Josh Axelrad: The Gold Watch - The Moth

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Moth" Episode Featuring Josh Axelrad’s "The Gold Watch"

Introduction

In the September 19, 2011 episode of The Moth podcast, titled "The Gold Watch," storyteller Josh Axelrad shares a compelling and deeply personal narrative that intertwines themes of financial desperation, identity crisis, and the perilous allure of gambling addiction. Recorded live at The Moth in 2010, Axelrad's story delves into his tumultuous journey from a successful professional blackjack player to a man grappling with overwhelming debt and the impending loss of his cherished inheritance.

Financial Struggles and Therapeutic Advice

At the outset of his story, Axelrad sets the stage with his severe financial predicament. He recounts a particularly harrowing period marked by five consecutive days of insomnia and escalating anxiety. The catalyst for his distress was a visit to his psychiatrist, who attributed his sleeplessness to his dire financial situation: “I was carrying about $30,000 in credit card debt and had less than a grand in my checking account. Minimum payments due in a week that I couldn't quite make” (03:01). This stark revelation pushed Axelrad to the brink, forcing him to confront the possibility of seeking employment—an idea he vehemently resisted, given his existing circumstances.

The Life of a Card Counter

Axelrad’s financial woes are intricately linked to his past as a professional blackjack player. Three years prior to his financial downfall, he had sold a book proposal, “Repeat Until Rich: A Professional Card Counters Chronicle of the Blackjack Wars,” to a major New York publishing house. Ironically, he had yet to write the manuscript, a situation exacerbating his insomnia and anxiety. The memoir was to chronicle his experiences with a group of professional card counters who, for five years, earned a living by systematically winning money from casinos through blackjack.

He provides an insightful explanation of card counting: “Blackjack is this game where certain cards in the deck are disproportionately favorable to players...When you find a deck that's rich in these good player favorable cards, you bet more and that's it” (03:01). This strategic approach, however, inevitably draws the ire of casinos. As Axelrad elaborates, casinos employ sophisticated methods to identify and blacklist card counters, including sharing photographs and tracking betting patterns across different establishments.

Casino Hostility and Adopting a Persona

Axelrad narrates his gradual entrenchment into an increasingly hostile environment within the gambling world. Starting in Las Vegas, he enjoyed the perks of unrecognized play, but over time, casinos began to recognize him, limiting his opportunities and forcing him to relocate to less reputable establishments like the Majestic Star in Gary, Indiana. The Majestic Star, in Axelrad’s vivid description, was a "terrible shithole," characterized by poor conditions and a stringent no-tolerance policy toward card counters.

Faced with the inevitability of being ousted, Axelrad devised a coping mechanism: adopting a "lobotomized" persona to mask his card counting activities. “I thought, that’s it. My act is lobotomized” (07:45). This act involved minimal verbal communication and exaggerated physical cues, such as "grunting and drooling," to project an image of cognitive impairment. Remarkably, this strategy paid off when a casino supervisor mistook his act for genuine incompetence, leading to unexpected hospitality: “a few minutes later, he was grabbing my arm and offering me comps and he never even threw me out” (10:15). This success emboldened Axelrad to continue using this persona across various casinos, temporarily preserving his lucrative card counting career.

The Decline: From Card Counting to Online Poker

Despite his initial success with the lobotomized act, external factors began to erode Axelrad’s card counting profitability. The casino environment in Las Vegas became increasingly hostile, and his group of card counters eventually disbanded due to mounting pressures and reduced earnings. Concurrently, Axelrad grappled with the psychological burden of writing his memoir. He confessed, “every time I started a sentence in which the blackjack stories were taking place in the past tense, I couldn't quite bear it” (12:30), highlighting his emotional struggle to detach from his former life.

