First, host Gill Alexander is joined by Michael Kaplan and Bill Krackomberger to discuss Michael's experience covering advantage players in the gambling world. Then, Producer and Narrator of the ESPN "30 for 30" podcast, "A Queen of Sorts," Rose Eveleth recounts the amazing story of how poker star Phil Ivey pulled off an elaborate baccarat scheme that won him more than $20 million and landed him in court. But, as she shares with Gill Alexander, its secretive mastermind "Kelly" Cheung Yin Sun who crafted the entire scheme to get revenge. (April 14, 2020).
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Check it down man, Now down there. It's the Meeting the Book podcast, Gil Alexander. Hope you and your family are staying safe during the global pandemic. Today on the podcast Advantage Play. First, Michael Kaplan, who is the author of several books and has written a myriad of gambling pieces for publications like The New York Times, New York Post, Cigarficionado, and Thrillists, among others, joins me and Bill Krackenburger to talk about some of the stories that he's covered, including his latest about the Hollywood poker game that Toby McGuire was a part of. We'll get into that with Michael, followed by an interview I did a couple of years ago that we touched upon with Michael. This time, Rose Eveless joins me. Rose even Lef was the producer of the thirty for thirty called a Queen of Sort. Has everything to do with Phil Ivy and his mysterious Asian counterpart who goes by the name of Kelly. Fascinating stories a little different. Hope you enjoy it. Advantage Play. On today's Beating the Book podcast, It's a numbers game with your host, Jil Alexander wants to believe in Adams. Yes I am. It is Gill Alexander live from San Francisco. Good morning to you, serious except Channel two four, Visa dot Com, the Visa app, Fubo, Slang Game plus on down the line, a real treat. First of all, this gentleman, uh, Bill Crackenburger is always on the show on Thursdays, but has decided to sort of hook us up once again by my request, with the gentleman who I really want to talk to, So Billy. First of all, good morning to you. Good morning. Uh. The gentleman that we are referring to is Michael Kaplan. He uh has written four books, um, a couple of which are about gambling, All Sensible Chances, Our Adventures and probability aces and King's inside stories and million dollar strategies from Poker's greatest players, and perhaps more prominently, I don't know more, Uh, you know where people recognize him, for I think greatly so, perhaps more than the books themselves, are pieces that he's written about gambling and about advantage place specifically uh in The New York Times, The New York Post, Thrillist, Cigar Aficionado, Wired, and Playboy, among the publications we bring him in now courtesy of Bill Crackerburger. It is Michael Kaplan. Good morning to you, Michael, and thank you for making the time. Sir, hey man, how are you. It's it's great to be on doing very well. And I didn't realize you had a Twitter at Kaplan Words. I searched for it desperately, So I'm glad you're on at Kaplan Words. That's me. I'm not. I'm not as active on it as I might say in two busy writing stories, but you know, I try. I try to post on that when I can, first of before I get into some of the things I want to ask you about, because there is Honestly, I don't know that there's a writer who has who has really had this great of a chance to talk to as many advantage players as you have over the course of your career. But how did you two meet? You? You and Bill Michael? Well, we met. We met through a sports better we both know in New York. That's that's my recollection, Um, Bill, right, Yeah, we we met through We we met through a sports better that we're both acquainted with. I think remember having iced tea at an outdoor I remember sitting in being in the East Village with you and this other gentleman. We're having iced tea at a at a cafe in in in the East Village in New York City. Wow, yeah, I guess. So you know we've we've been uh, we've been friends so long I actually forgot, but yeah, it was the initials are j M. I don't know. I don't know how much you want your name splattered around that's all you want to say. Um, yeah, I think I think that. I think, uh, I think that's exactly how we met. I know, we we ate over and Carol, Carol Varden's over in uh in the Italian Joy Yeah, yeah, wow you remember? Good? But yeah, I think that's what I meant. And and I've been fascinated with Michael for years because there's not that many times you have an opportunity to be with a journalist that knows both sides of the counter. Not so sports betting. But Michael has been around advantage gambling for a long time himself. Uh, I know, we we we've been to a couple of casinos ourself, and uh, we we've I'll just say this without spoiling some things. Michael knows a lot of things. He's a sharp guy himself, so it's fascinating that thank you, thank you, thanks for being on, Michael. Michael, that's a lot. That's a lot coming from Bill, because I mean Bill is extremely sharp. So I a pre shake that thank you, Oh, Michael. I spent I spent the weekend reading just about as much as I could from you over time. The m I T. Blackjack Team, Um, James gross Gen, Phil Ivy and Kelly, the mysterious uh Asian counterparts. She really she was the head of the Bakara global attack on casinos. I've actually had rose Eva Lef on the show before she produced the ESPN thirty for thirty doc about it. Um, you've written about characters like Ms Brown, Edward, Tiger, Mike Davis, Don Johnson. Uh. I guess the