HBO series on Gina Fiore

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HBO is developing a movie based on the life of advantage player Gina Fiore who beat casinos for millions at blackjack


https://www.casino.org/news/hbo-developing-casino-drama-advantage-player-starring-riley-keough/


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Thread split from Misc Discussion, since I have a hunch that this topic will generate a fair few posts.

This coincides with her book release on October 27th: https://www.amazon.com/Advantage-Player-Blackjack-Backrooms-Beginnings-ebook/dp/B0GK5LWSQ5

Quote: Dieter

Thread split from Misc Discussion, since I have a hunch that this topic will generate a fair few posts.
link to original post

What makes her AP skills stand out such that hbo took notice?

Quote: 100xOdds

Quote: Dieter

Thread split from Misc Discussion, since I have a hunch that this topic will generate a fair few posts.
link to original post

What makes her AP skills stand out such that hbo took notice?
link to original post

Based on the numerous interviews I've heard, it promises to be an engaging book. I understand the series will be based on the book.

I also understand that she will be consulting on the show, to get the details right - the stupid stuff that dramatic reenactments often get wrong about AP, like "do the cards on the table make sense for the story?"

Even if you omit the AP antics, the court cases alone should be fascinating.

As for her skills, I can only guess. The one and only time I believe I encountered her, the play was interrupted and I was chased away before I could glimpse what was up.

I volunteer to be an actor in these HBO movies.

Quote: Dieter

What makes her AP skills stand out such that hbo took notice?

I signed up to her paid substack, and gave it a pass the next month.

Her mathematical skills are, to put it mildly, limited. She can memorize charts other people created, that's it. I doubt she really understands anything about the games she plays beyond that and she doesn't have to. Her explanation of technique is often way off-base, for example she states height doesn't matter for hole-card play. This is kinda bs, taller hole-carders exist but you are at a huge disadvantage if you are over 6ft relative to a borderline dwarf like James Grosjean, you probably won't get even half as many opportunities. I suspect she says stuff like this because she doesn't want people to stop giving her substack money, and she's very greedy ($600+ to be a "founder" member). If you tell people how niche and demographically specific advantage play is you shrink your market smaller than your typical midget LVHCM member.

That said, her understanding of casino comportment is pretty good as is her use of psychological manipulation.

Like a lot of crossroaders you can learn more from the methods she uses to sell to you than what she's actually selling.

I suspect any drama will be very loosely based on the actuality of her life, she's not really that interesting beyond the basic premise of women card player which would get old in a heartbeat. If you've seen the mentalist you'll know what I mean, they ran out of mentalism tricks to do pretty fast and resorted to formulaic detective stuff and romantic sub-plots real quick.
Stuff like "I had to sit in this old guy's piss to play a great game" is an interesting anecdote to gamblers, to normal humans it makes no sense and just sounds like moral degeneracy.

Quote: Dieter

Even if you omit the AP antics, the court cases alone should be fascinating.

As for her skills, I can only guess. The one and only time I believe I encountered her, the play was interrupted and I was chased away before I could glimpse what was up.
link to original post

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_v._Fiore

Interesting.. Why didn't she sue in Georgia?
Nevada had nothing to do with this, besides her living there.

Quote: GrahamThorp

Her mathematical skills are, to put it mildly, limited. She can memorize charts other people created, that's it. I doubt she really understands anything about the games she plays beyond that and she doesn't have to.
link to original post

I disagree with exactly none of that.

That said, an advantage play consists of three components. If any are missing, you don't have a play. Math is one, bankroll is another, and execution is the third.

Then again, I liked Molly's Game well enough, and there really wasn't a new play in there.

Quote: Dieter

Quote: GrahamThorp

Her mathematical skills are, to put it mildly, limited. She can memorize charts other people created, that's it. I doubt she really understands anything about the games she plays beyond that and she doesn't have to.
link to original post

I disagree with exactly none of that.

That said, an advantage play consists of three components. If any are missing, you don't have a play. Math is one, bankroll is another, and execution is the third.

Then again, I liked Molly's Game well enough, and there really wasn't a new play in there.
link to original post

What I meant by limited mathematical skills is that she demonstrated zero interest in the mathematics of games.

She learnt or was told that if she followed the strategy in a book by someone who seemed respectable it would probably work. That's what most people do, it is not really a criticism of her as such. An AP can get by doing that. It doesn't contradict what you have written above since the math was done...just by someone else.

It is somewhat problematic if you are selling an ap substack since you can't really innovate anything and all your strategy advice comes from secondary sources. Her advice on getting reads was better and may be worth it to some, but she kinda ruined it for me by implying you could have simultaneous careers in pro basketball and hole-carding, that's just dumb.

I'd be curious to find out which casinos hire security guards so unfathomably stupid as to backroom a woman. Especially one who is an AP, who are morally flexible when it comes to money, and are usually not doing or holding anything illegal that can be used as a negotiating chip. ("We'll drop the cheating charges if you drop the skin charges.") All she has to do is make a claim and those guys are in for a miserable experience, and depending on the jurisdiction they may be treated as guilty until proven innocent. Their employer will throw them under the bus too, on advice of counsel.

