or against the game's rules. Now, I'm not saying that maybe there's some state somewhere where it's different or whatever, it's been ruled differently, but as a general blanket rule, team play is fine.

Now, if you were texting the count to somebody, or using electronics to communicate that in any way, or you're using electronics to actually count the cards, that is deemed cheating and therefore illegal in most states and countries, I believe.

Jordan Harbinger: Fake teeth, neck tats, and bruises. Finally, business expenses your accountant is afraid to question. We'll be right back.

By the way, y'all, I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Most of the sane people, well, some of the sane people are there.

Now, for the rest of my conversation with Steven Bridges. Theoretically, you could just have a bunch of people that speak, let's say, Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese. They just go to where there's a dealer who's not from the United States and they're not Asian and they have a pretty good way of speaking.

Hey, Tim, what's the count? Actually, it's 42. Okay.

And nobody knows what you're saying. For sure. I mean, maybe surveillance is wired to listening to every table too.

I have no idea.

Steven Bridges: They can't do that.

Jordan Harbinger: They can't do that, right?

Steven Bridges: They can in the UK. My friends are the tables, but in the US, it's illegal.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, it is?

Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, you could just say it out loud.

Steven Bridges: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: What about recording? Because you're recording for videos.

Steven Bridges: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: So, there's no expectation of privacy. Everyone's on a million cameras in the casino, but can you record? I mean, that's got to be against their policy at the least, right, to record at the table.

Steven Bridges: Yeah. I'll speak about this, I guess, fairly vaguely because I don't want to accidentally give some kind of advice or legal advice or whatever that's not covered. But yeah, you've got different laws that affect things in different ways.

So, for example, you've got one-party consent states versus all-party consent states. That's just about whether as long as someone knows that the conversation is being recorded, then it's okay in certain states. And then you've got reasonable expectation of privacy and you don't really have that in a public space.

Now, a casino is private, but it's operating like a public space.

Jordan Harbinger: It's open to the public.

Steven Bridges: You'd have to ask a lawyer. My main strategy that I employ, in my videos I blur the faces of everybody that I see as like a significant person. So, the dealers always get blurred, the pit bosses get blurred, most of the players get blurred.

I'm really on it with that and that is one of the longest and most tedious things in our production process. But for me, I don't want to poke the bear and also, I have a problem with the casino, not necessarily with the individuals that are doing their job in a way that I think is scummy sometimes, but they're still just doing their job. And it's also about the proportionate reaction too, right?

If a video gets a million views and this person's not had their best day and they've said something to me that's kind of rude or they've been rude about it, that person's going to get so much hate from my audience and I just don't want that. It's not even about whether I could legally have their face blurred or not, it's just that I don't want them to get shit and so I just generally try and treat them with respect within the box that I feel is correct, if that makes sense.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So, they ask for ID, you never want to give your ID as a card counter because then they can what, start add that to the profile and got your name and that's the beginning of the end, right?

Steven Bridges: Yeah, in essence, yeah. It's just a lot easier to build a database of pictures around somebody once you know who that person is. It's just all information is harmful for us if they have it.

For me, it's a little bit different. There was this weird tipping point in like season two of me putting out my show where I realised that my desire to protect my name was almost getting in the way of just getting the job done and getting paid out when they kind of knew my name anyway or that it just became this thing where I was like, well actually, I've got to pick my lane so I'm a bit more free with my ID at times but even then I'm still careful about when I do it.

I might be in a casino, get these chips and then I need to cash them out. I know that they're going to argue with me about the ID even though there's no legal requirement for me to give over the ID, they're still going to argue about it.

Jordan Harbinger: A lot of these cage people are like, you have to give over your ID, it's the law. No it isn't, yes it is and you also probably know that it isn't. You're just being a jerk.

Yeah, I think a lot of them don't know that it is. They might not. I think they equate policy with the law.

I've noticed that some places they're like, we're not going to cash you out. Me, the lawyer in me, I'm looking at this video and I'm going, oh, the fuck you aren't. I'm holding chips that you have to consider as cash.

