466: Blackjack

Summary

Podcast Summary: This American Life, Episode 466 – "Blackjack"

Original Air Date: April 26, 2026
Host: Ira Glass
Notable Contributors: Sarah Koenig, Jack Hitt, Andy Block
Main Theme: Exploring the allure, mythology, and moral dilemmas of blackjack—America’s iconic casino game—through personal stories of would-be card counters, Christian blackjack teams, and an epic legal battle tied to compulsive gambling.

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Overview

This episode delves deep into the world of blackjack—the game, the dream of beating the house, and the complex realities behind that dream. Through immersive reporting and interviews, it investigates the mechanics and mystique of card counting, the moral calculus of a Christian blackjack team, and the predatory marketing of casinos toward addicted players. True to This American Life’s signature style, it’s a tapestry blending humor, big feelings, and sobering truths.

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Key Segments & Discussions

1. Learning to Count Cards: The Reporters' Crash Course

[00:15–09:16]

• Sarah Koenig and producer Robin Simeon journey to Atlantic City to test their freshly acquired card counting skills, taught by Andy Block, a famed former member of the MIT Blackjack Team.
• Andy Block shares the mechanics:
  • Card counting isn’t about remembering every card but keeping a simple running tally: subtract one for every ten or ace dealt, add one for low cards.
  • Quote: “It's not a complicated thing... You just need to know that one number.” – Andy Block ([07:13])
  • The benefit? As the tally goes up, so do your odds—and your bets.
• Their initial excitement fades at the casino: the practical challenge of maintaining focus, social pressure, and making swift, high-stakes decisions under scrutiny.

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2. Professional Card Counters: The Christian Blackjack Team

[10:18–28:49]
Act I: "Render Unto Caesar’s Palace What is Due Caesar's Palace"

• Jack Hitt investigates "Holy Rollers," a card-counting team comprised of devout Christians, as depicted in the documentary Holy Rollers.
  • Origins: Ben, a Sunday school teacher, discovers card counting via a book, tries it with his last $800, and wins—transforming his view of money ([11:26]).
  • Recruiting from church: Trustworthy, community-minded Christians became ideal team members and investors—sometimes cashing out savings to bankroll the team ([12:17]).
• Gambling vs. Math: The team rationalizes card counting as a business, not gambling.
  • Quote: “As a card counter... there's no such thing as luck. There's only math.” – Mike ([14:00])
• Is it illegal or immoral?
  • Card counting is not illegal; it’s just discouraged by casinos, who may ban or “back off” players they detect ([15:01]).
  • Ethics gray zones emerge: the team uses disguises (“personas”), bluffs, and covert signals. Members grapple with the Ninth Commandment and lying about identities ([18:58]).
  • Memorable confession: “Maybe God saying, shut up. Just tell them the truth. I felt guilty... it was a sin to lie to them.” – Mike ([19:48])
• Temptations & Internal Struggles:
  • Handling tens of thousands in cash on the honor system breeds suspicion; some confess to stealing.
  • Quote: “Yeah, I know people on the team stole money. In fact... I admitted to them that I stole money from them.” – Ben ([25:11])
  • The emotional toll: Even big wins come with isolation and guilt, living between two communities (gamblers and churchgoers) ([26:34]).
• Inevitability of burnout: Despite good money, the team disbands—card counting is grueling and ultimately unfulfilling ([27:40]).
• Where are they now?
  • Mike became a pastor; Shirley returned to family life; Ben switched careers ([28:49]).

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3. Reporters Try Their Luck: The Reality of Card Counting

[31:01–35:42]

• Koenig and Simeon’s attempt at card counting reveals its challenges:
  • Robin masters the count, but mental strain makes basic math and conversation difficult.
  • The environment is tense, mistakes are made, and table conditions (bad counts) aren’t ideal.
  • They experience a classic near miss—increasing their bets when the count is favorable, only to be beaten by the dealer’s luck.
    • Quote (on post-loss contemplation):
      “That’s all I wanted, to get kicked out for being good... Instead, we walked out in shame.” – Sarah Koenig ([34:50])
  • Result: Lost $348 in two hours.

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4. When the House Always Wins: Angie Bachmann's Legal Fight

[36:17–62:35]

• Angie Bachmann, a housewife turned gambling addict, is taken to court by Caesars for six-figure debts from counter checks—a form of casino loan ([36:17]).
• Unusual defense: Her lawyer, Terry Nofsinger, argues that Bachmann was a compulsive gambler exploited by the casino, thus not liable for the debts ([37:32]).
  • Quote: “Because at the time of those losses, she has passed the point of no return... and the casinos know it and take advantage of it.” – Nofsinger ([37:32])
• Industry tactics: Casinos use “Total Rewards” loyalty cards and predatory marketing to target high-value, high-loss players—regardless of gambling problems ([43:32]).
  • Shocking perks: Free suites, luxury items, personal casino hosts—offers escalate after big losses, not wins ([45:33]).
  • Angela feels guilt over not gambling enough to “repay” comps ([46:14]).
• Addiction neuroscience: Researchers Reza Habib and Mark Dixon explain how the near-miss effect in gambling warps addictive brains—losses trigger brain states similar to wins, making rational choice nearly impossible ([57:09]).
  • Quote: “A pathological gambler going into the casino who's actually losing, his brain is firing like he's winning. Disturbing, doesn't it?” – Mark Dixon ([58:55])
• Do casinos care?
  • Ex-casino pit boss Christian Kunder says casino policies to identify addicts are rarely enforced; even visibly impaired gamblers are allowed (or encouraged) to keep playing ([52:35]).
  • Quote: “Not one bit. Not the slightest part. In no way... The only time they'll approach a player is if they're suicidal.” – Kunder ([52:35])
• Legal outcome: Courts rule casinos have no duty to protect compulsive gamblers; Bachmann remains accountable for her debts ([61:49]).
  • Quote (from dissenting judge): “From a moral standpoint, Caesar's predation and prosecution of a pathological gambler is repugnant,” but it’s not illegal. ([61:49])

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Learning the thrill of card counting:
  • “You think you can beat it. But as soon as you start to think you can beat it, it gets you into trouble.” – Sarah Koenig ([04:00])
• Christian subterfuge:
  • “We would cross our arms if it was a good count... leave our arms open if it wasn't.” – Shirley ([20:18])
• The house’s ruthlessness:
  • “My life depends on you coming up here this weekend.” – Casino host to Angie ([46:52])
• The crushing downside:
  • “We bet high when the count was good, just like you're supposed to, and dumb luck made us lose anyway, which is part of the game.” – Sarah Koenig ([35:09])

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• [01:41] — Sarah & Robin prepare to count cards
• [02:03, 07:13] — Andy Block teaches card counting
• [10:18] — Christian card counting team, “Holy Rollers”
• [14:00] — Card counting as “work, not luck”
• [18:58] — Identity and truth dilemmas for Christians in the casino
• [21:19, 22:08] — Risky “splitting tens” move; adrenaline of deviating from the script
• [25:11] — Confession of stealing within the Christian team
• [31:01] — Koenig & Simeon’s actual casino tryout
• [36:17] — Angie Bachmann’s story: the lawsuit, addiction, and predatory casino tactics
• [43:32] — Casino host explains targets and manipulation of high rollers
• [52:35] — Casino manager exposes the reality of addiction “interventions”
• [57:09] — Science of gambling addiction and the “near miss” brain effect
• [61:49] — The court’s final ruling; moral vs. legal questions

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Concluding Thoughts

This episode weaves together myth and method, morality and commerce, following those drawn to blackjack’s siren call—be they journalists, students, believers, or addicts. It illuminates the razor-thin line between hope and delusion, skill and compulsion, and asks listeners to reckon with where the responsibility really lies: is it the gambler, the house, or the seductive systems in between?