In an attempt to cope with his creative stagnation, Axelrad turned to online poker, initially viewing it as a harmless diversion. However, what began as a minor procrastination quickly spiraled into a full-blown addiction. He describes the transition: “I continued to play, having entered a period of really being somewhat out of control” (14:05). This shift not only diverted his focus from writing but also introduced him to the treacherous realm of online gambling, where he found himself in a "different sort of cognitive space" that mirrored the exhilarating uncertainty of blackjack (14:45).

Attempts at Recovery and Hitting Bottom

Axelrad's downward trajectory continued as his losses in online poker mounted uncontrollably. From an initial loss of $2,000 within a month, his debt ballooned to $50,000 over the span of a year. Recognizing the severity of his situation, he sought professional help, only to face rejection and further isolation. His experiences with therapy were disheartening: “I can’t see you anymore. You’re too unstable” (15:10). This rejection deepened his despair, making him feel alienated from traditional support systems like Gamblers Anonymous.

Undeterred by his exclusion from support groups, Axelrad continued his destructive gambling habits, ultimately identifying himself as a "full-time professional losing gambler." His story poignantly captures the internal conflict between his former disciplined self and the losing, desperate individual he had become.

The Pawning Incident and Self-Realization

A pivotal moment in Axelrad’s narrative occurs when he visits a pawnshop to sell his inherited solid gold Bulgari watch—a symbol of his grandfather’s legacy and his own former prosperity. Under the influence of exhaustion and desperation, he confronts the reality of his situation. The interaction with the pawnshop owner serves as a critical mirror reflecting his self-degradation: “Was I the ultimate degenerate who actually pawns the last thing he has from his grandpa to get enough money to live for another month?” (22:00).

This encounter forces Axelrad to confront his fractured identity. The refusal of the pawnshop owner to meet his valuation of the watch symbolizes the devaluation of his own worth and the loss of his heritage. The realization that he might be sacrificing everything he values for fleeting financial relief is heartbreakingly captured when he decides to reclaim his watch: “I grabbed the watch. I said, maybe, you know, another time. Not. Not today” (23:15).

Seeking a Temporary Solution

In a final act of desperation, Axelrad turns to a familiar yet unsustainable method to stave off his financial collapse: obtaining a cash advance on his already strained credit. This decision underscores the cyclical nature of his struggles, where each attempt to rectify his situation only perpetuates his dependency and instability. He reflects, “this is not a sustainable way of life, but it buys me a month, and that’s what I want right now. Just a little more time” (24:30). This moment encapsulates the essence of his internal battle—balancing between immediate relief and long-term ruin.

Conclusion and Reflections

Josh Axelrad’s "The Gold Watch" is a raw and unflinching portrayal of a man caught in the relentless grip of gambling addiction. Through his narrative, Axelrad explores the thin line between control and chaos, illustrating how the very strategies that once brought him success ultimately led to his downfall. His journey from a confident card counter to a broken individual highlights the insidious nature of addiction and the challenges of seeking redemption.

Notable Quotes:

“I was carrying about $30,000 in credit card debt and had less than a grand in my checking account.” (03:01)
“I thought, that’s it. My act is lobotomized.” (07:45)
“I continued to bet large...he never even threw me out.” (10:15)
“I couldn't quite bear” writing about his blackjack past. (12:30)
“I was now a full time professional losing gambler.” (16:50)
“I grabbed the watch. I said, maybe, you know, another time. Not. Not today.” (23:15)
“This is not a sustainable way of life, but it buys me a month, and that’s what I want right now.” (24:30)

Axelrad’s story serves as a poignant reminder of the fragile balance between ambition and self-destruction. It underscores the importance of recognizing the signs of addiction and seeking help before it irrevocably alters one’s life. The Moth episode masterfully captures this struggle, offering listeners a deeply human and relatable tale of loss, desperation, and the enduring hope for redemption.