I could give these to Osama Bin Laden and he could come in here and cash these things out and you would have to get, like, there's no scenario in which you can just say, we're not honoring money today from you specifically.

Steven Bridges: And what's mental about this is that intuitively, you don't even need to look at the law, you just know there's no shot that they can do that and then not honor that side of the transaction. Right, because otherwise, what's stopping them from just not paying people out who win all the time? So it's mad to me that they say this all the time and sometimes you know they know.

That's the worst situations where they just go, well, what are you going to do about it? And a lot of the time we'll call the gaming commission, the third party intermediary that is neutral, and they just immediately default deciding with the casino before they've even heard your story. There's been times that the gaming commission have come down to me and said, well, look, why don't you just give it over to them?

Why don't you just give them the ID? And I go, look, you're American. This is your whole thing about your rights and your freedom.

This is such a key part of American identity. Why aren't you batting for me here when I'm not doing anything illegal yet they'll just stand their ground and say, well, you've got to? It's insane.

Jordan Harbinger: No, that's crazy to me. I mean, I guess you could always say, that's fine, I have a bunch more chips at home, I'm going to send my friend and you guys can't do shit about it.

Steven Bridges: Well, these are probably the solutions, right? We could give chips to somebody else, we could sell chips, we could just come back a different day. I could come back in a week, give over ID at the cage and if they don't put me with that other person, it's fine.

Jordan Harbinger: They won't aggregate it.

Steven Bridges: There's a bunch of approaches that we could use and definitely when I started, my approach was, I'm going to stand my ground because I'm correct and that led to a bunch of shit that's happened in the videos with police being called and all sorts of stuff. So there's definitely a point where being right is not being effective.

Jordan Harbinger: Of course.

Steven Bridges: You've got to think about what battles you're going to have. I mean, don't take any of this as legal advice and also, there is certain limits like 10K is like a magic number where they then have to do a form. That's a whole other thing where you, when we hit those things, we just go, oh crap, I'm giving over my ID today.

So don't take any of this as advice. And also, Vegas has changed the law recently so then it's a little bit different. They can make you give ID at the cage, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Point being, do your own research.

Jordan Harbinger: If you lose enough money, can they demand your ID? I feel like there was something you said in a video where they'll CTR me and I'm like, oh, I don't know what that is and you didn't explain it.

Steven Bridges: Yes. Currency transaction report, the document that they have to fill out, it's basically triggered by being in for 10K or cashing out 10K. Either way.

So yeah, if we're losing $10,000, that's when we have to give it over. Sometimes we'll leave the casino before we hit that point because we know that we're going to have to give over the ID.

Jordan Harbinger: There's places I wouldn't want to do this, right? Like you've got to find the sweet spot. You go to America, it's fine, they got tech.

You go to Europe, it's fine, they got tech. Latin America and stuff, it's like you've got to check who owns this place because if you win $200,000, they might be like, this is cheaper for us to kill you. We're just going to do that instead.

Steven Bridges: It's wild. A friend of mine on my team went to a casino once and I can't quite remember exactly what happened, but they refused to pay him out. They told him if you come back tomorrow, we'll pay you out for whatever bullshit reason they were giving him. He comes back tomorrow, gets to the door, and they hand him, oh, here's this letter they gave you.

And they literally just said something like, go fuck yourself. It's just a casino. It's crazy.

And they just decided, are you going to try and sue us? Good luck. There's no gaming commission here.

And he does nothing he can do about it. He just has to take the loss.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm actually sort of, maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm surprised there's not a cage for like, oh hey, you want 500 bucks? Oh, you're getting $50,000? Come around into this room where you can sit down and have a glass of water because this is going to take 15 minutes.

And also, maybe we don't want everybody seeing that you're walking out with a burlap sack full of $100 bills. That's weird and uncomfortable.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, there are high-limit rooms that do have cages sometimes, so it depends on the place, but yeah, sometimes you're just queuing up with your own racks and racks of chips like everybody else and people are talking to you because they're like, whoa, holy shit, how'd you do, what game are you playing? They want to know stuff.