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Transcript

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[Ira Glass]

To make our newest bonus episode of this American Life, Ira Glass went digging. Okay, we're in digging for an old recording in a storage space with 70 boxes of old tapes.

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Oh, my God.

[Ira Glass]

And as luck would have it, I can't believe it.

[Sarah Koenig]

This is the 1, 2, 3.

[Producer or Narrator]

This is the fourth box I'm opening.

[Sarah Koenig]

I'm literally right here. I think this is exactly what I

[Ira Glass]

was looking for to hear what he found. Plus dozens of other exclusive bonus episodes. And most importantly, to help us keep making the show. [e-mail] LifePartners okay, I really am stunned. That link is also in the show notes of this episode.

[Sarah Koenig]

Thanks.

[Angie Bachmann]

First floor.

[Sarah Koenig]

From WBEZ Chicago, it's this American Life. Okay, here we go. Blackjack, $10 tables, $10 high limit room,

[Producer or Narrator]

which no one is in.

[Sarah Koenig]

Monday, late morning, this American Life producer Robin Semion and I are in a casino that will remain unnamed here on the radio because we did not have permission to record. I did not ask for permission due to the nature of our visit. Let's see over here. We stand by one of the blackjack tables and Robin does a quick scan of the cards. What's the count on this table?

[Robin Simeon]

Negative 6.

[Sarah Koenig]

We were there to count cards, to play blackjack and count cards while we did it, which gives a player such a big advantage against the house that most casinos ask you to leave the table if they catch you doing it. And how did we end up here? Well, we've gotten a lesson the day before in how to count cards.

[Andy Block]

We used to say that you could teach a piece of wood to play blackjack. You just have to be able to keep your wits about you when you're at the table and not make too many mistakes.

[Sarah Koenig]

We got our lesson from Andy Block, who played blackjack for what is possibly the most famous group of blackjack card counters, the so called MIT blackjack team. The winnings inspired a best selling book and a terrible Hollywood film called 21. These were real MIT students. Andy studied electrical engineering. There is no reliable way to know how much they won. They claim over $8 million between 1994 and 2000. After he quit the team, Andy put out an instructional DVD about how to count cards. He doesn't play much blackjack himself anymore.

[Andy Block]

Once I got known as a part of the mit blackjack team. It became hard to play. And I would get kicked out of just about anywhere I try to play. And sometimes I would take friends there. They just wanted to see me get kicked out of someplace, play for a little bit. After, you know, 15 minutes, an hour, they'd come over and ask me to leave.

[Sarah Koenig]

Now, I don't know if I should assume that you've played blackjack or you know the rules, but if you haven't played or you don't know, here are the rules. Everybody at the table gets cards. You can ask for more cards if you want. The way that you do that is that you tell the dealer, hit me. You want your cards to add up as close to 21 as possible without going over. It's very simple. So simple that when you play, it feels winnable. And it seems like everybody you meet who plays blackjack has a system. Everyone thinks they can beat it.

[Andy Block]

Yeah, I've heard a lot of crazy systems about blackjack. You know, the best myths are the ones that are based in fact. And it is a fact that you can beat blackjack. You can actually beat the casinos. And the idea that it's possible to beat the casino is what made blackjack so popular.

[Sarah Koenig]

I think this is what makes blackjack so special, is that you think you can beat it. But of course, as soon as you start to think you can beat it, it gets you into trouble. Here's how diabolical blackjack is. Unlike most casino games, if you play blackjack correctly, the casino barely has an edge. The odds are very close to 50. 50, you win almost half the time. So the dream of winning is right there in front of you, just out of reach. And if you did have a system that could beat blackjack, imagine what that would mean. It's like the money is just sitting there in casinos everywhere, all over the world. Huge stacks of chips and hundred dollar bills waiting for you to take them home. No job, bad economy. If blackjack is beatable, your problems are solved. Today on our program, we watch people run after that dream, including some fine, upright, God fearing people, including Robin and me. Stay with us and good luck with that ace. Okay, so when Andy Block says that you can beat the casinos, he is talking specifically about counting cards to change the odds. The mathematics of counting cards was nailed down in the 1950s and 60s. There is a way to count cards that definitively gives you an edge over the house. And you don't need to be a rain man or have a photographic memory to pull this off. A normal person can do it. So Robin and I decided that we wanted to learn. And I could pretend right now that there is a high minded journalistic reason for this. You know, we wouldn't really understand what blackjack is all about if we didn't dive in ourselves. That would be a lie. We'd both heard of card counting. We wanted to try for the same reasons that anybody does. We thought it would be so awesome to beat blackjack. And the thought that we would be doing it during our jobs, that we would be in a casino when the rest of the staff was back at the office editing and writing. Amazing. So I can tell you what we Learned in like 2 minutes. Here is how card counting works. Please remember this public radio station if it makes you rich. The basic idea is, for lots of reasons that we don't need to get into here, tens and aces are to your advantage as a blackjack player. So as the cards are dealt, what you want to know is, are there lots of tens and aces left in the deck for you to get? And by tens, I should say, I just don't mean like the 10 of hearts and the 10 of spades and all that, but I mean like the face cards that add 10 to your hand when you play blackjack. Okay, so stay with me. You want tens and aces and you count. And this is important. You're not going to keep track of the position of every single card. You're not memorizing the deck. That would be insane. They invented something that is way, way easier than that. You just keep a running tally, very rough one of tens and aces. You start your tally at zero. When a ten or an ace is dealt, you subtract one from the tally. When a low card comes out, you add one. That's it. That's the whole thing. The running tally, that one number, that's all you need to know. Again, here's Andy Block.

[Andy Block]

It's not a complicated thing. You don't need a great memory. You don't need to know how many queens are left in the deck. You just need to know that one number.

[Sarah Koenig]

And when that one number when you're running tally gets up to seven or eight or nine, it means that there are lots of aces and tens left in the deck. So it's good for you, right? It's really, really good for you. And that is the time that you want to start to bet big. Like, your bet should jump up to five times what it was. Andy says all you have to do is keep your running tally. And Andy demonstrated here he Dealt cards into a pile to demonstrate how that works.

[Andy Block]

So minus 1 0, plus 1, plus 2, plus 1, plus 2,plus 3, plus 2.

[Sarah Koenig]

Then it was time for Robin and I to try this. Note that the pace changes just a little. Plus two, plus two. It was a three. Plus one plus one

[Jack Hitt]

zero.

[Sarah Koenig]

Minus one, plus one, plus one. You know, I'm getting confused over which one gets the plus and which gets the minus.

[Andy Block]

You're sad when tens and aces come out, especially when you don't get them.

[Sarah Koenig]

You're sad when tens and aces come out, which is why they get subtracted.

[Robin Simeon]

There we go.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

That works.

[Sarah Koenig]

Okay, we tried a few more times. Andy would deal. Robin and I would keep the count in our heads. At the end, he would ask us the count.

[Andy Block]

Okay, what'd you got?

[Sarah Koenig]

Minus five, negative two.

[Andy Block]

Minus three.

[Sarah Koenig]

Finally, on our fourth try. Anded out the cards. We kept the count in our heads. And at the end, negative 8. That's what I have, too.

[Andy Block]

All right, you guys both win. Negative 8.

[Robin Simeon]

Shut up.