Quote: GrahamThorp

What I meant by limited mathematical skills is that she demonstrated zero interest in the mathematics of games.
link to original post

(snip!)

The person getting the money down doesn't need to be the person figuring out the play. I know plenty of people who see something intriguing and call their math guy to crunch numbers.

Quote: GrahamThorp

Quote: Dieter

What makes her AP skills stand out such that hbo took notice?

I signed up to her paid substack, and gave it a pass the next month.

Her mathematical skills are, to put it mildly, limited. She can memorize charts other people created, that's it. I doubt she really understands anything about the games she plays beyond that and she doesn't have to. Her explanation of technique is often way off-base, for example she states height doesn't matter for hole-card play. This is kinda bs, taller hole-carders exist but you are at a huge disadvantage if you are over 6ft relative to a borderline dwarf like James Grosjean, you probably won't get even half as many opportunities. I suspect she says stuff like this because she doesn't want people to stop giving her substack money, and she's very greedy ($600+ to be a "founder" member). If you tell people how niche and demographically specific advantage play is you shrink your market smaller than your typical midget LVHCM member.

That said, her understanding of casino comportment is pretty good as is her use of psychological manipulation.

Like a lot of crossroaders you can learn more from the methods she uses to sell to you than what she's actually selling.

I suspect any drama will be very loosely based on the actuality of her life, she's not really that interesting beyond the basic premise of women card player which would get old in a heartbeat. If you've seen the mentalist you'll know what I mean, they ran out of mentalism tricks to do pretty fast and resorted to formulaic detective stuff and romantic sub-plots real quick.
Stuff like "I had to sit in this old guy's piss to play a great game" is an interesting anecdote to gamblers, to normal humans it makes no sense and just sounds like moral degeneracy.
link to original post

Grahm while it’s true being short is an advantage, I know more than a handful who are 6ft or taller and one who is around 6’5” who was a very successful hole carder.

Quote: Hunterhill

Grahm while it’s true being short is an advantage, I know more than a handful who are 6ft or taller and one who is around 6’5” who was a very successful hole carder.
link to original post

I'm under 6' tall and have NEVER seen a hole card opportunity in uth in the years i've been playing. (i dont play bj)

Quote: 100xOdds

Quote: Hunterhill

Grahm while it’s true being short is an advantage, I know more than a handful who are 6ft or taller and one who is around 6’5” who was a very successful hole carder.
link to original post

I'm under 6' tall and have NEVER seen a hole card opportunity in uth in the years i've been playing. (i dont play bj)
link to original post

No offense but you don’t know what you’re looking for. I see opportunities frequently in Uth in multiple casinos. I am over 6ft

Quote: Hunterhill

Grahm while it’s true being short is an advantage, I know more than a handful who are 6ft or taller and one who is around 6’5” who was a very successful hole carder.
link to original post

Yeah I agree and I covered that in the post you quoted "This is kinda bs, taller hole-carders exist but you are at a huge disadvantage if you are over 6ft".

But the implication of what Fiore is saying is that it makes no difference, which just isn't true.

Essentially there is a mathematical formula between the depth of your eyeline and the number of visible reads you get. For someone at or below the level of the table itself depending on how you define these things it could literally be over 60%. You don't even need to hole-card, you can read the undercard on the stacks during the shuffle and spread to multiple hands during the crossover segment if its an ace.

There's a long history of people using often legally dubious methods to lower their eyeline, rolling up in a wheelchair, the drunk slouching, Taft's "belly-telly" etc. The more dubious schemes could potentially get you jail time: that's how much people were willing to risk just to be shorter.

Tall players certainly have a role in an ap team using physical methods to gain information. For some methods of reading the deck height actually helps. But to imply that there isn't a premium to being shorter is disingenuous.

As far as I know, hole-carding does not exist in North America, both in UTH and Blackjack.

Quote: aceside

As far as I know, hole-carding does not exist in North America, both in UTH and Blackjack.
link to original post

You are correct. It’s like Bigfoot.

Quote: Hunterhill

Quote: aceside

As far as I know, hole-carding does not exist in North America, both in UTH and Blackjack.
link to original post

You are correct. It’s like Bigfoot.
link to original post

I’ve played many dozens of casinos. Man.

Quote: aceside

Quote: Hunterhill

Quote: aceside

As far as I know, hole-carding does not exist in North America, both in UTH and Blackjack.
link to original post

You are correct. It’s like Bigfoot.
link to original post

I’ve played many dozens of casinos. Man.
link to original post

And yet you claim it doesn’t exist

Quote: Hunterhill

Quote: aceside

Quote: Hunterhill

Quote: aceside

As far as I know, hole-carding does not exist in North America, both in UTH and Blackjack.
link to original post

You are correct. It’s like Bigfoot.
link to original post

I’ve played many dozens of casinos. Man.
link to original post

And yet you claim it doesn’t exist
link to original post

I'm quite convinced it doesn't exist.
There was a woman I met who simply had amazing feminine intuition about cards, however. If she took insurance, I'd take insurance. If she tucked a 15, I'd tuck my stiff.
She couldn't possibly have seen a down card; her wheelchair barely let her see over the rail.