question that that is begged here is of all of the characters that you've run into all of the years and written about, and maybe this is an impossible question answer, so maybe I should apologize in advance. But of all of them, what's the single most incredible when you think about all of them? Um, good question. I mean Tiger Mike was incredibly interesting, but I mean, I will tell you like probably the most. And these guys are advantaged players, but not in casinos. I did a story years ago for Wired about these two Arab brothers. They live in this place called Farkassum. It's sort of like and you know, a sort of Arab enclave, um, not that far from Tel Aviv. And these guys basically ran circles around the Israeli telephone company. They were phone hackers, and they were blind, and um, these guys are insane advantaged players at at phone hacking, which was incredibly interesting to make. Another one that that I was really into, which is more gambling related. I did a story about these computer teams that made apparently, I mean you know that they made over a billion dollars, you know, beating horse racing in Hong Kong. They came up with a computer system to model racing and turn off that Hong Kong was the ideal place to do that in because it's a small pool of horses, a small pool of jockeys, and they don't it's not like you know, all of a sudden, some new horse and and writer are going to come in from out of nowhere. And I mean, these guys made an awful lot of money, and it was really fascinating spending some time with them. So I mean those are two that I found really really interested. Is there a common thread, I mean among all of these folks or or are they all unique in their own way? Or is there something Is there a brush where you can paint a broad stroke over all of them. I think there are people who kind of are pretty obsessed with figuring out how to beat something, but like, you know, obsessed in a way that you know, normal people would not be. I mean, you know, a guy like James Gross Jean, I mean that guy, if he wants to figure out a game, I mean he'll be up night and day running computer simulations and figuring out how to He'll know the game better than the person who created the game. And I mean, you know that like that, and I think that is a common threat. I think there's a sort of upset sh and that certain people develop with you know, beating these games. I mean obviously it's you know, financially rewarding, but it also is a lot of work. Like I mean, you know there's that say, you know it's an easy you know, you know, it's a hard way to make an easy living. And I mean that's definitely. Um I think applies to the most successful of these a p s is that they work so hard at it and they just don't give up, and it's like, you know, it becomes you know, kind of their life and it's it's interesting. I mean, they have an amazing work ethics, they're incredibly bright, and they can kind of think in ways that other people aren't thinking, you know, and it's, um, it's yeah, it's really it's a really interesting world. And I feel privileged that I've been privy to it. And I mean and I played on a pretty big card counting team for a while and I have a t V PID for a pretty big casino play that kind of dropped into my last So I've been around it like as a reporter and you know, to some degree as a practitioner. And it's it's really interesting. Do you still have an itch to be a practitioner or you or are those days behind you? Well, if the right opportunity exactly let's put it that way, if the right opportunity presented itself, I would do it. I Mean it's one of these things where like you know, card counting is something that people think, oh, yeah, it's like a license to print money, and I will tell you it definitely is not. I mean, it's extremely volatile, and yeah you can make money doing it, but hey, it's a lot of work. It's very volatile. You need to put it enough hours to iron out the variants. Um, it's really the James Grosten called me and said he needs somebody to be p I would say, Okay, where do I beat you? So, yeah, if the right opportunity came came about, I would. I would definitely do it. Well, James Grostan, who you wrote I'm sure more than once about, but but extensively. The article that I that I focused in on was the one in Oklahoma, Whereas again you mentioned he sleeps maybe two or three hours a night, so he's out working everybody to try to figure out how to beat the game. But just a fascinating story. And I think if Grocer calls any of us, we probably pick up the phone and be part of the advantage play. We're talking to Michael Kaplan, who has written so many pieces about advantage players. By the way, when he says a P S that's what he's referring to. UM, at kaplan words on Twitter. Bill, you were I hope I'm not speaking out of school here. You were instrumental in one of at least one of Michael's articles in terms of just sort of hooking him up with folks. Oh yeah, oh yeah, Michael will call me from time to time and ask me some questions or um, I actually hooked him up with Eddie Teams, right, Michael? Is that all right? That is true? That is true. We met, um, you know. I mean the funny thing is you and I played in a black jack torn I don't know if you remember this or not. We played in a black jack tournament at um Um what is it? The treasure island and between and between between hand you know, between rounds, we went and we went to have some eggs or something, you know, in the in the cafe there, and um and Eddie was in there and you know, to use your to use your Lingno, I mean, I had no idea