Jordan Harbinger: So yeah, it can be a little bit sketchy. Think about it, you're basically holding actual cash, it's sure they're chips, and then it turns into cash. Imagine someone goes to the bank and gets $150,000.

You're not like, dude, whoa, that's a ton of money, what are you going to do with that, huh? You would immediately call the police. Somebody did that at the bank, but at a casino, totally fine.

Oh, I'm just going to walk through this dark parking structure alone with all of this in a bag, see you later.

Steven Bridges: It's funny actually because sometimes you get so used to carrying the cash, you become a bit numb to it, especially for me, right? American money isn't the money that I have in the UK.

Jordan Harbinger: It's funny money.

Steven Bridges: So it's funny money, but after a while you just kind of get used to it, which is very weird and sometimes quite worrying. There was one time I was on a trip and I had, I can't remember how much it was, but let's just say it was $70,000, it was probably around about that, $70,000 in a bag and I just had this attached to me at all times. Like a fanny pack.

I'm like a forgetful guy at times, ironically as a card counter, so I'm like, I'm going to have this strapped to me every minute of the day except when I'm sleeping and then I'll put it on the side of the table that's away from the door, you know, all these kind of precautions. I'm just doing that and I'm living my life like this. It's solo trip, so I'm nowhere near anybody else and then one day I go to the local cafe that I was getting my breakfast from, I go to the restroom and I go, I'm just going to put the bag on the shelf, go to the loo, leave the restroom, go sit down there, drink the rest of my coffee and then obviously just shit myself in terms of, holy shit, where's this money?

Run back in the bathroom, it's still there. Everything's fine. There are these horror stories that happen with card counters because obviously we're all human, people make mistakes and you think that you would never be so careless.

Everybody listening to this is going to go, I would never.

Jordan Harbinger: I've left my laptop on subways before, or not subways but like the air train and it's like then the police have to give it back to you and they're like, so are you just stupid or what? And you're like, yes sir. I'm an idiot.

You leave like your whole luggage and laptop because I'm talking to somebody and I'm like, nope, you just don't know me. I do this all the time. Meanwhile, you can do that with $75,000.

Steven Bridges: It's just one of those things that you get weirdly used to and therefore it doesn't flag up as like this big issue in your brain which is funny because I was trying to like put precautions in there and then the one exception to the rule was when I left it.

Jordan Harbinger: It's how people get caught with drugs, right? Like they're just on them all the time and then suddenly they're at an airport and they're like, I have cocaine in my pocket. I have to pee right now before I go through that scanner right now.

Steven Bridges: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Oops. So if you think you said this before, like, oh, I know when they're talking to surveillance, they're going to kick me out.

Do you get up and leave on your own ideally at that point or do you just like screw it? I'll just play another hand, wait to get kicked out.

Steven Bridges: Once again, it becomes this weird game about us thinking about how do we think instinctively this casino is going to act? Because there are definitely times where if a casino is suspicious and we leave, they might then go surveillance, rewind the tape, check if they were counting, update the database, do all these things. And in which case that process can take sometimes an hour or two, especially if surveillance has got something to do, they've got a queue, they've got more important things to worry about.

So sometimes it's like if we leave, that's going to happen anyway and we've wasted all of that additional time that could happen. But other times, as you can imagine, it's just like a suspicious meter is going up and if you leave before that hits a certain point, they just go, oh well, who cares.

Jordan Harbinger: And then you show up again tomorrow and it's all over again.

Steven Bridges: Different staff, and it's like a fresh start. So it's always just a judgment call basically. In general, we find two principles that work pretty well in terms of card counting are aggression, both in the bet sizes, like being subtle about things and doing all this cover stuff on the betting front doesn't tend to buy you more time than the money that you sacrifice by doing it.

In general, you might get more time, but it won't exceed the extra few hundred dollars that you left on the table.

Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense.

Steven Bridges: And then also that extends to playing. It's like play until you get backed off. Maybe there's certain regions like Vegas where we'll try and be more strategic because we've got more info, but in general, it's hit them hard, keep playing until they make you leave, never back yourself off.

