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I have two distinct lives. One in the trenches of low-budget film and television, the other in professional gambling. Because of the feast-or-famine nature of show business I need a reliable income... gambling. So here you will read about both worlds. Enjoy!



Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Gambling With an Edge - guest Joseph Kerr #2

The guest on the show this week is Joseph Kerr. Joseph is an advantage player from Florida. He was on our show two year ago talking about "Advantage Cruising" and now he is back on to talk about gaining advantages on travel by credit card churning.


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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Gambling With an Edge - guest Blair Hull

This week we talk with former blackjack professional turned top trader, Blair Hull. Blair started in blackjack in the 70s, and connected with Al Francesco who invented the "Big Player" concept. He played with Ken Uston on that team, and then moved from blackjack into trading. He founded the Hull Trading Group which he sold to Goldman Sachs in 1999 for over $500 million. His current company is Hull Investments where he continues to trade.

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Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Las Vegas Strip Diaries - Roger Hall

Last year my partner Minnie Madden and I decided to launch a new web series called Las Vegas Strip Diaries. The idea was we would interview interesting people in Las Vegas. Vegas has no shortage of interesting characters, and everyone has a story.

As often happens, life intrudes. We never launched the series, but we did record 4 episodes. This is one of those episodes; an interview with a wonderful musician named Roger Hall. I learned that Roger died last month at the age of 90. Roger was a saxophone player that moved to Las Vegas in 1954. He played with the "swing band" which meant that he played 6 nights a week, each night at a different casino on the strip in order to give the house band at each place a night off. When I interviewed him it was just before his 90th birthday, and he was still playing his saxophone every day. I hope you enjoy.


Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Gambling With an Edge - guests Matt Kaufman & Rob Stan WSOP 2016

Our guests this week are Matt Kaufman and Rob Stan, two poker professionals that are on to talk about the upcoming world Series of Poker 2016. Matt Kaufman is a mixed game specialist, and a gaming consultant and general manager of a group of affiliate websites. Rob Stan in addition to being a cash game pro, blogs, and coaches through crushlivepoker.com.

 
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Monday, May 16, 2016

loaning money, and a couple jokes

One of the blogs I skim is that of Paul Harris. Paul is a radio personality, blogger, and serious poker player. He had a brief blog post today entitled Poker Loans. He started the post with this:

"If you lend a poker player $20,000, you will always get your money back.
But if you lend him $20, you'll never see it again."

It got me to thinking about it, and my experience is that it is the guy, not the amount. The same guy who won't pay back the 20k is the one who won't pay back the 20 bucks.  And vice versa. Paul concludes with the following joke, which I particularly enjoy since I am a theater person:

A homeless guy walks up to a man on the street and asks if he can spare a few dollars. The man rebuffs him, saying, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be. That's Shakespeare." To which the homeless guy replies, "Oh, yeah? Fuck you! That's David Mamet!"

and that reminded me of one of my favorite gambling jokes.

Bob gets hit up by his friend Jimmy, who says, "Hey, can you help me out. My rent is past due, and I really need some money for food." Before he can respond a third guy walks up and says, "Hey Jimmy, there is a really soft $2-$5 game at my house tonight. The buy in is $1,000." Jimmy says, "I'll be there."  Bob says, "What the hell? You just told me your rent is past due and you need money for food." Jimmy says, "Yeah, that's right, but I have money for a game."

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Gambling With an Edge - guest Russell Fox #2

This week we talk with tax professional Russell Fox. Russell is based in Las Vegas and handles many professional gamblers. We discuss things like - how teams handle W2Gs, 1099s, and K1s. We talk about how to be smart about having residences in 2 states, and some tips on an HSA.

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Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Gambling With an Edge - guest card counter SmallCap

Our guest on the show this week is a very successful card counter we call SmallCap. SmallCap was on our show in June of 2015, and we continue to get comments on how well people liked that episode. He graciously consented to come back. In the past year he has focused more on foreign travel.


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