[Musician / Singer]

Well done.

[Robin Simeon]

My heart's racing a little bit.

[Andy Block]

You're ready to hit the tables.

[Sarah Koenig]

And so the next day, we headed to Atlantic City. We headed to the casino to hit the tables and try our techniques at the lowest stakes tables possible. We basically went into the kiddie pool. We skied the bunny hill. Did we win? Did the casino notice and send swarms of security guards with walkie talkies to kind of ask us to play a different game? What happened to us later in this.

[Angie Bachmann]

Foreign.

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[Sarah Koenig]

By state law, it's just American life.

[Producer or Narrator]

Myra Glass. Today's show is a rerun.

[Sarah Koenig]

Act 1. Render unto Caesar's palace what is due Caesar's Palace. When you think professional gamblers, you don't think Christians, but there was a team of blackjack playing Christians. No joke. There's a documentary about it called Holy Rollers. They took in $3.5 million from casinos. To do that, the entire team had to know how to count cards. They had skills. But beyond that, what did a Christian card counting team have going for them that gave them an edge. Former Sunday school teacher jack hitt decided to find out.

[Jack Hitt]

The way Ben tells the story, it all began where so many great ideas originate. Reading in the bathroom. It was a book about gambling, and there was a three page chapter on blackjack explaining how to count cards. And Ben thought, I could do this. He waited tables back then, Minimum wage work, and he had just had his first kid. He and his wife were broke. And so one day he came up with a plan to take their last $800 to a Dinky casino outside of seattle. And he won the first day.

[Ben (Christian Blackjack Team Founder)]

I remember making Maybe it was 500 or $1,000 in one night. And I've never seen money move like that before. You know, I was used to waiting tables, and every once in a while I would get a $10 tip and maybe make $100 a night. But I just remember being fascinated by how fast this cash could move back and forth. It was just, I started to see money differently.

[Jack Hitt]

Ben formed a small crew of card counters to hit the casinos together. And they did okay for a while. But after three years, that team fell apart. Ben said they just had different values. And so ben and another player, his good friend Colin, Decided that if they were going to create a great team, then they had to find new members they could trust completely. And that's when it hit them. The perfect source of blackjack players. It was right in front of them, at least on Sundays. Church.

[Ben (Christian Blackjack Team Founder)]

Basically all these people had been watching us play blackjack for the last three years, and they didn't know a lot about it, but they knew that I bought a house with the winnings. So there was all these kind of family members that had heard of the story and I think, frankly, were just excited about the story. And me and my business partner, Colin, we went to different churches. So he had people from his church coming to him. And, you know, word was kind of spreading. And people were like, oh, I heard about this blackjack thing. Are you guys hiring people? And we, if it was the right person, we weren't. We would never say no.

[Jack Hitt]

Now that ben and colin had their players, they needed more money, a lot more money if they hoped to win big. So they went to the same source. Using PowerPoint presentations, they showed their fellow christians how much they'd been winning. Not using luck or prayer, just math. And at the end of this presentation, here's what they pulled off. They convinced churchgoers to cash out their savings and retirement funds and hand them over to a pack of young people. To carry straight into the devil's playground and risk at blackjack tables. Now, I know what you're thinking. Wait, where's the Christ in cheating at blackjack? And isn't gambling a sin or just wrong? Turns out all the players asked those questions, too. In fact, Ben said part of training a new team member always seemed to involve a moment when the player would be stricken by a crisis of faith. Ben said he got quite good at these rap sessions. And here was his. Yes, gambling's wrong. No question about that. But they weren't gambling at all because they counted cards. Here's one of the players, Mike.

[Mike (Christian Blackjack Team Member)]

He'll explain As a card counter, you go in there thinking, there's no such thing as luck. There's only math. We're going to sit down and work for eight hours and make money. And that's the exact opposite of what 99.9% of all people do in a casino.

[Jack Hitt]

But even if you square in your heart that card counting is not a sin, morally, isn't it illegal in some states or at least considered cheating by the casinos? I ran this by Ben, the founder, who could not wait to correct me.

[Ben (Christian Blackjack Team Founder)]

No, it's not. No. One of the biggest misconceptions ever, and this drives me nuts, is it's so fundamental, but people don't get it. And I guess that's to the casino's credit, is people actually think that this is violating the rules of a casino. But we follow every rule the casino has. In fact, if you call up a casino and you ask them, is it against the law to count cards? Is it against your rules to count cards? They'll be like, uh, well, no, not really, but it is kind of frowned upon.

[Jack Hitt]

How could that be? We all know that casinos spend tons of money on overhead cameras and security guys to detect card counters. So I called the MGM grand in Las Vegas, and Ben was right. Card counting isn't illegal. In fact, the spokeswoman said it wasn't even against the rules, though they do discourage it. She told me that if they catch you, they'll ask you to go play other games, a process known as backing off. Or if they really don't like what you're doing, they will tell you to leave and that you're not allowed back. But for the most part, casinos just don't like to dissuade anyone from gambling, even card counters. Maybe because most of them are so bad at it, they lose money anyway. And so they pulled it off. Ben and Colin kept training more and more churchgoers, flying the members of their congregation to casinos all over the country. Soon enough, the casinos began to treat them as whales. That's what they call big time gamblers. Rewarding them with comps, free rooms, cases of liquor. They'd come home with amazing stories of winning thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, on the perfectly laid bet. Bragging rights all around. In order to convince the casinos that they were reckless high rollers and not card counters, they'd often wear costumes and take on Personas, Everything from golf pro to what one team member called gay art collector. In this scene from the documentary, you see Colin dressed as a mechanic in a jumpsuit and baseball cap. Ben, meanwhile, has gone full on goth. White face paint, black lipstick with black outfit, and even black fingernails. But they never forgot this was a business. And business was good to give you a sense of just how good. At the height of their team in 2007, Ben and Colin were rotating as many as 30 trained blackjack players through their transcontinental circuit. And remember, they would hand each member of the flock tens of thousands, sometimes as much as $80,000. And because you can't transfer money like that through, say, an atm, the players carried this cash in envelopes stuffed in their pockets. At the end of each trip, the members would return to Ben and Colin and report back their hours and winnings or losses. This was all done on the honor system. You can see why finding trustworthy, churchgoing collaborators was so important. When the whole team achieved a certain goal, $100,000 in winnings, they'd split the profits, and every quarter, Ben and Colin would host a team meeting at one of their houses in Seattle. Here's Colin at the big meeting in 2008.

[Ira Glass]

You know, it's been another good quarter. Any guesses on how much we took from casinos in 2007?

[Andy Block]

900,000?

[Ira Glass]

1.2. A million, something like that.

[Musician / Singer]

Boom.

[Christian Kunder (Casino Pit Boss)]

Oh, you got it.

[Ira Glass]

$1.58 million taken out casinos this year. I'm excited to take more money from casinos next year.

[Ben (Christian Blackjack Team Founder)]

So for those of you that hate casinos, we're doing our part.

[Jack Hitt]

Did you catch that last part? If you hate casinos. Even after all the talk of it being a business and not gambling, there was still this nagging sense that what they were doing was somehow not part of the Christian mission. They were bleeding the casinos of evil money doing their part. But occasionally, some players began to feel there was something wrong with what they were doing. Take Mike. He had joined the team with the most Christian of all intentions. He used to be a youth pastor. His crisis of Faith began with the ninth commandment. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Weren't all these costumes and fake biographies bearing false witness?