Jordan Harbinger: Got it. Yeah, that makes sense because sometimes that you might just be overthinking it and they're not suspicious. They're worried about the guy behind you who's like pickpocketing women who are playing another game or something.

Steven Bridges: So in the Caesars casino database, I, for some reason, and I only know this because a surveillance person told me, I am listed as a cheater, which I take great issue with. How dare you? Also, if they back me off and that information gets to whoever's doing it, they're going to treat me differently.

It genuinely worries me a bit. One time I'm playing in a Caesars property, not in Vegas. They don't have face rec and I'm playing for quite a while.

It's like this sort of sweet spot at the time where I got days and days in playing at this case, which is really rare. You can't do that there now. But at the time that was this sweet spot.

And then I see finally we have this thing that we call heat. Oh, here's a suspicion. The pit boss is looking over at me and looking back and having these little whispering conversations.

There's been a couple of phone calls and I just remember feeling like my whole heart rate just going up. I was essentially in like a panic mode because I thought they are going to realize who I am and then they're going to be freaking out because I'm a quote unquote cheater. I'm up like a large amount of money at this casino.

Like it was going really well. And arguably, I've been, this is a weird kind of complicated one, but maybe trespassed from a Caesars property. It's more that they haven't done it, but they've noted it down.

So it's this weird thing legally. This whole combination made me genuinely really worried that they would just confiscate the money because if you're in a casino where you're not legally allowed to be in there, different story about the money, right? It maybe goes one way or the other depending on the court or the particular state.

So I was getting so worried because I just knew everything about my experience doing this. I'm about to get backed off and I just know it's going to be bad. Anyway, a few minutes go by and sure enough the pit boss comes over to me.

He's like, sir, can I, can I speak to you? Yeah, we just need you to fill out this form because you put the UK number here where it should be here and it was just a false alarm. They were just talking about the CTR form, the whole currency thing.

And it was just a complete non-issue. Funnily enough, two hours later, I got backed off. I was able to just tame us back off of my life.

They're really nice. I wasn't trespassed. They're pretty chill with me.

I left and it was fine. So there's definitely these times where our instincts are working against us. And who knows?

We assume that we know what's going on, but it's maybe arrogant to assume that we always know.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. Yeah. You actually said an especially nasty casino can attract other counters who want revenge. So that doesn't seem like a professional decision to target a casino because you're pissed off at them, but I also totally understand the instinct to be a little bit upset. These people treated me like crap for no reason or they screwed with a friend of mine. I'm going to take them to the cleaners.

That's interesting. I never really thought about that. So there's people who go, I just particularly hate this place and I want to take their money in particular.

Steven Bridges: It comes down to some casinos will assume that if they treat us like shit, that we'll be scared and we won't want to come back. So when they do the back off, they might make it really aggressive. They bring all the security.

They yell at you, they scream at you, whatever it is so that you are like scared of the casino and then you tell all your card counter friends and they never go back. But in my experience, a hundred percent of the time, if the casino does something like that, then the other card counters on principle just don't like that. They don't like the bullying, the intimidation, all that stuff.

So they'll make a point of prioritizing going to the casino.

Jordan Harbinger: That's great.

Steven Bridges: All it ever has to be is, hey, you can't play this card game anymore. And maybe there's one of the hundred times the card counter will throw a hissy fit. But other than that...

Jordan Harbinger: There was one time where the guy said, you're like, why? And he goes, you're just too good at it for us. We're losing our shirts or something.

And you're like, have to laugh. Okay. So you're just honestly upset that I'm winning and they're like, that's what my boss said.

But yeah, when they come in and they're like, we're going to treat you like you're robbing us when they're busy robbing everybody else who's there. Some people take it super personally. They really feel like angry that you've done this.

It's really strange. Which is funny because it's like, hey, you know what? Not your money.

This place doesn't give a shit about you. They will fire you tomorrow and replace you with somebody else and they won't care if you're homeless, but make sure you simp for them a little harder and take it personally. Like get your blood pressure going and treat me poorly.