Transcript

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Dan Kennedy (1:31)

Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. For those of you in Vermont mark your calendars, the Moth is coming to Burlington on Saturday, October 22nd. We're partnering with Vermont Public Radio and PH International to present Building a Stories from Both Sides. For tickets and more information, go to themoth.org this podcast is brought to you by Audible.com, the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks with more than 85,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature. For the Moth listeners, Audible is offering a free audiobook to give you a chance to try out their service. One audiobook to consider is Here Comes Trouble Stories from My Life, written and read by Oscar winning filmmaker Michael Moore. Ride life's roller coaster with Michael as he tells stories of his often funny and always entertaining early life. That's Here Comes Trouble Stories from My Life by Michael Moore. Available from Audible. To try Audible today and get a free audiobook of your choice, go to audible.comthemost that's audible.comthemost the story you're about to hear by Josh Axelrad was recorded live at the moth in 2010. The theme of the night was stories of fooling and being fooled.

Josh Axelrad (3:01)

Thank you. I was walking down Park Avenue, as I'm sure many of you have done in A haze bordering on insanity. It was my fifth day of insomnia. I was starting to hallucinate. The buildings were swirling around me and the sun was pounding down. And I didn't know where I wanted to go to. I had just come out of my shrink's office, and she said she thought that my anxiety and my sleeplessness had to do with my financial situation, which was bad. I was carrying about $30,000 in credit card debt and had less than a grand in my checking account. Minimum payments due in a week that I couldn't quite make. And she said in light of this, she thought it was time that I think about looking for work. And I thought that was crazy. So I left in a bit of a huff and was right at park and 25th. And I walked by this building that I'd seen a lot in the past. It was a stone structure. It looked like a bank, sort of an austere, serious facade. But I saw a sign in the window that I'd never noticed before, and it said, Cash Loans for Gold. And I thought, this is not a mainstream lending institution. And I stopped. I looked down at my watch, not to check the time, but to confirm that I was still wearing the solid gold Bulgari that I inherited from my grandfather. And I was. So I stepped through the door, thinking, has it really come to this? Now, I wasn't supposed to be broke. I didn't think it was part of God's plan for me to be broke. In fact, just three years earlier, I sold a book to a major New York publishing house for a good bit of money. Now, I hadn't written that book. I hadn't written it yet. It was an original deadline had come and then gone. And there was another deadline that was three months away. And I continued not to have written it. So there was no manuscript. This was an additional source of sleeplessness. And it was also part of why I didn't want to work. I needed times that I could write, but I couldn't write because I was so freaked out because of my financial situation. So it was a bit of a self preparation, perpetuating cycle. And to make matters worse, the book was to be titled Repeat Until Rich. It was a memoir. It was a story of how I had fallen in with a group of professional card counters and for five years earned my living winning money from casinos at blackjack, which I did. And I think part of why it was so hard for me to write is that I knew that getting to the end of it and typing the end, and you Know, closing the file or closing the book would mean that that part of my life, which in many ways had been very magical, was behind me, that it was really over and I couldn't quite let go of it. Card counting is a sort of magical thing. You come into the casino and you feel like the ultimate badass. Everybody around you is a sucker. The people at the tables, the pit bosses too, because you're going to win money from them. And even the people outside the casinos who have to work honest jobs for a living, they're all suckers. And you feel like you're in this extraordinary position. In addition to that, when you walk into a casino, you know, just so you understand with card counting, Blackjack is this game where certain cards in the deck are disproportionately favorable to players. And what a card counter does is just keep track of those cards. And when you find a deck that's rich in these good player favorable cards, you bet more and that's it. So you bet small and you count the cards and bet small, and then you find a good count and you bet a lot and then small again. And this pattern is conspicuous. Casinos are able to identify it, and when they do, they ask you to leave or they tell you to leave. So the moment you walk into a casino in a card counting session, a clock begins to tick. And it's only a matter of time before they figure you out or recognize you, because they exchange