Quote: Hunterhill

Quote: aceside

Quote: Hunterhill

Quote: aceside

As far as I know, hole-carding does not exist in North America, both in UTH and Blackjack.
link to original post

You are correct. It’s like Bigfoot.
link to original post

I’ve played many dozens of casinos. Man.
link to original post

And yet you claim it doesn’t exist
link to original post

I played with a self-proclaimed hole carder one afternoon, and he'd signal me when he saw it. I got the signal about six times over two hours, and he was spot on each time.
Knowing he was on to something, I studied the dealer as I'd never studied one and didn't see anything.

Quote: billryan

Quote: Hunterhill

Quote: aceside

Quote: Hunterhill

Quote: aceside

As far as I know, hole-carding does not exist in North America, both in UTH and Blackjack.
link to original post

You are correct. It’s like Bigfoot.
link to original post

I’ve played many dozens of casinos. Man.
link to original post

And yet you claim it doesn’t exist
link to original post

I played with a self-proclaimed hole carder one afternoon, and he'd signal me when he saw it. I got the signal about six times over two hours, and he was spot on each time.
Knowing he was on to something, I studied the dealer as I'd never studied one and didn't see anything.
link to original post

If you’re only getting it 6 times in two hours then the game isn’t good enough.

The guy told me the LVHCM had chased him off better games. It's also possible he saw many more, but only told me occasionally. I had a falling out with him after I saw him cheating. Perhaps it's a coincidence, but I saw him wandering Sams Town a few months later with a cast on his left hand.
I personally made more money exploiting promos than playing BJ and found my time was better spent hunting estate sales and second-hand shops.
I respect those with the ability and inclination to beat the house.

I can't seem to find any other information that this series is even in development, much less production.

Anyone got updates?

Quote: Dieter

I can't seem to find any other information that this series is even in development, much less production.

Anyone got updates?
link to original post

Why would you think there would be any? The script has to get written, be run by some executives, greenlit, pilot made, approved and it can get shot down at any stage with the whole process usually taking years.

Chances are you will never hear of it again even like most similar projects.

Quote: GrahamThorp

Quote: Dieter

I can't seem to find any other information that this series is even in development, much less production.

Anyone got updates?
link to original post

Why would you think there would be any? The script has to get written, be run by some executives, greenlit, pilot made, approved and it can get shot down at any stage with the whole process usually taking years.

Chances are you will never hear of it again even like most similar projects.
link to original post

I often see upcoming projects listed on IMDB.

Quote: Dieter

Quote: GrahamThorp

Her mathematical skills are, to put it mildly, limited. She can memorize charts other people created, that's it. I doubt she really understands anything about the games she plays beyond that and she doesn't have to.
link to original post

I disagree with exactly none of that.

That said, an advantage play consists of three components. If any are missing, you don't have a play. Math is one, bankroll is another, and execution is the third.

Then again, I liked Molly's Game well enough, and there really wasn't a new play in there.
link to original post

There's a follow-up written by one of the regular players who outs Molly's Game for the truth. Not that there wasn't a lot of truth in Molly's Game but apparently there was a hustle going on she didn't discuss.

Primarily, if it made no sense Toby Maguire could keep insulting her and she felt compelled to keep him in the game, it's because he and his confederate were side dealing and card cheating the others.

As the book goes on Molly keeps mentioning they need new fish and obviously that's because the longer you expose yourself to the game the easier it becomes to catch the con. They wanted to fleece and move on. Bad Brad didn't seem to mind losing (,as of course it wasn't his money.

The book is called Billion Dollar Hollywood Hustle.

Halle Berry was supposed to play Doris Payne. The biopic project got as far as a title in 2009, Who Is Doris Payne? but never got much off the ground.

A major hurdle was that while Payne was known for high-end jewelry thefts, she kept getting busted for petty shoplifting right around the time the movie was in development. These low-stakes arrests watered down the impact of her legendary persona. Plus, her active criminal streak meant the writers never actually had a final ending for the script.

What Payne did get out of it though was that the filmmakers hired high end attorneys to represent her in her final criminal cases, and did keep her out of any prolonged custodial sentences.

However the Gina Fiore story is based on her Advantage Player: A Memoir of Blackjack, Backrooms, and Beginnings, and so it has a definite beginning and end. There are other reasons her project will probably go to fruition too versus the Payne no go.

https://youtu.be/5uHGwO5p6l8

BJA interview with Gina Fiore

There were a few oblique hints that the HBO series is not near production yet.

Quote: Dieter

https://youtu.be/5uHGwO5p6l8

BJA interview with Gina Fiore

There were a few oblique hints that the HBO series is not near production yet.
link to original post

I'm sticking to precedent here: this will not happen.

I'm saying that in the hope the god of irony will subsequently make it happen to prove me wrong. I suspect if it does happen it will provide us with a lot of morbid entertainment by being awful.

Quote: GrahamThorp

Quote: Dieter

https://youtu.be/5uHGwO5p6l8

BJA interview with Gina Fiore

There were a few oblique hints that the HBO series is not near production yet.
link to original post

I'm sticking to precedent here: this will not happen.

I'm saying that in the hope the god of irony will subsequently make it happen to prove me wrong. I suspect if it does happen it will provide us with a lot of morbid entertainment by being awful.
link to original post

I broke down and ordered a copy of the book last night. (I'm not fancy enough to get an early review copy.)
If it's 1/3rd as informative as claimed, I won't feel the money was squandered.