Steven Bridges: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: That is wild, man. You think an advantage player can still become addicted to gambling or is it generally not a thing that happens?

Steven Bridges: Oh, that's a great question. That's a really good question. I would never advise that someone that has a gambling problem gets into advantage play.

Generally a bad idea. Weirdly, I do know of some people where it's almost like it's almost acted as a form of therapy where it's dismantled the game so much in their head that then the prospect of them playing becomes really unappealing and those people have gone on to be great card counters. So I can think of two people that have done that.

Now for those two, there might be a couple of hundreds that did the same thing and then their gambling problem got worse.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

Steven Bridges: So in general, if you've got a problem with gambling, I wouldn't try and learn card counting or advantage play. But yeah, the flip can happen. It's pretty rare I think because we're so aware of how the sausage is made.

Yeah. We're so aware of it. But there was a Josh Axelrad, am I getting that name right?

There was a card counter that ended up with a poker addiction just because he got into that. Poker, a game that's really easy to self-deceive. You think you've got an edge when you don't.

You don't know when your opponent's better than you.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

Steven Bridges: So it can happen for sure. In general, I would tell everybody to be incredibly cautious about gambling as a hobby. And most of the time I'd say there are probably other hobbies that you would enjoy more.

Not that I'm saying don't gamble, but for most people, it's not worth it.

Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense. That makes sense. Have you ever followed the count because it was correct, but also you secretly wanted the dopamine from the win?

Steven Bridges: There's definitely an element where we can play for really long periods of time because it is such a dopamine heavy activity.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Steven Bridges: And at the end of a trip when I get back home, I find that my dopamine is fried. Yeah, sure. Like everything is boring and it's just really weird.

So there's definitely that thing where it's an addictive game that can keep us playing for a long period of time. But honestly, most of the time, if I'm sat there and I'm doing like a seven-hour session, I'm almost looking forward to them backing me off because I want to go home.

Jordan Harbinger: I would imagine, yeah. How do you decompress when you're home to make sure that you don't just like get addicted to the dopamine and start doing other weird stuff to keep it going?

Steven Bridges: I think, luckily for me, despite having quite an addictive personality, it's just never happened that I've got addicted to card counting. And I do my play in trips. So I'll come and I'll be in the U.S. for two or three weeks. I'll play really intensely in that period and then I'll go home. So there's such a separation, almost ritualistically, like I get the flight and then I get home and then I'm jet-lagged and then I recover from that that it's almost like my brain turns off from thinking it's even a possibility. Well, actually, it isn't a possibility in the U.K. for me. So I'd have to go and gamble on some other weird thing if I wanted to do it. Yeah, luckily for me, it's just not a thing that has manifested into a gambling problem. Definitely is a risk factor for people.

Treat gambling like heroin.

Jordan Harbinger: Man, I assume when you leave because you've asked to be watched your car before, you're carrying all this cash, I guess I'm kind of surprised nobody's ever tried to rob you guys at all?

Steven Bridges: The closest thing we had, I say the closest thing, it was completely a false alarm, but when we were in the Bahamas, we got in a taxi that wasn't a legit taxi and the taxi driver told us that he was going to stop off on the way to a strip club to pick up some food he'd ordered and it just felt incredibly sketchy.

Jordan Harbinger: Because people order food at strip clubs? Exactly, right? And it's so good, you want to take it out and not go in the strip club actually.

Steven Bridges: Of course, right. You just want to bring it home. Well, we told him, no, we just want you to drive us directly to the street that we're on and he said, no, no, no, it'll just take a moment.

So we were really worried. We pulled up to this building that didn't look like a strip club, just this kind of big concrete thing where there was a bunch of heavies outside, stood arms folded, looking aggressive. It just looked really sketchy and he gets out.

We were stuffing money into our pants and just trying to like, I really thought we were going to get mugged to the point where I messaged him saying, do we make a run for it? We're in a sketchy area. But it was totally a false alarm, he comes out with his Chinese takeout and it's leaking from the bag and he gets in and he drives us.