who the guy was. You go, this guy is the sharpest of the shark. That was what you said to me. And you know he was sitting there with Stanford Wong's book. You know, everybody else is just you know, kind of relaxing, having breakfast, just you know, like I'm not saying whatever happens happens, but you know, like we're there to play. And that was that this guy was like brushing up on stuff. And you know, every other page had you know, a post it note with notes in it. I mean, listen, and that's that's what I'm talking about when I say about guys who are who are aps and like taking very very seriously. I mean, you know, this guy was there to win money. I mean we all were, but you know, not to the degree that he was. And it's, um, it's it's it's it's interesting, yeah, sharps, um sorry, go. He is one of the sharpest sharps. And and I was actually shocked that he was, uh that that he actually would would go on and want to talk about something. But I asked him, and uh, you know a lot of these guys, you have to understand, they've been so super genius, so super boxed up. They're the guys that were made fun of their whole lives while they were younger. They were the smaller people in school. They were the ones that would do the extra credit. They would do the you know, maybe even the Southern and teaching the students. So these kind of guys have been kind of shut ins um and their their whole life. And now that advantage gambling is talked about a little bit, well it's now maybe almost like it's almost like you're coming out of the closet for you could talk to people about being an advantage gambler now, just like Michael was so quick to do there, which I'm shocked but I'm glad he did it about being a card counter. And black Jack's absolutely how I know Michael one of the reasons I think I know about Michael. But so these type of guys, as we noticed with even are even the Visa network, Um, they'll pop out once in a while. They're looking for a little more arriety now because hey, their whole lives. They were kind of the ones that really, uh, their their brain was hurting. It was so painful because they couldn't really tell anyone, They couldn't really express their feelings of people because no one really understood or even wanted to understand. However, with a network like Visa or just any kind of social media, these people out now have a have a voice, They have somewhere they can talk, so introduced them to Michael. Michael wrote the greatest piece in Cigar for Grnado on Eddie and whatever Eddie's doing there, if you see him in the casino doing something, you can guarantee there's an advantage to it. So great story. It's available on the internet. And okay, go affack to you. No no no no, But you know, Eddie is one of these guys, and we'll sort of get background on some of these stories. But Edie was one of these guys who did lots of things. But but along the lines of what you were saying, Bill, Um, Michael, it's it's an interesting point that Bill makes that this is advantage play, and so by nature of advantage play, you know, it kind of behooves those aps to sort of keep their mouth shut. But there is this sort of human conflict. Uh. And Bill called it notoriety that that's being sought. And you've written about at least one or two of these guys who in the end, when they say, would you've done anything differently, they're like, yeah, I probably wouldn't have talked as much. It's probably is an element to that. I mean, it's interesting to me, like, you know, doing this sort of thing. It's one of the few things that you know, you get that's it's not you know, it's one of the few things you can do that legal. You get very very good at it, and it's your it's in your interest that that when you're in the place where you do this thing, that nobody knows what you're actually doing, even though it's completely it's you know, obviously it's completely legal. I mean, it's um, it's just it's a pretty it's a pretty interesting um economy. It's like an interesting sort of shadow world that these guys um came to operate and and um, you know, I mean I was at an event. This is an event that takes place each year called the Blackjack Ball, and it's a it's a you know, it's this gathering of people who you know beat casino games. Is a sort of secret gathering. May have written about it because I'm not like speaking out of school about it, but it definitely is one of these things where like you will not see photos from there. I was at a dinner the night before and there were a bunch of people and um, somebody tell you, let's get a photo, and you know, one of these you know kind of really high end practitioners goes no, and you know, this person could just ducked away and there was no way in hell they were going to be um. They were going to be photographed, even though it was just you know, for some person wasn't going to post it online or something. But people are very very careful. It's it's fascinating all these pieces because the really you know, when when folks outside of betting asked me about better, they're a whole section of society that that immediately is sort of dismissive. And I always say, I was like, yeah, but you know what, the top two percent of these guys, I put him in any profession and up up, go up against any professions. Top two Uh. It really is just an amazing swath of of human beings. Michael, when we come back, if you're kind enough to stay with us, I want to ask you about, first of all, what you might be working on currently or what you have your eyes on, uh these days. Where does the phil Ivy Kelly case uh stand right