[Mike (Christian Blackjack Team Member)]

High rollers are never mid 20 white kids, never. And they're going to say, so what's your story, man? What do you do? Well, what do I say at that point, you know? Well, in the beginning of the team, I lied. I used to create crazy stories because I thought it was fun. I told at Hard Rock. I remember they said, so, hey, what's your deal? I was like, oh, I work for Fox. I'm an animal agent. I actually do agent stuff for animals and movies. Maybe you've seen Bart the Bear in Legend of the Falls. I do stuff like that. So I'm telling them this story, and the kid next to me playing, he says, no way, I work for Fox too. And he starts describing the offices and asking which building I work out of. And I thought, are you kidding me? The one time I say something off the top of my head, the guy sitting next to me works for Fox.

[Jack Hitt]

Do you think that was some divine intervention there?

[Mike (Christian Blackjack Team Member)]

It probably was. Maybe God saying, shut up. Just tell them the truth. I felt guilty right after I said that it was wrong and it was a sin to lie to them.

[Jack Hitt]

And there were other deceptions, too. One involved playing in pairs. One person would count cards at the table, then they'd signal another teammate across the room to join the game and start betting big when the count favored the players. So you had to have a signal that looked like it wasn't a signal at all.

[Shirley (Card Counter)]

Oh, crossing of the arms. Yeah, it's really subtle. So we would cross our arms if it was a good count, and we would leave our arms open if it wasn't a high enough count.

[Jack Hitt]

This is Shirley, not her real name, by the way. Shirley used this tactic a lot. Among card counters, stepping up to the table right when it's hot is so well known that it has a name, Wonging, from a famous counter known as Stanford Wong. There was this one time for Shirley, the most nerve wracking bet of her life that involved this exact tactic.

[Shirley (Card Counter)]

I was at the Venetian in Las Vegas. I was playing at a table I had just finished. And there was actually another guy on the team who was playing at the same pit across from me. And he gave me the sign to what we call Wong. In means you go over and you go to the table because the count is good, the table's hot.

[Jack Hitt]

So Shirley walked up to the table and put down her bet. A massive bet. And Then another and another.

[Shirley (Card Counter)]

It was phenomenal because we kept winning and winning. There is layers of people behind us. We've got security around us. It's so intense. So I get two hands of 20. I got four tens, basically, which you think would be a great hand. The dealer pulls up a six. That means I have to split my tens.

[Jack Hitt]

Okay, a quick explanation for those of you who don't play in blackjack. You're trying to get close to 20.

[Dusty (Card Counter)]

1.

[Jack Hitt]

2 tens add up to 20, so that's a really good hand. Splitting tens is crazy, what they call a deviation, and Shirley has just done it twice. But it's not crazy if you happen to know that the deck is momentarily packed with high cards and that the dealer probably would bust.

[Shirley (Card Counter)]

So I split my tens, and then I put another two grand on the other ten. And people are just like, what she doing? Whoa. I mean, there's, like, comments from the crowd. I mean, people. It's so much adrenaline when you're doing something that is completely against the blackjack book. But it's exactly what you're supposed to be doing. It's the right deviation, and you know you're gonna kill it and win. Oh, my goodness. It was crazy. I ended up with $22,000 on that one hand. By the time it was over, it was insane because I kept getting tens and I kept splitting them, and I'm super, like, excited but nervous at the same time, hoping that this dealer busts out, which he's supposed to do, and the dealer didn't bust.

[Jack Hitt]

Even though the dealer didn't bust as he was supposed to, it didn't matter. Splitting those tens and making such massive bets gave her a way to security.

[Shirley (Card Counter)]

It's a red flag when you've got 20 and you're splitting it. They know that something's going on, and they can't catch onto it while you're doing your hand that quickly and make it all stop. But no. And I never played at the Venetian after that.

[Jack Hitt]

For some of the other card counters, they faced a different crisis of faith. The commandment about stealing. Remember, you're carrying around tens of thousands of dollars in your pocket and winning tens of thousands more, and nobody knows how much you've won or lost except you. Here's another team member named Dusty.

[Dusty (Card Counter)]

After my very first trip, I had gone with this guy in California. We're, like, doing our results after we got home and totaling up our cash, and I'm like, man, I'm off by exactly $10,000. That's weird. I must be missing 10 grand. And he's like, no, what's the likelihood that you just dropped $10,000 somewhere? You probably just miscounted one of your results. So turn one of your losses, you know, into just correct the miscalculation, which

[Mike (Christian Blackjack Team Member)]

you're like, is horrible.

[Dusty (Card Counter)]

That's, like, falsifying what happened. But this guy's been on the team longer than me. He knows better than me. I'm like, okay, I guess that makes sense. Lo and behold, months later, my niece pulls a couch cushion off of his couch, and there it is. $10,000.

[Jack Hitt]

Which means he was faced with a choice. Keep the money or confess the mistake. Dusty confessed, but you can see how easy it would be to steal. And they all knew it. In time, their trust in each other began to fray, and suspicions that some of the members were stealing grew. One player lost big one night and phoned a lot of the other players. He was hysterical that he had cost the team so much. But their reaction that he probably hadn't lost but was stealing. Ben, the founder of the group, told me about one time when a team member claimed that he'd never even contemplated stealing. That struck Ben as unusual, and he immediately began suspecting that player of stealing. Do you think some of the members of your team did steal money?

[Ben (Christian Blackjack Team Founder)]

Yeah, I know people on the steam team stole money. In fact, to be really honest, one of the decisions I made very recently was to go back to the founding members of the team before our team took off, and I admitted to them that I stole money from them.

[Jack Hitt]

Oh, wow.

[Ben (Christian Blackjack Team Founder)]

Whoops. Yeah.

[Jack Hitt]

Ben, how much did you steal?

[Ben (Christian Blackjack Team Founder)]

$8,000, I think.

[Jack Hitt]

And did you pay it back?

[Ben (Christian Blackjack Team Founder)]

Yeah, I paid it back. The money was stolen from me, from my car, and I had the choice of whether to report it or not. And at the time, I made a very quick decision, and I decided that our family couldn't afford it. And I just. I fudged the paperwork, and I said that I lost it at casino. So those were three of my close friends, and I had to go to those guys years later and tell them the truth.

[Jack Hitt]

Throughout it all, playing blackjack never stopped being a little strange for the Christians. Trying to make money, surrounded by almost every temptation. Free booze, plane tickets, beautiful prostitutes, Easy money. But they had to stay focused on their job, counting cards. For some, it was lonesome, like Jesus in the wilderness. Here's Mike in the desert of Las Vegas.

[Mike (Christian Blackjack Team Member)]

It's funny. I talked to one of the guys on the team about what I did, and he had the exact same experience Go up to my suite, which was usually, you know, 1100, 1200 square feet, gigantic, big TVs everywhere, bars. I had one that had a stripper pole in the bathroom. But I would be by myself or with other card counters. I traveled with one or two other of the players and I would go up into my casino room and I would order some real simple meal like a club sandwich. And then I would just sit in the chair, no music, no television, and just look out the window over the strip and feel lonely because you felt isolated. You know, you can't be open with the casino who you are. And when you're open with your Christian friends, they're either way too excited about it or they think you're doing the most evil thing in the world.