But that was one of those moments where I was genuinely really worried. But yeah, luckily for me, never been robbed. So far, so good. Touch wood.

Jordan Harbinger: So today I'm wondering what percentage of your income is blackjack versus you have YouTube, you have sponsors, there's affiliate stuff, there's training that you offer, memberships, I don't know, you're probably investing in stuff for all I know.

Ranges are fine. I'm not asking how much money you make or whatever, but I'm curious, is it like, oh, well actually, our YouTube's doing really well? Are you a production company now that the subject is card counting or are you a card counter and you just have a YouTube channel?

Steven Bridges: Yeah, I think that people would assume that most of the money comes from card counting. And if I was a full-time always card counting card counter in the US, then maybe I'd be making more money doing that. But really, because of being a Brit, there are just limitations.

Why don't you move here? Well, yeah, I guess I could, but that'd be upending my entire life. No big deal.

Yeah, exactly right. So I actually, I make more money off the YouTube channel. I tend to think of that as just one big bucket, whether it's the sponsorship revenue, the ad revenue.

I'm super fortunate that the show does really well. I think it was just kind of lucky that I was sort of first to that and it's gone really good. So for me, I make more money off the YouTube channel.

Sponsors are a huge component. I wouldn't be able to make the videos without the sponsors. We put like a ton of time into the edit and the story, maybe more so than makes sense profit-wise, but we just want to tell a good story.

So yeah, most of it comes from the channel, decent chunk from the actual counting. And then I invest in other card counters and other trips or maybe I'll manage things. So I've got like essentially a decent amount of cash that's just in various places in the US that people are using to play and then I get a cut of their winnings.

So that's pretty useful to me.

Jordan Harbinger: So that's interesting that part of the business is the highest return on your time actually.

Steven Bridges: I guess so, right? Because it doesn't take me anything. And it's actually really useful for me to have that money split in different places because I'm a bit less worried about, I don't want to put it in the bank because it's hard to get it out the bank.

I don't want to leave it at one person's house or even in a deposit box. It's all a bit tricky. So having it split between different friends that are playing with it, it's a pretty good situation to be in.

Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense, wow. Is there a line you won't cross with the whole video production thing and the card counting thing? Is there something you just won't do?

Even if it would be a sick video?

Steven Bridges: I try and just, I don't know how to say this in a way that doesn't come across wanky, but in essence I just try and live the experience of me counting and then document that and tell that story in an honest way. I try not to do things too much for the content.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that makes sense.

Steven Bridges: I'll do disguises and stuff and maybe I'll lean in more to that because I know it'll be good for the content or more accurately, the content makes me do that because of putting my face online. But I try not to engineer arguments with staff or anything like that. There's been this trend of people, especially on short form, arguing with pit bosses and things.

I just try and keep it to how I would naturally be in the casino because I just want to document a real thing and I don't want to glorify it either. Obviously it kind of glorifies it because I'm showing the sexy element of being a card counter, but I also want to show me crying in my car or having an awful time or whatever it is. The main kind of principle is I just try and tell things honestly.

It's very rare, but sometimes I want to move this casino session to be after another one in the narrative for a very specific reason, but even that makes me a bit uncomfortable because I just want to stay really true to the thing.

Jordan Harbinger: You have to decide if it's a security thing, a business thing, or if it's just a storytelling thing. If it's just going to make the story better, maybe not, but if it's going to get us banned from a whole chain of casinos before we actually fly out there to do it, then maybe we're releasing this one earlier.

Steven Bridges: Some of the stuff that surveillance tell me is so juicy, and I write it into the video and then I send them the script and they tell me that I can't do it and I just cut it. It really hurts my heart because sometimes it's the most interesting thing to me, and without that it's going to look like why did Steven do this weird thing? But I just take that here because it's not disrespectful to do that.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure, yeah, that's funny because I was going to just ask you what's the next thing you can't put in a video and it's going to be all that insider info that will get somebody fired if they see it.