Quote: GrahamThorp

Quote: Dieter

https://youtu.be/5uHGwO5p6l8

BJA interview with Gina Fiore

There were a few oblique hints that the HBO series is not near production yet.
link to original post

I'm sticking to precedent here: this will not happen.

I'm saying that in the hope the god of irony will subsequently make it happen to prove me wrong.
link to original post

What irony?

Quote: Dieter

https://youtu.be/5uHGwO5p6l8

BJA interview with Gina Fiore

There were a few oblique hints that the HBO series is not near production yet.
link to original post

In this YouTube video, this author keeps saying “I’m really really good at reading people.” One skill of hers is hole-carding blackjack; however, I’ve never seen any such opportunity in North America.

I’m really good at reading people too. I read Dieter is a blackjack Hall of Famer. If not yet, I would vote Dieter to be the newest one.

Quote: aceside

I’m really good at reading people too. I read Dieter is a blackjack Hall of Famer. If not yet, I would vote Dieter to be the newest one.
link to original post

Not to brag, but I haven't lost a single hand of blackjack in a casino in five years. I think that ties me with Nathan.

Quote: Dieter

Quote: aceside

I’m really good at reading people too. I read Dieter is a blackjack Hall of Famer. If not yet, I would vote Dieter to be the newest one.
link to original post

Not to brag, but I haven't lost a single hand of blackjack in a casino in five years. I think that ties me with Nathan.
link to original post

Then let me add that I've never lost a hand in 3 card poker or lost a bet in roulette, lifetime.
Dieter knows my system so Pm him for it so you can be Elon rich like me
:)

Quote: Dieter

Quote: GrahamThorp

Quote: Dieter

https://youtu.be/5uHGwO5p6l8

BJA interview with Gina Fiore

There were a few oblique hints that the HBO series is not near production yet.
link to original post

I'm sticking to precedent here: this will not happen.

I'm saying that in the hope the god of irony will subsequently make it happen to prove me wrong. I suspect if it does happen it will provide us with a lot of morbid entertainment by being awful.
link to original post

I broke down and ordered a copy of the book last night. (I'm not fancy enough to get an early review copy.)
If it's 1/3rd as informative as claimed, I won't feel the money was squandered.
link to original post

TLDR

60-80% of it is personal info, early life, personal relationships etc. Her Father is a low-level hood, her mom a compulsive gambler, they all love the mafia because hey they are Italians, who would want to buck that stereotype.

She starts out as a dealer making 100k a year and decides her life goal is making 50k a year from ap.

She starts out counting, moves onto hole-carding. Meets El Burro who teaches her hole-card and later has a disturbing encounter with her, then dies from drug addiction.

She then meets "Stalker", who she describes as a mildly psychotic bodybuilder who doxxes people and threatens their family members online. She goes into some detail about that and then goes straight from that into saying he is lovely and a great mentor to her. (You get the impression he's seeking out her Father in every older man she meets and has zero self-awareness). In actuality reading between the lines their relationship is brief, and purely functional. They later have a minor disagreement over distribution of payment from HC play and he never speaks to her again. This is one of many descriptions in the book where her views of some individual veer wildly from one extreme to the other and do not to any extent match what she describes actually happening.

She meets James Grosjean who she describes as an ultra-brilliant genius supercool dude who is cool and amazing, then later and rather incomprehensibly decides that he is destroying her life by sending his vast hordes of winged monkey ap's to destroy all the games in america so she can never play again! (I'm not even exaggerating there much, read it).
That makes no sense at all based on her description of what actually happens. Grosjean comes across as slightly less arrogant than he does online (commendably he bails her out when she falls on hard times, probably for a cut, but whatever...). But he also behaves seemingly idiotically, for example by allowing his girlfriend to take team bank profits from his sorts operation without actually playing-causing widespread resentment and ultimately leading the team to break up. He also keeps deliberately ruining six-seven figure op weak dealers because he's paranoid about casinos discovering the play and then retroactively banning him, even though, as Gina (correctly) says, weak dealers often tighten up by themselves.(This is after his famous court case which distributed his picture to vast numbers of casinos) Finally he brings Gina into his team with an apparent promise to teach her sorts but then no one does that. He just seems incompetent as a team leader with no ability to manage personnel, delegate roles, employ cover intelligently rather than reflexively, or think ahead.

When the Grosjean team breaks up disastrously most sceptical readers will be questioning why these people think they are the masters of the universe. Gina starts hcing with other players for hundreds of dollars, and never seems to go above $1000 a hand. Many of the people she hangs with seem to be absurdly underbetting their apparently huge advantages from hole-card/next-card play. The big wins sound impressive but hundreds of thousands of dollars split between multiple players not inclusive of scouting time/expenses in a decades long career are not really that impressive. There are many publicly known ap's making millions of dollars a year, and many more less publicly known. Everyone featured in this book is strictly second-tier or more probably third-tier as a lifetime winner in that context.