[Jack Hitt]

In the end. The church team split up in 2011, and not because any of them succumbed to gambling or any other temptation. They believed in God and his glorious gift of math. But apparently God gave none of them the patience of job needed to endure the mind numbing work of card counting. So they all went their separate ways. Even though many worked only halftime 20 hour weeks and earned a full time wage, around $40,000 a year, it wasn't worth it. Mike now sells cell phones to pay for his studies at a pastor's college and he intends to start a church when he gets out. Shirley returned to being a stay at home mom. Even Ben and Colin bailed to take new jobs. Colin starts websites now and Ben says he makes more money from doing Internet marketing than he did from playing blackjack. God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes he enlightens you, like Paul on the road to Damascus. A blinding epiphany convincing you to quit your old ways. Other times, God gets you to virtue by boring you to death.

[Sarah Koenig]

Jack Hitt. He's a regular contributor to our show and a writer for the New York Times Magazine. In the years since we first broadcast today's program, Mike's dream of starting a church came true. He has a congregation in Batavia, Ohio. Colin went on to write one of the most popular books out there on blackjack. It's called the 21st century card counter. The documentary about card counting Christians is at holyrollersthemovie.com Coming up, when you can't bring down the house, just sue it. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio. When our program continues,

[Producer or Narrator]

support for this

[Sarah Koenig]

American Life and the following message come from Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you are probably multitasking. Are you scrolling home listings on Redfin? Saving homes that you don't really expect to get. Redfin wants you to know that they are not just built for endless scrolling, they really are built to help you find and own home. Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents, so when you find the one, you got a shot at getting it. Get [e-mail] own the dream support for

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[Sarah Koenig]

This IS American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show Blackjack Ace 8 Negative 4105

[Robin Simeon]

Negative 4 Queen 9 Negative 5 On

[Sarah Koenig]

the bus to Atlantic City, this American Life producer Robin Semion and I practiced counting cards on these card counting apps that we downloaded to our phones. There are dozens of these. If you heard the beginning of today's program, you heard that she and I took a lesson in card counting. Now we headed to a casino to try it out. Robin had mastered card counting much better than I had. I was much better at knowing proper blackjack strategy. You know how to play the cards, when to hit all that, in other words, as I told Robin when we got off the bus, so between the two of us, we comprise one competent player. Our tutor, Andy Block said that one day a player practice before we went into a casino would not be enough, that it would take weeks. And he was right. Robin could count the cards, but it was so difficult, it required such focus that she had trouble speaking to anyone at all. People at the table, it was all guys would say things to Robin. They asked if we were on our honeymoon at one point and uncharacteristically, Robin said nothing. When we took a break. After an hour, we found this empty lounge and recapped. She had a Headache from all the non stop counting. It was so hard.

[Robin Simeon]

I can't say a sentence. I can't remember how to play basic blackjack. It's weird. Like, I'm looking at these two cards and I'm like, seven plus five, that's my hand. What's seven plus five? What does that mean? Like, I can't remember what the basic. Yeah, I just can't remember.

[Sarah Koenig]

And then as soon as that happens, everybody at the table starts telling you, oh, you have a 12. Here's what you're supposed to do. Like, I love how everybody's just jumping in.

[Robin Simeon]

Oh, yeah, they're all there. For me, it was a whole team of guys ready to tell me how to play. That's totally comfortable.

[Sarah Koenig]

Yeah, we made mistakes. Our biggest mistake, I think, was that the count at the table we were at was mostly negative. It was mostly against us for most of the time that we sat there. I realized later that Andy would have gotten up and found a different table. The real pros switch tables a lot, but we held our own. And at the end of two hours, we were in a great situation. The count was seven, and there were two decks left to deal. And if you're not totally following this, all you need to know is that was good. That was good for us. It meant lots of good cards were coming. So we boosted our bets, just like you're supposed to, from the minimum bet at the start casino, which was $10 a bet. I bet $50. Robin bet $30. Cards were dealt. I got a pair of tens, she got a pair of tens. These are, by the way, great hands you're trying to make 21. And we each had 20. The dealer had one card down, and the card that was showing was a five. One of the worst possible hands for the dealer. Robin and I talked about what happened next on the bus ride home. And then the dealer ended up dealing herself 21.

[Robin Simeon]

Yeah, she had. She flipped her whole card. It was also a 5. So then she had 10. And then she dealt herself another card, and it was an Ace 21. We should have split our tens. You would have gotten that ace.

[Sarah Koenig]

Okay, non blackjack, people splitting tens is something that nobody would ever do except a card counter. It's what gets the woman kicked out of the casino. In Jack Hit's story at Atlantic City, they don't kick you out, but if they spot you counting cards, they start shuffling the deck after every hand. Or they come over and tell you that you can only bet the minimum bet at the table, which is basically telling you go away. But once Robin brought up this idea that we should have split our tens, it was hard to let it go. I would have gotten the A's.

[Robin Simeon]

Yeah.

[Sarah Koenig]

It would have stopped her from getting the A's. We would have made all sorts of

[Robin Simeon]

extra money, and then they would have kicked us out for being so good.

[Sarah Koenig]

That's all I wanted, to get kicked out for being good.

[Robin Simeon]

Yeah.

[Sarah Koenig]

Instead, we walked out in shame.

[Robin Simeon]

Instead, we just sucked.

[Sarah Koenig]

We bet high when the count was good, just like you're supposed to, and dumb luck made us lose anyway, which is part of the game. The dealer got 21, which beat our 20. We made big bets and then lost one more hand after that and walked away down. Total losses. This is my money, by the way, and It's a lot. $348 in two hours, first time out.

[Shirley (Card Counter)]

I just.

[Robin Simeon]

I feel like we could have done better. I think we should come back next week.

[Sarah Koenig]

Yeah, me too. We've both been practicing. Tattoo Tara's today, gone tomorrow. Now we have this story of somebody who thought that she knew how to play blackjack. She played for years. She didn't count cards, but she says that she knew the basic strategy cold. We've changed her name to protect her privacy. Sarah Koenig tells what happened one day in 2006.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

A woman I'm going to call Angie Bachman went to the Caesars Indiana casino and began to lose. She played blackjack. That was always her game. But on this night, when she ran out of her own money, the casino offered her what are called counter checks, like a loan from the casino that you're supposed to pay back. She signed a paper for $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, six checks for a total of $125,000. This is not a happy gambling story. So you know what happens next? She can't pay back the money, any of it. So the casino takes her to court. Says Angie bachman owes us $125,000. And not only that, we're suing her for damages, tripling that amount, half a million dollars in all. This isn't unusual that casinos go after debtors like Bachmann in court. What is somewhat unusual is what happened next. Bachmann hired a lawyer named Terry Nofsinger, who argued that not only did she not owe the casino money, but they owed her money. I put to Knofsinger the question you might be having at this very moment. Wait, what? Why is she not liable? It seems like if you go to a casino that's like, you know what you're doing like, what's your best one sentence argument for why it is that you believe she shouldn't be held responsible?