now in terms of it's a judication globally. Want to get into that a little bit. And then on our air this past Friday, Uh, we had Houston Curtis on on Follow the Money. I want to play a clip from that and get your gauge on just what Houston Curtis was up to a p or more exploitation than anything. We'll get into that coming up with Michael Kaplan and Bill Crackenburger, of course, who did it all for us? Right here on a numbers game at Visa, the sports betting network. Welcome back to a number game with Jill Alexander. Man escapes dot com has the tools for your family jewels. You can get off plus free shipping with the code vs in at manscape dot com. That's off at man escaped dot com with promo code v s I n It's Gill Alexander, Bill Crackenburger and Michael Kaplan kind enough to join us for most of this hour. He's written pieces about advantage play in the New York Times, New York Post, Thrillist. Cigarifici not a Wired Playboy, author of four books. Um has written stuff about advantage play, even when it comes to a stripper who made three hundred thousand dollars a year in Las Vegas. Have you ever followed up with her at all? Michael. I actually did call her about something else I was writing on and she just goes, yeah, I don't know about that, but yeah she was. She was a made at I mean, like you know, but listen, that's like another example of somebody who's an eight who, like you know, most strippers, they show up, they do their work. She cared of at it so much like she didn't drink, didn't do drugs, drove you know, her old Volkswagen jettle while all these other strippers are buying BMW's. You know, she exercised before she went, and she meditated, she got her nails done. I mean, she went in there just like an ap walks into a casino. It was like no different, which was which was amazing that you know, you've got all these women that you know, they're making good money or whatever, but they're not in there to crush it like she was. It was. It was just in its own way, fascinating. Billy I did an old deep dive on Michael this week, and believe me, I read every I read everything, No please, it was it was. I'll put it this way, and Bill, you can appreciate this too. I'm a sports better. I don't I don't play cards, I don't usually play casino games of any kind. But reading your reading your stuff, and I know Bill does dabble more than dabble. Reading your stuff, it almost made me want to just like I've been doing this wrong all these years? My god, why have I been know? Like it got that far into my head. I was like, this is just phenomenal stuff. You must I mean, really, you say you're a practitioner. But but wouldn't you say because Billy and I were talking about this this weekend, Bill, you'll you'll articulate maybe better for me. It's our little corner of the world, whether it's sports betting, or whether it's advantage play in other casino games or otherwise we just talked about. It really is a phenomenal cross section of humanity, Like it's just never ending in its fascinating characters. I'm coming in here for one second. You know, I love when someone I love when someone challenges me or something about and and Michael knows what I'm talking about here. I can walk into almost any casino in Las Vegas, especially the East coast Atlantic city, and I love to bet anyone that wants to bet me. If I can make money in that casino by the time I walk out. I'll bet any amount of money to anybody that I could walk into a casino and I can make money. On the way out, I'll have more money than I went in with. Because there's so many advantages in casino is not granted, it's a grind. The r o I that I would have compared to sports betting and doing other things I do is not as much, so I stick to sports betting. However, there are certain bonus machines and bankable machines. Every casino has them. You put your time in its tedious work. But I know one thing, without a doubt. If I didn't have sports betting, I'd be walking through a casino. It's a casino, each casino making a little bit of money, thirty bucks, fifty bucks, eighty bucks. I guarantee you every day I would have a profit because these casinos all have these type of machines. And I'm sure Michael knows what I'm talking about. Um and and there's some other people on the network that uh knows what I'm talking about because then they know about these bankable machines. So anyway, go ahead, guys, Yeah, that. I mean, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean like that's always like the funny thing you people who like I've talked to people who love GA and I could tell you how to beat this game of that and but like they, oh yeah, that sounds too much like a job. I think most people don't mind losing the money and they're there for recreation, and it's you know, that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. It in some ways, I've buried the headline and I want to get back to uh to it momentarily because Michael, you've had something actually we'll get it here because we have sixty seconds. But you had something optioned here that you that you uh I wasn't aware of. Oh yeah, this the story that I did on Kelly got option for a movie. So it's in the process of being written, so it'll be about the Kelly's Sun. Still I've the great Bakara Caper. Have you ever had anything option before? First one? I've come, I've come close a couple of times that this is, um, this is the first one. Yes, I'm pretty excited about it. Oh man, So this is yeah, that's huge for for you. I would imagine that's great. You can I hope that I hope that they allow you to be part of the