photographs with each other. They take photographs. You can walk into a casino that some other casino has sent photographs of and be thrown out, even though you've never played there before and they haven't even seen you in action. And the same thing happens on a grander time scale also over the course of your card counting career. You start out with a clean face, unknown to the casinos, and you're able to play everywhere. And over time, you run out of options and you become hot and have feel the whole experience of it beginning to slip through your fingers. It started to happen to me. I started in Las Vegas playing big casinos, the best places in the world to play blackjack in. And within a couple years, 2002, 2003, I was being sent on trips to northern Indiana, and not just northern Indiana, to Gary, Indiana, and not just to Gary, but to the Majestic Star, the woefully misnamed Majestic Star, which is a casino that they never let card counters play. For one thing, they always throw you out immediately. But it's also a terrible shithole. You walk onto this boat that it looks like Somebody bought on ebay. And the smoke is choking the chambers inside of it. And the floor, the carpet is indistinguishable. You can't tell if it's the actual design or vomit or some other thing. You just don't even know. And you walk up to the table, and I was walking into this place where they always throw people out, and I thought, what act can I use? This is part of what you do as a counter. You come in with a story, who you are, what you're about. I'm a drug dealer or I own a nightclub, and I deal in a lot of cash, and that's why I have money. You sort of want it to make sense that you're betting the way you are. But I walked into this place thinking, what can I possibly do? They're gonna throw me out. I thought the only thing that will cause them to accept wagers from me Is if they think that I'm cognitively void, that I've been lobotomized. And so I thought, that's it. My act is lobotomized. And I walked up to the table. There was no story. I didn't explain anything. I used three words of vocabulary, and I started betting and counting. And when the count bent up, I bet more, and I was grunting and drooling. No story, Lobotomized. That was it. And as soon as I started to bet large, Somebody new entered the pit. As happens, it was an older person, had an aura of authority about him. And he walked in and walked right over to behind the table where I was betting, and started looking at me like they do. They like to look you right in the eye and sort of put the reed on you. And if you can convince them with your act that you're, you know, a crazy person or what have you, you, can buy yourself a little more time. And he looked right at me, and it was this moment that I loved in a blackjack session. It was the moment of truth, because you really don't know what they're going to do. I mean, I know the truth, which is that I'm a badass and he's a sucker, But I want to look like a sucker. And he looked in my eyes, and I couldn't think of anything to do or say. So I just opened my mouth a little bit further and let a little bit of extra drool spill out of one side of it. And his eyes lit up, and he beamed at me. And a few minutes later, he was grabbing my arm and offering me comps and he never even threw me out. I was never born at the Majestic Star. And I ended up using this lobotomized character in casino after casino, going around the country at a time when I should have been out of options, finding new options all over the place, thinking that I had really cheated death, that maybe this perverse way of life might actually be sustainable indefinitely. Maybe time had stopped, but it hadn't. Our group ended up splitting up for a number of reasons. We all became very hot. And the blackjack conditions in Las Vegas changed materially so that we were making much less money. And I sat down at home and started trying to write and to learn how to write. And eventually I got an agent and I put together a book proposal. And to my astonishment, it was purchased. And I found myself in a new life, sitting at the computer, writing or trying to write. But every time I started a sentence in which the blackjack stories were taking place in the past tense, I couldn't quite bear it. And I became restless. And I would log on to the Internet just to procrastinate a little bit, bang out some money, maybe on an Internet poker site, send 100 or $200 over to some offshore website, you know, based in some other country. And I wasn't good at poker. Poker is a game like blackjack, that you can beat if you're skilled. But I wasn't. And I knew that this was not about. This wasn't work. This was a busman's holiday, so to speak. It was just recreation. And I would win. I would lose. It was just a little procrastination thing, not a big deal. At the end of the first month, I realized I was down $2,000. And I thought, all right, this is counterproductive. And the following month changed my ways entirely. Started getting up early in the morning, which I had never done, having coffee, sitting down at the computer, taking a breath, typing