Steven Bridges: Sometimes I will tell slightly fictional story around that that is keeping the truth of what happened whilst protecting the identity of the people involved. I think that's fair. Yeah, so I might say a friend of mine suspected this could be happening when in reality surveillance told me this was happening.

Might be a thing, but I really just try and keep it true to the actual thing.

Jordan Harbinger: Are you worried that eventually, like we said before, AI facial recognition is going to make it impossible for you to disguise yourself? So who are you without the chase? Without this, what are you going to do?

Steven Bridges: Yeah, it's weird because there's nothing else I've come across in life that scratches the itch that card counting has. It's like being a career criminal when you're not doing anything illegal. And arguably it's morally neutral, I would say.

So it is going to be a bit of a hit when I can't do that anymore. I've been quite slow at producing the content, so I film more trips than I actually publish. Well, I publish them all, it just takes me a while.

So I'm maybe a few years ahead or behind on content depending on how you look at it.

Jordan Harbinger: That's good, then you'll have a runway.

Steven Bridges: I have some time to pivot or at least to accept this is my 15 minutes of fame and then I go and do something else. Honestly, I'm just very grateful that I get to do this. It feels very surreal to me.

And once again, I don't know if this just sounds overly corny, but genuinely there's probably not a day that goes by where I'm not like sat going, I get to do this, this is my life, I get to make the show that people like and I get to go and do this adventure and I feel really really just appreciative that I get this little pocket in my life where I get to do it.

Jordan Harbinger: If you want to have kids though, you can't be flying around Bahamas and Vegas all the time doing this.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, when you've got a family, it's so tough. I don't have kids, so it's not an issue for me, but if you have a partner, if you're married, if you've got a kid, the whole thing is going to be so much on hard mode. And I would encourage those people to maybe think about it part time.

If you're someone that travels for a living, like if you're speaking or whatever, it's something that requires a lot of travel, then it's great to go, well actually when I have to be in San Francisco, are there casinos around? And then you can go do that. I think that's much healthier as well psychologically, because those swings of the wins and losses, much like I guess day trading or whatever, it's not great for your brain.

Jordan Harbinger: Makes a great hobby, makes an iffy career.

Steven Bridges: For sure. Yeah, that makes sense.

Jordan Harbinger: Steven, thank you so much, super interesting.

Steven Bridges: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Jordan Harbinger: Your body fights microscopic cancers before you know they're there, but what happens when its defenses slip?

Here's a preview with Dr. William Li.

Dr. William Li: I'm a researcher as well as a physician, so being a doctor and a scientist gives me an unusual lens. It turns out the actual new biology of cancer, we're actually forming cancers in our bodies all the time. The fact of the matter is, is our bodies are made of about 40 trillion cells.

Those are the building blocks of our body. These cells have to copy themselves over and over and over again over the course of our lives. 40 trillion cells copying and pasting each other.

Do they make an error? And the answer is yes. That's how we understand cancers can actually form.

So they sit there abnormally until our immune system swings by, finds them, and then knocks them out. And that's actually the key. Most of this stuff gets taken out by our body's health defenses, meaning that when our defenses are working well, these kinds of things are going to get taken out.

We're not going to be worried about them, and so our health is a result of our body's defenses firing on all cylinders from the day we're born until our very last breath. Having your shields down is really the problem. The diagnosis of cancer is still a big deal, but we are beginning now to see the end of cancer with treatments that are actually able to take very advanced cancers and literally dry erase them.

The developments are happening so fast now. I never thought in my career I would see stage 4 cancer going to stage 0, and it's happening.

Jordan Harbinger: To hear which foods can help and which health trends could backfire, check out episode 1357 of The Jordan Harbinger Show with Dr. William Li. A good decision can lose money, and a terrible one can pay off. The danger is learning the wrong lesson from either one.

Judge the process, understand the downside, and don't let one lucky win convince you that you've outsmarted the game. All things Steven Bridges on the website. Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

Don't forget about Six-Minute Networking as well, still free over at sixminutenetworking.com. And this show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadas Sidlauskas, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

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