process. That's always a question mark in it, that that is a question. I'll let you know what happens. I would love I would look along. Yeah, we'll come back, because I do want to ask you about, uh, this latest piece that you wrote in the New York Post about Houston Curtis and his account of what really went on in that Hollywood poker game with Toby mcguireel coming back, Michael Kaplan, Bill Crackerberg a numbers game at Visa these Sports Betting Network Welcome back to a numbers game with Jill Alexander. It is a numbers game right here at Visa. The Sports Betting Network series XM twoh for Gail Alexander, Bill Crackenberger, my buddy with us uh and Michael Kaplan at Kaplan words on Twitter. Uh there is and honestly, as we're doing this, there's no real justice we can do to the volume and the detail of work that Michael has done with all these pieces. But I would just send people to everybody out there if you're if you're interested in some of these characters and all of Michael's pieces, just google them um again from just the most amazing characters in the world. Edward Tiger, Mike Davis. I mean names I've never heard of before. Don Johnson might be familiar to some, but uh yeah, James Grossjen who is known to all sort of advantage players. Just great pieces on all of these guys. Michael, I couldn't have been more entertained and more fascinated. We have a show on the network Monday through Friday. It's called Follow the Money. It precedes this show hosted by Mitch and PAULI, and they had Houston Curtis on air with them on Friday. Your latest piece in the New York Post had to do with Houston Curtis's new book. Uh. That new book is called The Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist. It's all about his version of events. Was really reaction to the to the motion picture Molly's Game, which had a lot of acclaim Molly Bloom's account of what went on in a famous Hollywood poker game that involved Toby maguire and others. But here's what Houston Curtis had to say on Follow the Money, and I'm curious to get your reaction. Afterwards. I told him about this game, and then that next week, Toby showed up at the game, and uh, and then he invited me to his house the next night, and that's when we really just connected and we started realizing that these guys, Uh, there's so many guys in town who just learned how to play poker, like they didn't even they didn't even know how shuffle a deck of cards, most of the guys who were playing in this game, but for Texas, all of you just gotta learn how to hold two cards and know what the hands are right and if I can sit and play with all these big celebrities, So we identified that. Uh in your opinion, you're educated opinion, Michael. I mean Houston, Curtis, Toby McGuire advantage players mainly or or exploitive just as much. Well, I mean they they were manage players and they definitely put together, you know, a game and like you know, everybody knew. Listen. You know, there's the thing about poker is you know who the good players at the game are because they're the guys that win all the time. And I mean, you know, Houston won all the time until he lost a million of dollars one night, which you know was not a great ending for him, but um, you know the excellent at poker. It's kind of interesting, you almost I think people at poker kind of exploit themselves a little bit because you're sitting there and you see weekend and week out. You know, Houston and and Toby were the we're the you know, consistently the big winners. So I mean, you know, you could always not play in the game. You can always find a softer game to play in, or a game where you're not going to be you know what I mean, one of the one of them, you know, the producers as they call them, you know, in the game. I mean, like I think go ahead, and Michael, I'm sorry, Oh, I mean you know, like I guess, like I think with poker, you know, it's like it's it's weird in a way because everybody knows how everybody else did. So if you're losing weekend and week out, listen, it might be entertaining for you. I mean, like, you know, they certainly set it up so that you know, they had Leo DiCaprio there and you know, to get to good play in the game with Leo and Toby. That sounds like you know, you're gonna quest you some money, but you're rich and you might win once in a while. Maybe not that bad of a deal. Bill. Oh hey yeah, Uh well, listen how many guys used to fly into Vegas to play with Phil Ivy or Daniel Lagrono and you know dropped fifty or a hundred thousand dollars you could, um, go on and on. Let's let's use the banker, the big guy in Texas and do you think his name was? Andy Beale? Came in and lost you know, millions of dollars. Uh, you know, and in the end, this this uh, this team of players beat him up because you know, he had the kind of money as a bank care he's a billionaire. Uh. This this happens. So of course these Hollywood type same thing. They all want to get together, um, you know, and they want to be with the likes of these players. Um. You know, my own opinion is that I'm a little more I'm a little more tough. You know. I watched I'm a street guy. I'm a knock around guy because he tells sometimes what people talking. I watched the interview with Mitch and Paulie. You know, Um, the guy has his side. I'm not saying it's the right side. You know, he's a little bit of a huckster himself. You remember, now, this guy is a card mechanic, So which that means is he's cheating people. Not saying he was cheating in that game, because Michael and I talked about this, Supposedly he wasn't. But he's never gonna tell