This does seem to change when Fiore goes it alone and hits AC playing TH Bonus Poker forms a team and they make 2.5 million playing with a strategy she pays a guy $1500 for. Even here she never describes how the chop works, the exact time frame, the expenses, taxation so you are left guessing probably deliberately. And of course this is all self-reported so she could just be making it all up. But the stated numbers sound a lot better and THBP was a truly great opportunity (I made some money at the time also).

She keeps dating ap boyfriends and breaking up with them. She loses all her AP money on an online poker investment and real estate. Then she meets a guy who is an asshole and decides to have a baby with him, which goes badly. She ends up almost broke and has to get her ap friends to bankroll her, starts hustling sports bonuses online and slots offline. The end.

She complains a lot about the sexist world of ap and vegas, which it kinda is, but since she is directly profiting from that and doesn't seem to be that much hurt by it, it feels like she is protesting too much.

She is diagnosed as bi-polar. She thinks this helped her with ap-living a double-life is a natural thing for an ap.

This isn't the worst book but it isn't the tell-all on ap you might think. Everything she writes about it is in the public domain though some of the plays such as sorting, pai gow tiles, roulette tilt are not THAT well known. To her credit she openly admits she doesn't understand the math and has worked around that limitation very well considering.

To repeat what I said at the start of this thread: doing anything in a real casino at this level was a waste of time during the initial period of Fiore's career. The sports bonuses (which Gina discovers in 2018 apparently) back in 2001 were 1x playthru up to 1000 with half or even no-juice quite common. BJ bonuses for 1 x 5 playthru for up to $1000 were everywhere. Walking around casinos for the one dealer in 300 that exposes their cards (Gina's number) just wasn't an intelligent use of time compared to that. People got VERY rich bonus hustling during the period Fiore describes. I just mention this to puncture the phenomenal self-importance many in the HC community have sometimes exhibited, and this book will probably add too.

There's a LOT of detail left out. For example she describes Grosjean as an incredible reader. This gives impression he some super-powers mere mortals don't possess. She doesn't mention that he's 4'10-of course he can see everything, for someone that size their main problem isn't getting a glimpse of the hole-card, it is being able to see over the top of the table. He's not doing anything amazing, he's just really short.


As for Gina I'm sure she'll get a lot of $600 substack payments out of this and piss it all away on some useless venture/idiot boyfriend. She must be one of a very few people in the world who can't be trusted to do anything with money other than gamble with it. She's not without charm but her repeatedly stupid self-destructive and somewhat self-pitying mindset makes her difficult to like that much.

How does she start out as a new dealer and making $100k?
Why would anyone quit a $100k/yr job dealing to make $50k/yr as an AP?

I just recently heard of this lady Fiore and just found GrahamThorp had had every knowledge of her. Great writing!

One thing I’d like you to explain a little more. In the YouTube video, the author talks about blackjack edge-sorting a few times. What is edge-sorting blackjack? I only heard of it in use in Baccarat.

Quote: 100xOdds

How does she start out as a new dealer and making $100k?
Why would anyone quit a $100k/yr job dealing to make $50k/yr as an AP?
link to original post

Simple answer: she hates dealing and wants to be an ap, so is prepared to take a pay cut.

Complex answer: her mother is a dealer and a compulsive gambler. You might view the entire book as an examination of the Elektra complex, where the girl competes with the mother for the attention of her father. It doesn't seem accidental she becomes the literal opposite of a dealer/her mother as a full-time hole-carder, and pathetically seeks the acquaintance of hustler types like her father.

Quote: aceside

I just recently heard of this lady Fiore and just found GrahamThorp had had every knowledge of her. Great writing!

One thing I’d like you to explain a little more. In the YouTube video, the author talks about blackjack edge-sorting a few times. What is edge-sorting blackjack? I only heard of it in use in Baccarat.
link to original post

Card sorting can be practiced in literally any card game. It only works with badly designed cards. If they are not perfectly symmetrical, say diamonds are cut off early at one border, you might try and order them so high cards have the cut off diamonds at the top while low cards have diamonds at the bottom. You can then use this info to predict the appearance of a card, since you can see the back of a card before it is dealt.

Fiore practiced edge sorting at blackjack and multiple other games. For blackjack I imagine she sorted the cards so her team knew when aces and tens were coming and had their big player raise their bet.

The theory of it is quite old and predates blackjack: it comes from ancient magic textbooks.

I would say that if a game is beatable, usually the casino will quickly find out and remove that game. Many people say that blackjack is beatable, I doubt. This game of blackjack has been there fore many decades, so it’s a hard game to beat.

Quote: aceside

I would say that if a game is beatable, usually the casino will quickly find out and remove that game. Many people say that blackjack is beatable, I doubt. This game of blackjack has been there fore many decades, so it’s a hard game to beat.
link to original post

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that any game has ever been removed for being "beatable". The casino can just take countermeasures to prevent hole carding, edge sorting, collusion, card-sharing, card counting, etc.

The only time I've heard about a game being removed for being beatable was the rumor that Double Draw Poker is being removed from Mohegan Sun because of collusion. It's still being played in Florida though.

edit: I'm sure side bets have been removed for being countable

Sounds like she should stick to knitting. I suppose if your goal is to make a movie, you can put anything you want in a movie, but AP in practice does not need that kind of drama. It is not a good environment for people with certain kinds of problems. Math for money, it what it's supposed to be, and if you are looking for anything else out of it you will not be happy with what you actually find.