[Terry Nofsinger (Lawyer)]

Because at the time of those losses, she has passed the point of no return to where she has no control over what she's doing, comma, and the casinos know it and take advantage of it. They knew she was a compulsive gambler. They knew she didn't have control. Now, here's the difficult thing. A lot of people wouldn't believe me. You know, I've even had friends of mine who it took a while to convince them that I was really telling the truth, that this was really what was happening.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

I heard about this case from New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg. It's in his new book called the Power of Habit, which is about how habits form in our brains and also about how companies tap into those habits to get us to spend money. In Bachmann's case, money she didn't have. Duhigg also calls her Angie Backman in his book. By the way, Bachmann's lawsuit made news, and some of the reaction was backlash. Nasty online comments lamented the ever increasing abrogation of personal responsibility. One person wrote, what's next? Suing supermarkets because you eat too much? And another, not unless Lamborghini pays my speeding tickets. And another, can I sue Budweiser for getting me drunk? I have to say, the case initially struck me as flimsy, too. And when Nofsinger first heard about gambling addiction, he didn't buy it either. Years earlier, he'd gotten a call from a guy named David Williams. Williams had lost everything, including his house playing slots on a local riverboat casino. He'd told Nofsinger he'd run red lights driving to the riverboat so he could be there the second the casino opened. That he'd sat at the same slot

[Terry Nofsinger (Lawyer)]

machine for 20 hours straight with regard to David Williams. When he came in, he told me the story and I was incredulous. So I went down to the office that Saturday I told you. And I read about policy of gambling. I read DSM 4 and I read some of the other scientific literature that was online. And there's. And I thought, this guy, I think he's telling the truth. And everything I learned from there on confirmed to me that David Williams was telling the truth. It seemed clear to me that the casino had to know that he was a compulsive gambler and that he was one of their favorites. And they would put him up at night in the fancy suites and Give him drinks and meals and all these things. So I felt like they were taking advantage of him, and I thought the evidence supported that, and we filed a lawsuit.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

The lawsuit didn't work. It was rejected in federal court. But afterwards, Nofsinger started to get phone calls from Arizona, Southern California, Seattle, Mississippi, Massachusetts, all gamblers with similar stories. After a while, he started keeping track. He's got a list now with about 40 names on it. He told every one of these callers the same. I believe you, but I can't help you. Until Bachmann. Since she was already being sued by the casino, he thought maybe his counter argument could get traction in the courts. This time, he hoped to make visible the very thing he believes the rest of us don't see or understand. The lengths to which casinos go to keep gamblers playing, including addicted gamblers. His argument boiled down to Caesars had a duty not to protect Mrs. Bachman from herself from her own gambling habits, but to protect Mrs. Bachman from itself from Caesars. When her gambling started, Bachmann was a housewife in Iowa, the mother of three girls. She started playing blackjack first, pretty small amounts, just once a week or so. Soon enough, she was hooked, doing all the typical things addicted gamblers do, chasing losses, borrowing money from her mother to pay her debts. Then at the very end of 2001, she filed for bankruptcy. She says she'd written $20,000 worth of checks to the Harrah's Casino and Council Bluffs, and the checks had bounced. Backman says Harrah's knew about the bankruptcy, that even the dealers there knew about the bankruptcy. She remembers having conversations with them about her bankruptcy. Nevertheless, the casino welcomed her back.

[Angie Bachmann]

What they told me at that point was, it's fine that you continue to come in. It's fine that you. That you play. We just, you know, that you can't write a check here. We won't allow you to write checks. But, you know, go ahead and continue to come back. Just bring cash. Just bring cash. So.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

So she did. Then in 2004, both her parents died, and Bachmann inherited close to a million dollars. She says the staff at Harrison Council Bluffs figured out she'd come into money after she stopped in there one day and. And a host took notice of the amounts she was playing. He invited her into the players lounge, chatted her up. What'd you win the lottery or something? What's going on in your life? Backman says she more or less told him what had happened and kept betting with larger amounts than in the past. After that she says vouchers and coupons and invitations started coming in the mail with big offers. She'd moved from Iowa to Tennessee by this point, so they offered her hotel rooms for as long as she wanted them. A week, two weeks. And gifts started coming, too. But Bachmann says her contact with Harrah's kicked into high gear after her biggest loss up to that point, which might sound counterintuitive. You or I might think, well, after a pummeling, that's the end of that customer. But in the casino industry, the more you lose, the lovelier a prospect you become. So after Bachmann lost a quarter of a million dollars in one night at the casino and Council Bluffs, the phone calls began.

[Angie Bachmann]

It probably went from a couple of times a week to five times a week from various casino hosts throughout the country. Really?

[Casino Host]

I have been assigned to be your casino host here in Kansas City. And I was just calling. I know that you haven't been in for a while.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Bachmann played me a few of these messages from her answering machine.

[Casino Host]

And that you had a birthday coming up. So I was calling to end the vice chair to come to Kansas City and celebrate your birthday. If you need anything here at Harrah, please give me a call. And we want to wish you a happy birthday on the 27th.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

These kinds of calls are standard. Apparently, Angie Bachmann always gambled at Harrah's casinos. The company is now called Caesars Entertainment, since it bought out Caesars, it's the largest gaming company in the world. And Bachmann happened to start gambling at the same time that Harrah's began to overhaul its marketing strategies. Harrah's knew how to track each gambler's habits through total rewards cards that each gambler, including Bachmann, would use throughout the casino. And that told the company exactly how much money each player spent on which games and at what frequency. The company would then use that information to tell them exactly what kinds of perks and rewards would keep certain gamblers coming back and at exactly what juncture to offer those perks and rewards. I couldn't find a Harrah's host to talk to me in detail about the job. But I did talk to one former casino host in Iowa. He worked at the Isle of Capri riverboat for nine years. He told me he was responsible for a list of about 800 to 1,000 players at any given time, and around half of those he knew personally. Every day, he was supposed to call at least 25 people on his list for each player. The Casino assigned a dollar figure, which was how much a player should theoretically make the casino during each visit. The host's job is to push up these numbers by getting players to visit the casino more often and once there, to stay longer. These numbers drive everything, this host said. The comps that players get and the host's quarterly bonuses. So as Bachmann played more and her bets got bigger, so did her comps. She talks about all the luxuries you've maybe seen in the movies. First class plane tickets or trips on chartered planes, Free meals. A five bedroom suite at the Palazzo in Vegas for her and her family and her friends, with a hot tub off every bedroom, limos, free champagne, clothing, special golf trips for her husband in Lake Tahoe. The casino gave her and her family front row tickets to an Eagles concert and also put them on the same hotel floor as the band. They gave her a room with a grand piano and a butler. Anything she asked for, she got.

[Angie Bachmann]

They never said no. They never said no to anything? No. In Lake Tahoe, they would tell me, go into the gift shop, anything I wanted, including handbags, jewelry, like real jewelry?

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Are we talking like, gems?

[Angie Bachmann]

Yes. Diamonds. Usually it would be something for my daughter. Diamond earrings for her or diamond necklace for her.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Baughman says at first, she was excited by the phone calls she got from hosts, these friendly people sending her off for free to all these places she'd never been. Later, she says she came to dread

[Angie Bachmann]

the calls because towards the end there were conversations when they would call that, well, you know, last month we gave you a trip, we offered you the suite, we gave you a golf game. You didn't really play that much.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

She says one time, when she was back home, despondent after a big loss, a casino host called her and persuaded her to return to the blackjack table, saying, you'll win it back. She didn't and in fact ended up losing hundreds of thousands more. Another call also stands out for her from a host in Illinois.

[Angie Bachmann]

And I said, you know, I really need to not be doing this as

[Casino Host]

much as I'm doing.

[Angie Bachmann]

I really need to slow down. I'm losing way too much money. And he said his exact words to me were, my life depends on you coming up here this weekend. And I took that as his job depended on it, on getting me up there, and I would feel guilty that I owed them more play. I know it sounds insane. It is insane. I mean, I was dealing with the guilt that I wasn't playing enough to repay them what they were giving me. And then the Guilt of, I shouldn't be doing this.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

By early 2006, Bachmann says her nearly $1 million inheritance was gone. She'd spent a few hundred thousand buying a house, and the rest, in just two years, was poof, playing blackjack all over the country. Even so, in March of that year, she and her husband went out to Indiana. She thinks she probably played what she describes as conservatively, around $400 a hand. They were drinking, she says the drinks were strong. Her husband went up to bed, but she gambled all night and into the next morning. At some point, she signed the six counter checks for $125,000. This time, because she knew she didn't have the money. She was frantic.