Michael. He's never gonna tell anyone when he's writing a book that he's cheating up cheating these Hollywood guys either. So I don't I'm a little more cynical. I think maybe, uh, you know, you know, you can't lose that. If you're a cheater and you lose a couple of plots, legitimately you get mad. You're you're gonna start dealing off the bottom again. You're gonna start dealing seconds from the deck. These are terms that mechanics used, so um, you know, listen, you're talking about tobym Wire. I played with him twice at the Bellaggio. I played with him at Max Factor's son studio, Dean Factor in l A. I played a private game with him, I was in a tournament with him. Not my favorite guy. I'll be happy to tell you that. I'll be happy to tell that to him to his face. So not my favorite type of guy. He's not friendly to people. Um. I've seen him turn down a little kid's autograph at that the game there, someone brought the sun um during a break. Uh you know listen, I've watched him uh tip or not tip waitresses. So um, you know, kind of like Tiger Woods. You know, I rape people by tipping sometimes, so I'm sorry to do that, but um, anyway, that's my take on it. The guys like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, I've been with them, fantastic triple George taking care of everybody. I'll just show you the difference. Michael. We have one thing that I'll say about Houston though, is you know there was a dealer he so he couldn't he didn't deal in the game at all or whatever that's worth. Yeah, yeah for whatever, No, that's true. That needs to be pointed out. Um, Michael, Willie have sixty seconds here left, So I just wanted to ask you beyond the optioning of your story on phil Ivy and Kelly. That's what she's known as, by the way, not a real name. Um, what do you what? What is in your cross hairs right now? What are you thinking about writing about. I'm actually working on a book right now. It's going to be a collection of my stories about aps in and out of the gambling world. It's being done for Hunting to Press. But I mean that's own by Anthony Curtis, who was a serious AP in his own right before I got into the publishing business. And um, I'm working on pretty that together now. So I'm excited about having this collection come out and be really cool. Uh, Michael, it's been a pleasure. I really appreciate the time. Uh you're working. Yeah, thank you so much to do it really kind and thank you very much. Thanks so much again. The books. Some of the books are a couple of books, Aces and Kings, Inside Stories and million dollar Strategies from Poker's greatest players if that interests you, as well as Chances are Adventures and Probability. But the New York Times, New York Post, Thrillist, Cigar Officiing, Dota, Wired, and Playboy. Thank you, Michael, Thank you, Bill. I appreciate you both. Thanks guys. Thanks guy. Michael Kaplan, the great Michael Kaplan right here on the numbers game here at Visa would love to have him back time and time again. Numbers Game live from Las Vegas, Nevada, only on the Vegas Stats and Information Network. Now live from the Visa in Studios. It's your host. Kill Alexander. Kill Alexander on a numbers game here Visa in Series XM channel two oh four. Check us out online at Visa in dot com. So a couple of nights ago, Tuesday night, I'm ready to go to bed. I'm like, great, I'm gonna get a full night sleep. And I just decide for five seconds, I'm just mess around my computer and for whatever reason, up pops on my screen the latest thirty for thirty podcast entitled A Queen of Sorts. And I go ahead and press play. And let's just say, my the prospects of a full night of sleep were done right there. And what I listened to and I've produced five podcast episodes or so myself, this is the greatest podcast episode of any format I've ever listened to. It. It is about Phil Ivy ten time World series of poker Bracelet Winter Time for second most of all time. Certain bet to be in the world, or I should say in the Poker Hall of Fame on the first ballot when the class of seventeen is announced later this month, and his partnership with a high stakes advantage player, mysterious young lady by the name of Chung Yan Son who is known as Kelly, and we will refer to as Kelly on this and them taking two different casinos, one in England one in New Jersey for six million dollars and the ensuing fight to collect that money and to adjudicate their method of getting that money. Queen of Sorts is what it's called. And with us on the phone, kind enough to join us, the producer and narrator of a Queen of Sorts and a Queen of Sorts herself, Rose evelet low Rose, Hi, that was very high praise. This was Rose. I am. Let me tell you something. I am not blowing smoke. This was so good I'll blow some more that. Uh. It's such a complicated subject as a storytelling vehicle. There's so much happening here, I was mentioning earlier. There is revenge, there are geniuses, there are millions of dollars, prison, racism, sexism, I said earlier. If it's as if the serial podcast that um was done so well by NPR and Oceans eleven had a baby. This is your podcast. Congratulations are I did read from the eleven script to like prep for writing the script for this one. So I'm glad that that came through. Well, let's let's start here. Uh, that's awesome that you read that because it shines through. Why don't you lay this out for us just in general? And then I have tons of questions throughout you, so if you could just give us the general story that we're referring to here. Yeah, So, um twelve Phil Ivy gets accused of cheating UM, and it comes