Females often toxify a work environment but it's not their fault, it's ours, and it's because of the common male fantasy of a workmate who is also a playmate.

Quote: GrahamThorp

Quote: Dieter

Quote: GrahamThorp

Quote: Dieter

https://youtu.be/5uHGwO5p6l8

BJA interview with Gina Fiore

There were a few oblique hints that the HBO series is not near production yet.
link to original post

I'm sticking to precedent here: this will not happen.

I'm saying that in the hope the god of irony will subsequently make it happen to prove me wrong. I suspect if it does happen it will provide us with a lot of morbid entertainment by being awful.
link to original post

I broke down and ordered a copy of the book last night. (I'm not fancy enough to get an early review copy.)
If it's 1/3rd as informative as claimed, I won't feel the money was squandered.
link to original post

TLDR

60-80% of it is personal info, early life, personal relationships etc. Her Father is a low-level hood, her mom a compulsive gambler, they all love the mafia because hey they are Italians, who would want to buck that stereotype.

She starts out as a dealer making 100k a year and decides her life goal is making 50k a year from ap.

She starts out counting, moves onto hole-carding. Meets El Burro who teaches her hole-card and later has a disturbing encounter with her, then dies from drug addiction.

She then meets "Stalker", who she describes as a mildly psychotic bodybuilder who doxxes people and threatens their family members online. She goes into some detail about that and then goes straight from that into saying he is lovely and a great mentor to her. (You get the impression he's seeking out her Father in every older man she meets and has zero self-awareness). In actuality reading between the lines their relationship is brief, and purely functional. They later have a minor disagreement over distribution of payment from HC play and he never speaks to her again. This is one of many descriptions in the book where her views of some individual veer wildly from one extreme to the other and do not to any extent match what she describes actually happening.

She meets James Grosjean who she describes as an ultra-brilliant genius supercool dude who is cool and amazing, then later and rather incomprehensibly decides that he is destroying her life by sending his vast hordes of winged monkey ap's to destroy all the games in america so she can never play again! (I'm not even exaggerating there much, read it).
That makes no sense at all based on her description of what actually happens. Grosjean comes across as slightly less arrogant than he does online (commendably he bails her out when she falls on hard times, probably for a cut, but whatever...). But he also behaves seemingly idiotically, for example by allowing his girlfriend to take team bank profits from his sorts operation without actually playing-causing widespread resentment and ultimately leading the team to break up. He also keeps deliberately ruining six-seven figure op weak dealers because he's paranoid about casinos discovering the play and then retroactively banning him, even though, as Gina (correctly) says, weak dealers often tighten up by themselves.(This is after his famous court case which distributed his picture to vast numbers of casinos) Finally he brings Gina into his team with an apparent promise to teach her sorts but then no one does that. He just seems incompetent as a team leader with no ability to manage personnel, delegate roles, employ cover intelligently rather than reflexively, or think ahead.

When the Grosjean team breaks up disastrously most sceptical readers will be questioning why these people think they are the masters of the universe. Gina starts hcing with other players for hundreds of dollars, and never seems to go above $1000 a hand. Many of the people she hangs with seem to be absurdly underbetting their apparently huge advantages from hole-card/next-card play. The big wins sound impressive but hundreds of thousands of dollars split between multiple players not inclusive of scouting time/expenses in a decades long career are not really that impressive. There are many publicly known ap's making millions of dollars a year, and many more less publicly known. Everyone featured in this book is strictly second-tier or more probably third-tier as a lifetime winner in that context.

This does seem to change when Fiore goes it alone and hits AC playing TH Bonus Poker forms a team and they make 2.5 million playing with a strategy she pays a guy $1500 for. Even here she never describes how the chop works, the exact time frame, the expenses, taxation so you are left guessing probably deliberately. And of course this is all self-reported so she could just be making it all up. But the stated numbers sound a lot better and THBP was a truly great opportunity (I made some money at the time also).

She keeps dating ap boyfriends and breaking up with them. She loses all her AP money on an online poker investment and real estate. Then she meets a guy who is an asshole and decides to have a baby with him, which goes badly. She ends up almost broke and has to get her ap friends to bankroll her, starts hustling sports bonuses online and slots offline. The end.

She complains a lot about the sexist world of ap and vegas, which it kinda is, but since she is directly profiting from that and doesn't seem to be that much hurt by it, it feels like she is protesting too much.

She is diagnosed as bi-polar. She thinks this helped her with ap-living a double-life is a natural thing for an ap.

This isn't the worst book but it isn't the tell-all on ap you might think. Everything she writes about it is in the public domain though some of the plays such as sorting, pai gow tiles, roulette tilt are not THAT well known. To her credit she openly admits she doesn't understand the math and has worked around that limitation very well considering.

To repeat what I said at the start of this thread: doing anything in a real casino at this level was a waste of time during the initial period of Fiore's career. The sports bonuses (which Gina discovers in 2018 apparently) back in 2001 were 1x playthru up to 1000 with half or even no-juice quite common. BJ bonuses for 1 x 5 playthru for up to $1000 were everywhere. Walking around casinos for the one dealer in 300 that exposes their cards (Gina's number) just wasn't an intelligent use of time compared to that. People got VERY rich bonus hustling during the period Fiore describes. I just mention this to puncture the phenomenal self-importance many in the HC community have sometimes exhibited, and this book will probably add too.