[Angie Bachmann]

I was in a panic. And I had talked to the host and said, I, I, I don't have it. I have to go home and, and figure it out. All right, then, you know, well, they said, they said, they said, all right. Do you want to go to the Kentucky Derby?

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Wait, what?

[Angie Bachmann]

Yeah, yeah. If you get that money and then you pay us, then you can cut, then you can go to the Kentucky Derby.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

If this level of cheerful relentlessness sounds far fetched, well, here's a voicemail from Caesars Indiana, the same casino she owed $125,000 to. It's from Bachmann's answering machine.

[Dusty (Card Counter)]

Caesars Indiana. Just wanted to reach out, give you a quick call. We're a few weeks away from Derby and just want to confirm that you guys are still going to be joining us up here and just set up any type of golf arrangements or anything like that.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

The Kentucky Derby was in May. Bachmann had been wiped out. Remember, back in March, looking back at it all, she knows she did this to herself, that she's responsible. But Bachmann also thinks the casinos knew what she was doing better than she did, that they sat back and watched it happen. That's why she sued. Because of the terms of the settlement, Bachmann and Caesars eventually worked out the company wasn't at liberty to talk about the details of her case. In a statement, a spokesperson from Caesars Entertainment wrote, there are many specific points, points we would contest, but we are unable to do so at this point. The spokesperson pointed out that the conversations Bachmann says she had with casino employees, her dealings with staff, they're all unverified, which is true. But I did talk to several other people, former casino employees, and one veteran gambler, who all said that most of the interactions Bachmann says she had with the casino are plausible and pretty typical. The Caesars Statement went on to say that their marketing isn't predatory. They're just doing what any smart company does. We look for ways to attract customers and we make efforts to maintain them as loyal customers. When our customers change their established patterns, we try to understand why and encourage them to return. That's no different than a hotel chain, an airline, or a dry cleaner. Gary Loveman is the CEO and president of of Caesars Entertainment. Lubman was a Harvard professor who came to the company to design and implement the marketing strategies targeting customers through the total rewards cards I mentioned earlier, which changed the industry. Last fall, Loveman talked to our colleagues at Planet Money for a different story about marketing. But he also addressed this problem of addicted gamblers. He was categorical. He said the company does not want them as customers.

[Gary Loveman (Caesars CEO)]

We do not wish to be in the business of serving addicted gamblers. I have 75,000 people that work with me who go home to their families and kids like I do. None of them want to go home thinking that they've just helped an addicted gambler do further harm to themselves or their families. So our objective is to try to identify addicted gamblers as best we can and encourage them to seek treatment and help and to the degree they're willing to identify themselves as addicted or troubled gamblers, not serve them in any fashion, not market to them, not lend them money, and where the law allows, not permit them in the casino.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Well, maybe this is Christian Kunder. For about six years he worked at Caesar's palace in Las Vegas both before and after it was taken over by Harris. Did you ever serve gamblers that you knew personally, like you knew or suspected that they were addicted?

[Christian Kunder (Casino Pit Boss)]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

You did?

[Sarah Koenig]

Yes.

[Christian Kunder (Casino Pit Boss)]

There's a lot of people that come through to it. Obvious. Obvious. I've seen players gambling and I go home, come to work the next night, they're still there in their same clothes,

[Interviewer / Reporter]

in the same seat, and no one's saying anything to them.

[Christian Kunder (Casino Pit Boss)]

Absolutely not.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Kunder's title was assistant casino manager. What's more commonly known in casinos as a pit boss. At Caesars, he typically worked the high limit room. Depending on the night, he was in charge of anywhere from 30 to 100 dealers. I asked him about Loveman's quote. So when he says, we do everything we can to identify, Our objective is to try to identify addicted gamblers as best we can and encourage them to seek treatment and help. That's not true.

[Christian Kunder (Casino Pit Boss)]

Not one bit. Not the slightest part. In no way. The only time they'll approach a player is if they're Suicidal, Something like that.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Kuner says the way it was supposed to work was that a designated person called a casino ambassador would respond to any gambler showing a potential sign of addiction. So if a dealer or a floorperson heard someone say, how am I going to feed my kids? Or I just lost my house, they were supposed to call over the ambassador, who would then give the player some addiction literature. Kunder remembers a pamphlet called when the Fun Stops and a phone number to call. But in practice, Kunder says it didn't happen. The only exception, he said, was if someone was suicidal.

[Christian Kunder (Casino Pit Boss)]

Until they come to us, you can come in every day and there's really. I could go to my VP and say, listen, this guy's a degenerate. I know he's got a problem. It's not for us to get involved in. What if the guy doesn't have a problem and you're assuming and he just has a ton of money? You're not gonna go and insult somebody like that. Those are people who. A lot of those guys can have you fired that next morning. So I mean, nobody's gonna take that chance.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

And anyway, there's no guarantee that a word of concern would make any difference. The former host at the Isle of Capri in Iowa told me things worked differently at his casino. A handful of times he did try gently to help addicts to talk to them about it. Each time he said it was received very badly. Imagine, he said, going up to a drunk in a bar and suggesting he ought to get himself to an AA meeting. It's not going to go over well. Still, in Christian Kunder's mind, there's one case that shows how flagrantly the casino ignores the policy that Lubman claims to live by. In 2007, Kunder witnessed the most spectacular losing streak on record. The case of Omaha businessman Terrence Watanabe. Watanabe lost about $200 million in a year long binge. Until he collapsed into debt, he was the company's most valuable player. Kunder says a picture of Watanabe hung in the serving area of the bar to make sure every employee knew who he was. Kunder was one of Watanabe's handlers at Caesars.

[Christian Kunder (Casino Pit Boss)]

Nevada Gaming states that you can't, you have to be sober to gamble. You can't be intoxicated. It's the casino's responsibility to escort you out if you're impaired in any way. Well, I mean, we would. The guy would fall asleep in the middle of a blackjack can and we would just leave him sit there and wait for him to wake up. The fact that we let him play while he was completely intoxicated and obviously on drugs, I mean, that, that's just, I mean that was just. That's just plain taking advantage of people. And, you know, I'm one of the guilty parties, but, you know, my hands were tight as well. As far as, you know, you're not going to tell the most valuable. The biggest player in the company said, hey, listen, you know, why don't you call it a night?

[Interviewer / Reporter]

I ran all this by Caesar's Entertainment. The supposed difference between their policy on paper and what actually happens on the casino floor. The Watanabe case. In response, a spokesman wrote to me that diagnosing problem gambling is extremely difficult even for trained clinicians. And that, quote, we take responsible gaming seriously and train our customer facing employees to listen to things that customers say that raise concerns about their ability to gamble responsibly. The company also noted that Caesars was the first to have a national self exclusion program that allows customers to ban themselves from Caesars casinos. And it's true, Bachmann did not ban herself from any casino. If you're not sold by now in the idea that the casino is partly to blame for Bachmann's losses, that Caesars wronged Bachmann, in the lawsuit's words, by enticing her to gamble even though it knew that she did not have the capabilities to resist such enticements. Maybe two researchers at Southern Illinois University, Reza Habib and Mark Dixon, can at least persuade you that Bachmann made irrational choices about gambling not because she's an idiot, but because neurons and the reward seeking part of her brain were overriding her rational decision making. Reza Habib is a neuroscientist and so of course does not like to anthropomorphize the brain. But I don't mind saying it, her wiring had turned against her. Habib's colleague Mark Dixon is a behavioral psychologist. His lab at Southern Illinois is set up like a casino. He's got slots, a roulette table, a blackjack table, craps table.