a sentence, realizing that the fast tense felt wrong and false and jarring and that none of the writing was not good either. And I thought, well, I logged on to the Internet. I beamed $500 or $700 over to Gibraltar and played a little bit. Killed some time. And while I was doing it, I realized quickly that I was in a different sort of cognitive space. It was very different from blackjack, from playing with an edge, knowing you're supposed to win. I knew I was supposed to lose, and I was losing. And I felt a little bit out of control. It began to mount and become more obvious that I was doing something bad. And even though the Actual activity was to me, so different from card counting. The feeling of uncertainty and of danger was very familiar. And I liked that feeling. It was like the moment of truth, every single moment. So long as I was in action. It was very exciting. The second month I lost $7,000 and I saw the cumulative result becoming something poor. So I continued to play, having entered a period of really being somewhat out of control. I guess I was writing very little and playing a lot of online poker. By the end of the summer, I was down about $20,000, which I saw as problematic. So I went to a therapist and he said, all right, well, we're gonna get you in Gamblers Anonymous. And I said, listen, there are two things that professional gamblers or former professional gamblers don't do. They don't get jobs and they don't go to Gamblers Anonymous. That means the whole sort of dream is really dead. I'm not doing that. And he said, all right. And after a few sessions, he said, I can't see you anymore. You're too unstable. Which I took offense to. So I stormed out. And I continued to play badly online poker. And it had become something else. Now it full time thing. I was now a full time professional losing gambler. And by six months, and then nine months, I wasn't able to snap myself out of this state. And a year later, the following summer, I had lost $50,000, which was the extent of my available cash. So unless I was going to go into embezzlement or really take things to the next level, I saw that I had to get a little help. And I started going to these programs where there were these people who were the sorts of people we used to mock inside the casinos. And they were really shattered. And we would share our stories, and mine didn't make any sense to them and theirs didn't make any sense to me. But I went, and then I went home and played a little bit of poker. And then I went, then I went home and played a little poker. I went to four meetings and I saw that I wasn't able to see myself as a peer with these people. I couldn't accept that. So I thought, I'm going to stop just so I don't have to call myself one of them. I can't handle that. That I can't do. And I did stop. And that meant to me accepting that blackjack and that magical period was behind me and accepting that I had annihilated $51,000 trying to preserve it. The following year I spent playing scrabble on the Internet. It was a healing period. I didn't lose any money. I didn't write anything. And In February of 2008, I was standing in this pawn shop, hallucinating from all the exhaustion, days of no sleep. And I walked up to the window. The man kind of had this wan smile. And I put the watch through the slot. And the first thing he said to me was, well, you know, this is plated. And I. At that moment, I couldn't tell, is this a movie where they sell you the thing that, like, you know, it is, but they say that it's not? And he's really like, are you really do. I said, it's not. It's solid. This solid gold. And he said, well, I'll take a look. And he brought it somewhere to examine it, Came back a minute later and said, I'm sorry, my mistake. It is. It is solid gold. He said, I can give you $600 for. And I said, this watch is worth $5,000. I had it appraised two years ago. And he said, actually, it's worth 7,000 now. I can give you $600. The watch I can move is a Rolex, and this isn't a Rolex. So if I sell it, that's what I get. You can take it or leave it. And he put it back in the slot, and he just looked at me. And I realized that he had looked at a lot of people standing where I was standing, and it reminded me of the man in the pit looking at me in blackjack. Only then I knew who I was, and now I felt like I didn't know. Was I the ultimate degenerate who actually pawns the last thing he has from his grandpa to get enough money to live for another month? And I grabbed the watch. I said, maybe, you know, another time. Not. Not today. And he said, I hope you find what you're looking for. And I walked outside, took a breath, saw the sun coming down. It wasn't so bad. And I got on the subway, and I went to my local. My bank and took out a credit card, a credit card that had been issued by that bank. And I put it in the slot. The teller looked up at me, and I said, I would like a cash advance. And I took out a cash advance for a thousand dollars. And as I signed the form, I thought, this is not a sustainable way of life, but it buys me a month, and that's what I want right now. Just a little more time. Thank you.