There's a LOT of detail left out. For example she describes Grosjean as an incredible reader. This gives impression he some super-powers mere mortals don't possess. She doesn't mention that he's 4'10-of course he can see everything, for someone that size their main problem isn't getting a glimpse of the hole-card, it is being able to see over the top of the table. He's not doing anything amazing, he's just really short.


As for Gina I'm sure she'll get a lot of $600 substack payments out of this and piss it all away on some useless venture/idiot boyfriend. She must be one of a very few people in the world who can't be trusted to do anything with money other than gamble with it. She's not without charm but her repeatedly stupid self-destructive and somewhat self-pitying mindset makes her difficult to like that much.
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Graham,You obviously have never seen James Grosjean, while he’s no Wilt Chamberlain he’s no where near the size that you claim. It’s also not just about seeing the card it’s about knowing what to do when you only have partial information. Many games are not full information so you have to make decisions on the fly. Yes we all know that online was where all the big money was made but you have an obvious dislike of Grosjean. Maybe because he trashed your book .

I also noticed she said BJ21 many times. I’ve posted thousands of posts on that website but was never aware of her existence there.

Quote:

you have an obvious dislike of Grosjean....It’s also not just about seeing the card it’s about knowing what to do when you only have partial information.

I thought I was actually quite generous: I commended him for being part of Gina's rescue package. Also I dismissed her allegations that he was trying to destroy her career. As for me I'm not sure what you are thinking of but I think we can agree James thinks much less writes about me or most other lesser mortals, that's pretty clear from Gina's book.

Now getting back to the substance I've never any published literature on how to deal with partial information.

The only thing I've read which covers the issue:

Donald B. Rubin, “Inference and Missing Data”, Biometrika 63(3), 1976. The 1976 paper introduced the core idea of data “missing at random”. It isn't about ap specifically.

I did some preliminary work on The three categories, mapped to hole-carding:

Missing completely at random (MCAR): whether you get a read has nothing to do with anything relevant, the card included. A miss carries no information, so basic strategy is optimal on missed hands.

Missing at random (MAR): misses depend on things you can observe, but not on the card once those are known. Examples are which dealer is working, your seat, or the time of night. You can still ignore the miss itself, as long as you condition on those observable factors (for example, by using a separate read rate f for each dealer).

Missing not at random (MNAR): misses depend on the hidden card itself, such as courts being easier to read than spots. A miss is then informative, and you have to model P(miss | card) to play correctly.

I haven't seen any work by Grosjean or any one else on the issue and would appreciate a heads-up if you have one. One of my frustrations with the LVCHM types and prior front-loading literature was that no one seemed to understand that this is a major practical issue that frequently leads to bankroll ruin. I'd appreciate a correction on that point if you can provide one.I was always very unwilling to commit to any form of AP where I could overbet my bankroll.

Quote: aceside

I also noticed she said BJ21 many times. I’ve posted thousands of posts on that website but was never aware of her existence there.
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She was known as Miss Brown. Her posts are still archived. She only made a few dozen posts and most are general discussions of little interest. One post of note: she got collusion scammed at pokerstars and they gave her the money back, which kind of backs up her confession in the book that she sucks at poker.

Quote: GrahamThorp

TLDR

60-80% of it is personal info, early life, personal relationships etc. Her Father is a low-level hood, her mom a compulsive gambler, they all love the mafia because hey they are Italians, who would want to buck that stereotype.

She starts out as a dealer making 100k a year and decides her life goal is making 50k a year from ap.

She starts out counting, moves onto hole-carding. Meets El Burro who teaches her hole-card and later has a disturbing encounter with her, then dies from drug addiction.

She then meets "Stalker", who she describes as a mildly psychotic bodybuilder who doxxes people and threatens their family members online. She goes into some detail about that and then goes straight from that into saying he is lovely and a great mentor to her. (You get the impression he's seeking out her Father in every older man she meets and has zero self-awareness). In actuality reading between the lines their relationship is brief, and purely functional. They later have a minor disagreement over distribution of payment from HC play and he never speaks to her again. This is one of many descriptions in the book where her views of some individual veer wildly from one extreme to the other and do not to any extent match what she describes actually happening.

She meets James Grosjean who she describes as an ultra-brilliant genius supercool dude who is cool and amazing, then later and rather incomprehensibly decides that he is destroying her life by sending his vast hordes of winged monkey ap's to destroy all the games in america so she can never play again! (I'm not even exaggerating there much, read it).
That makes no sense at all based on her description of what actually happens. Grosjean comes across as slightly less arrogant than he does online (commendably he bails her out when she falls on hard times, probably for a cut, but whatever...). But he also behaves seemingly idiotically, for example by allowing his girlfriend to take team bank profits from his sorts operation without actually playing-causing widespread resentment and ultimately leading the team to break up. He also keeps deliberately ruining six-seven figure op weak dealers because he's paranoid about casinos discovering the play and then retroactively banning him, even though, as Gina (correctly) says, weak dealers often tighten up by themselves.(This is after his famous court case which distributed his picture to vast numbers of casinos) Finally he brings Gina into his team with an apparent promise to teach her sorts but then no one does that. He just seems incompetent as a team leader with no ability to manage personnel, delegate roles, employ cover intelligently rather than reflexively, or think ahead.