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

It looks like a casino, really. Maybe not a five star casino, but maybe a two star casino on the interstate somewhere.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Habib and especially Dixon have spent a long time studying what's called the near miss effect in slot machines. A near miss is just what it sounds like. It's when, say, two cherries line up on the payoff line and, and then the third is about to come, but stops just short or just past the payoff line. It's like you almost won. Which, of course, in a game of chance like slots, is impossible. The results are random. Despite that, gamblers in Dixon's lab will inevitably say that the near misses are closer to a win than a loss, that they like them more than a loss. That reaction is what Dixon calls maladaptive,

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

because a loss is a loss is a loss.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

In 2006, Dixon teamed up with Habib to see if they could figure out what was happening to people neurologically when they saw near misses. They scanned the brains of 22 gamblers, 11 addicted, or what they called pathological gamblers, and 11 non pathological gamblers. As all these people watched near misses on slot machine displays, the results surprised them. Because while both addicted and non addicted gamblers said the near misses felt more like wins, their brains said something different. Here's Reza Habib.

[Reza Habib (Neuroscientist)]

What you see in the non pathological gamblers is that the regions that are activated for losses, those same regions tend to be also activated for near misses. And so the brain at least processes these near misses in the same way that it processes losses in the non pathological gamblers. In pathological gamblers, the same regions that are activated for winds are also activated for near misses. And so these include regions such as the amygdala, which is a region involved in emotional processing, as well as parts of the brain stem which are involved in reward and dopamine function, which is part of the reward system. So the pathological gamblers are seeing, or their brains at least, are responding to these near misses in the same way that they respond to wins.

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

This is Mark again. And one of the effects of this or the implications of these data are that a pathological gambler going into the casino who's actually losing, his brain is firing like he's winning. Disturbing, doesn't it?

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

Oh, it's way crazy. And so you are experiencing those same sensations as a win when you're not winning.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Habib and Dixon say that casinos know all about the near miss effect, and since the 80s, slot machines have been programmed to capitalize on it. Khabib and Dixon said that the near miss effect happens in all kinds of gambling, including blackjack, and that it's possible that even just an enticing phone call from a casino host could have fired up Angie Bachman's maladapted brain pathways, that her brain could have been reacting to the phone calls as it would to a near miss, especially if the message was, come win your money back. So let's say for a Second, that. Angie Bachmann's case went to trial, and the questions before the jury. If the casino knew she was addicted, is Caesars really the one responsible? And was Bachmann, as her lawyer contends, quote, incompetent in terms of this act of borrowing money?

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

You know, whether or not she's completely controlled by or has control over her own behavior, I think is open to debate. It depends, I guess, on your worldview of if you believe in free will and choice or if you believe that people's behavior is under environmental control.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Well, what do you believe?

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

Well, as a behavioral psychologist, I would tend to believe the latter.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Okay, so if you're on the jury. Forget me on the jury. Say you're on the jury. What are you going to. How would you decide?

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

Well, I think I would probably need to look at the case more. What happened earlier on that led her into this mess that she found satisfaction from gambling away.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Yeah, but as a juror, we don't care about any of that. It's just the crime on the table. You don't have the luxury of getting into her psychology that way. As a juror, you're just sitting there.

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

Okay, well. Right. Okay. Well, I. I guess if. If you're gonna push me on this,

[Interviewer / Reporter]

I am gonna push you.

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

I would say that the casino should not be held accountable.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Should not be held accountable.

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

Should not be held accountable. Because I think they only played a part. They only played a participating factor in a complex life. Not guilty.

[Reza Habib (Neuroscientist)]

Yeah, I would say not guilty as well. She's guilty.

[Mark Dixon (Behavioral Psychologist)]

Pay it back.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Pay it back. That she's guilty. That's so interesting. That's so interesting. It's not what I would have guessed.

[Reza Habib (Neuroscientist)]

You know, I mean, it's very difficult. Certainly, it's not moral. I mean, if we talk about it morally, was it right if they knew and they tempted her further? Probably not.

[Interviewer / Reporter]

Judge Terry Crone of the Indiana Court of Appeals agreed. Quote, from a moral standpoint, Caesar's predation and prosecution of a pathological gambler is repugnant, he wrote. But it was two against one, and Judge Crone was in the minority. The majority ruled that Bachmann couldn't bring her counterclaim because there is no common law duty obliging a casino operator to refrain from attempting to entice or contact gamblers that it knows or should know are compulsive gamblers. In other words, it's perfectly legal for Caesars to target an addicted gambler like Angie Bachmann. They might be wrong, but it's legal.

[Producer or Narrator]

Sarah Koenig, these days she's at Serial Productions, hosting her own podcast and also helping out with shows like their latest

[Sarah Koenig]

one, the Idiot, which you may remember

[Producer or Narrator]

we excerpted a few weeks ago and which I still recommend. Since we first broadcast today's show, Mark Dixon moved from SIU to the University of Oliver, Illinois, thanks to Charles Duhigg, who now writes for the New Yorker.

[Sarah Koenig]

His book the Power of Habit, which

[Producer or Narrator]

is where we heard about this story, is for sale online in many, many places, including his own website, Charles duhigg.com if you or somebody you know is struggling with a gambling problem, the National Council on Problem Gambling has resources you can call or text 1-800-MY-RESET well, I

[Musician / Singer]

guess I really ought to be making up songs but all I want to do is play cards I know it's dumb it's sick and wrong but all I want to do is play cards I got the studio booked in Tennessee and my record producer's calling me Tape parole in just three weeks and all I want to do is play cards

[Producer or Narrator]

Our program was produced today by Lisa Pollack with Alex Bloomberg, Ben Calhoun, Sarah Koenig, Jonathan Manhivar, Brian Reed, Robin Simeon, Alyssa Shipp and Nancy Updike. Senior editor for the show was Julie Snyder. Seth Lind was our production manager. Manager Emily Condon was our office manager. Production up from Matt Kilty. Help on today's rerun from Adrienne Lilly, Molly Marcelo, Ryan Rummery and Stone Nelson. Music help from Damien GRA and Rob Geddes. Special thanks today to Alexandra Berson of the Wall Street Journal, to Katherine Gorman, WYPR to Michelle Harris and to Benjamin Anastas. Our website, this americanlife.org where you can listen to any of our 850 plus episodes.

[Sarah Koenig]

For what price?

[Producer or Narrator]

Absolutely free. Incredible, right? This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by prx, the public radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co founder, Mr. Tory Malatea. You know, he's been driving a new Lexus. He's wearing these beautiful Italian suits ever since he started telling donors to the public radio station.

[Angie Bachmann]

You know that you can't write a check here. We won't allow you to write checks. Just bring cash. Just bring cash.

[Producer or Narrator]

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week, more stories of this American life.

[Musician / Singer]

21:31 7:27. Well, if I don't play for money, hun, will I still get to heaven? Three car brag. Three car Money rising. Deuce to seven.

[Podcast Promo Announcer]

Next week on the podcast of this American Life. The entire time we've been at war with Iran, the whole country has been under an Internet blackout. We hear from 12 people who managed to get messages out. A guy running a pizza shop, a bodybuilder making self help videos in the park, a woman whose boyfriend loves the Iranian regime and she does not. Living through war and a blackout. Next week on the podcast or on your local public radio station,

[Angie Bachmann]

Sam.