out that he has sort of executed this elaborate baccarat play, and the play involved asking casino just to do a whole bunch of things, play a certain kind of game, play certain cards. He's a shuffle machine, and then most importantly turn the cards for him. Um. And there are these cases you know, he sues in London, New Jersey because you know they're to use him. It goes back and forth, and um. The story that doesn't really get told, the story that I tried to tell, and the piece is sort of about this mysterious mastermind who actually came up with this whole play and kind of helped still win all this money named Kelly. So the episode kind of goes from it sort of revolves around their wood play at Crockford's kind of explain how it we're but it also tells the backstory of Kelly, where she comes from, how she wound up coming up with this play. You know, at one point she was thrown in jail for debts to MGM. She was a generate gambler. She learns advantage place, she figures out this play. She hooked up with all Ivy and they just sort of want to spree and take down all these casinos. And then, as you said, there's a big question do they have to pay them? Is this cheating? You know, who's in the wrong, who's in the right. You know, they don't ever touch the cards, you know, they don't mark the cards. They just kind of convinced causinos to do things for them, And there's this big question that's sort of still open and that's still sort of happening now about whether or not they should get their money, whether or not what they did was cheating. So let's start at the beginning. Because you touched on it. There. Kelly a degenerate gambler, as you document in the podcast, and really as soon as I as soon as I listen to it, uh Rose. The next morning, the first person I texted was Chad Millman, and I said, Chad, you've got to come on this podcast, and he goes, I've got somebody better for you, the actual producer. You do a great job. Kelly's motivation. She's a degenerate gambler. She loses all kinds of money and casinos. Her father, who I don't know that we delve in on the podcast to his background, but he is an endless source of income for her, and she loses all this money. What motivates her to just change her life around and go after casinos? Yeah, so you know, her father owned a huge banking chain in China and then UM eventually went up shifting to Tim. But yes, he's sort of endlessly wealthy UM and was happy to kind of fund her gambling habit. So she goes and she gambles, and you know, she starts in Macau and then she comes over to vegas Um and she sort of isn't fully familiar with this is in vegas Um, including markers and she basically, you know, she says she loaned the marker to someone and they didn't pay it back. You know, who knows what really happened. Maybe she didn't pay it back, but someone didn't pay back one of her markers, and for about a hundred thousand dollars um. And MGM obviously would like their money back. And in Vega, you know, not paying passing a bat check, it lands from jail. So she's landed. She lands in jail for this debt. And to her, this is you know, ridiculous. She has lost you know, literally six figures at these casinos, and she's kind of like, you're gonna put me in jail for a hundred thousand dollars like this is chump change. And and she's like, let me just call my dad, we can whatever'll pay, we'll pay back um. And the casino obviously doesn't do that because that's not really helping work. And so she was she felt very wronged by this. She thought, you know, I've lost so much money to you guys, and you're gonna really put me in jail for a sort of small amount. And so she vowed when she was in jail that she was going to get her revenge on mgm uh you know she done. Um, she actually winds up being one of the very few people who goes from being a truly degenerate gambler losing six figures because, you know, to an advantage player and sort of coming up with these ingenious schemes that is really, by the way, you know, not a point to be glossed over. We think of degenerate gamblers as lifelong degenerate, and by degenerate there's sort of a connotation that that means they lose forever. She might be both, right, she might both be a degenerate gambler, but certainly the exception who turns around and does exact revenge in the most amazing way and explain to us what it is that she seizes on to do that. Yeah, So the key thing is she figures out how to edge sort. Now, edge sorting is not new, It's been used all over but basically the premise of edge sorting is that cards that have patterns that go all the way to the edges aren't always cut exactly evenly. So, Um, if you're looking at a card and it's a diamond pattern, you know, the diamond on one side of the card might be a full diamond and the diamond on the other side might be a half diamond because the machine doesn't quite cut that big sheet of cards exactly down the middle. Um. And if you can see this, you know I can't. I have terrible eyesight, but she has amazing eyesight and she can actually see these tiny, tiny differences. And once you can see them, you can do all kinds of things. People have edge sorted all kinds of games where you've turned the card so that you know the val the ones, the ones that you want have their sort of edge asymmetry facing one way and the valid unvaluable cards are turned the other way. Um, you can do all kinds of things that. This is sort of the classic card trick where you know a magician split splays at his deck for you. You pick a card, you look at it, and then you put it back in the deck, and then he somehow