When the Grosjean team breaks up disastrously most sceptical readers will be questioning why these people think they are the masters of the universe. Gina starts hcing with other players for hundreds of dollars, and never seems to go above $1000 a hand. Many of the people she hangs with seem to be absurdly underbetting their apparently huge advantages from hole-card/next-card play. The big wins sound impressive but hundreds of thousands of dollars split between multiple players not inclusive of scouting time/expenses in a decades long career are not really that impressive. There are many publicly known ap's making millions of dollars a year, and many more less publicly known. Everyone featured in this book is strictly second-tier or more probably third-tier as a lifetime winner in that context.

This does seem to change when Fiore goes it alone and hits AC playing TH Bonus Poker forms a team and they make 2.5 million playing with a strategy she pays a guy $1500 for. Even here she never describes how the chop works, the exact time frame, the expenses, taxation so you are left guessing probably deliberately. And of course this is all self-reported so she could just be making it all up. But the stated numbers sound a lot better and THBP was a truly great opportunity (I made some money at the time also).

She keeps dating ap boyfriends and breaking up with them. She loses all her AP money on an online poker investment and real estate. Then she meets a guy who is an asshole and decides to have a baby with him, which goes badly. She ends up almost broke and has to get her ap friends to bankroll her, starts hustling sports bonuses online and slots offline. The end.

She complains a lot about the sexist world of ap and vegas, which it kinda is, but since she is directly profiting from that and doesn't seem to be that much hurt by it, it feels like she is protesting too much.

She is diagnosed as bi-polar. She thinks this helped her with ap-living a double-life is a natural thing for an ap.

This isn't the worst book but it isn't the tell-all on ap you might think. Everything she writes about it is in the public domain though some of the plays such as sorting, pai gow tiles, roulette tilt are not THAT well known. To her credit she openly admits she doesn't understand the math and has worked around that limitation very well considering.

To repeat what I said at the start of this thread: doing anything in a real casino at this level was a waste of time during the initial period of Fiore's career. The sports bonuses (which Gina discovers in 2018 apparently) back in 2001 were 1x playthru up to 1000 with half or even no-juice quite common. BJ bonuses for 1 x 5 playthru for up to $1000 were everywhere. Walking around casinos for the one dealer in 300 that exposes their cards (Gina's number) just wasn't an intelligent use of time compared to that. People got VERY rich bonus hustling during the period Fiore describes. I just mention this to puncture the phenomenal self-importance many in the HC community have sometimes exhibited, and this book will probably add too.

There's a LOT of detail left out. For example she describes Grosjean as an incredible reader. This gives impression he some super-powers mere mortals don't possess. She doesn't mention that he's 4'10-of course he can see everything, for someone that size their main problem isn't getting a glimpse of the hole-card, it is being able to see over the top of the table. He's not doing anything amazing, he's just really short.


As for Gina I'm sure she'll get a lot of $600 substack payments out of this and piss it all away on some useless venture/idiot boyfriend. She must be one of a very few people in the world who can't be trusted to do anything with money other than gamble with it. She's not without charm but her repeatedly stupid self-destructive and somewhat self-pitying mindset makes her difficult to like that much.
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I am shocked - SHOCKED - to learn that people sometimes exaggerate how cool they and their escapades are.

Quote: Dieter

I am shocked - SHOCKED - to learn that people sometimes exaggerate how cool they and their escapades are.
link to original post

Well sure, it's all exaggerated. Except for that one time at band camp...

But those kind of "improbable situations" do actually happen frequently enough that you could fill a monthly Penthouse Forum issue with things that were absolutely true, for someone, someplace that month, and it wouldn't read any differently.

One of the distinguishing things about trade lore is that the stories are a lot more amusing to people who are in the trade, and not so much to others. Like listening to truck drivers tell stories at a truckstop. They're laughing it up, they totally get it, and a non-driver hears it and understands what they are saying but it is barely amusing unless you understand all the implications of it.

AP is esoteric enough that the best stories we have would not be entertaining to anyone else.

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: Dieter

I am shocked - SHOCKED - to learn that people sometimes exaggerate how cool they and their escapades are.
link to original post

Well sure, it's all exaggerated. Except for that one time at band camp...

But those kind of "improbable situations" do actually happen frequently enough that you could fill a monthly Penthouse Forum issue with things that were absolutely true, for someone, someplace that month, and it wouldn't read any differently.

One of the distinguishing things about trade lore is that the stories are a lot more amusing to people who are in the trade, and not so much to others. Like listening to truck drivers tell stories at a truckstop. They're laughing it up, they totally get it, and a non-driver hears it and understands what they are saying but it is barely amusing unless you understand all the implications of it.

AP is esoteric enough that the best stories we have would not be entertaining to anyone else.
link to original post

I'll pause a moment to let one of the house men hand me my artistic license and selectively curated details from the back room.

(Irony? Oh, we use that to smooth out the wrinklies.)