knows where your card is. UM. That works by this trick that if while you're looking at your card, the magician is going to rotate their deck and he's already lined up all the cards in one way, so when you put your card back in he's rotated his a hundred and eighty degrees and yours is the only one that's facing the opposite direction. Um, that's how Sorry, I'm going to ruin magic tricks spoiler alert, Yeah, um, but that's that's what this is. So she figured out edge sorting. Now that the truly genius thing that she did isn't just the edge sorting. Edge sorting is something that you know, it's hard to do, but people do it. People can do it. What she feared out was actually how to execute an edge sorting play without ever touching the cards. She actually convinced the dealers to turn the cards for her, which is really I think the true insane thing about this this is that is really then we're going to get to this momentarily, because it is one thing to have the skill. It is another thing, uh entirely that casinos and big time casinos let this happen in the way they did before we get to that. How So she's winning money now, so she's exacting her revenge. She's out of jail. By the way, how long did she stay in jail? Rose About three weeks? About three weeks? Okay, that's that's three weeks. Too many as she seen uh and she got She exacts her revenge. She studies, she uses a magnifying class. She's going after this stuff and she starts winning money from all these casinos. How is it that she hooks up with Phil hot with Phil Ivy? And why is it that she hooks up with Phil Ivy? Yeah? So, um, she goes and she plays. You know, for us probably I don't know how what your bank bull is like. But for me, she's winning a lot of money in five hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand, a million and a half at these various in Las Vegas. Um and you know, casino Alan skuys start to note, right, they start to say, hey, wait a minute, what's going on now? They don't know it's free yet. She's playing with other whales. She's playing with mostly um whales from Asia, Asian guys who come over and find her. Many of them live in l A. And they start writing up her play in these surveillance newsletters. They say, hey, you know, watch out for this Asian team. They're doing this turning play. You know. They kind of try to get the word out among casinos surveillance and say, hey, you know, just just you guys know this is happening. UM. Of course, a lot of advantage players read those newsletters because they want to know what casino surveillance guys are talking about. UM. And one guy who she had actually already known, this guy named Eddie UM. She she had already kind of been working with him. He had been teaching her a little bit of advantage played. He actually read about this play in these news letters and he knew exactly who it was. He knew this had to be Ellie. And so he called her and he said, hey, you know, I read about this play. You know was that you? And she initially tries to kind of play a cool said don't know what I mean. She doesn't want him to know UM and he's like, no, no, it's it's you. It's got to be you. UM. And so Eddie is actually the one who introduced her to fill Um and he flies her down to Australia. UM. They fly down where Phil's playing poker. And this is actually a story that didn't make it into the episode, but I think it is really funny. They go down there, Eddie don't has a rapport with Phil, he knows him, and he says Hey, I got this barker, I'll play. Phil says yes to trying it, which I think is kind of amazing that he's willing to sort of trust this random woman who's never met to do this play That sounds completely preposterous, but they do. They play it, but their cards that Kelly has never seen before, so she doesn't know how to she can't identify them, and so she actually loses a bunch of his money, like millions of dollars, and Phil is rightfully kind of piste off about it. You know, he's like, what are you guys hustling me? Like what is this? You know, he thinks that he's just been conned, and they're like, no, no, no no, it's not it's not that. And so she winds up um spending all night memorizing these cards. They go back the next day. She's giving one more chances, okay, and she wins him the money back and more, and so then you know, from there there a team and they sort of hit all kinds of casinos. They actually do is play in more than just sort of the New Jersey and London, cause you know, but those are the two that have kind of taking action many of these have paid them out, you know, and they've made lots of money in this play. When we come back and Rose, if you will just hang out with us for one more semi because this is too good. I want to get into the specifics of what she did and what Phil and her both did, I should say at Crockford's in London, and just how specific it had to be for them to pull this off, what Crockford's acquiesced too, and really just get your take on the matter. How you feel about this in the end. Is it cheating in your opinion? Is it not? I think I know how most of our listeners feel about it. Rose, producer and narrator of the thirty for thirty podcast, A Queen of Sorts of Delight Back in a Moment at vis It's a numbers game live from Las Vegas, Nevada, only on the Vegas Stats and Information Network Now live from the vs in Studios. It's your host, Kill Alexander Jill Alexander once again on a numbers game on the phone with the producer and narrator of the latest thirty for thirty podcast entitled A Queen of Sorts phil Ivy, All about Phil Ivy and really more so about phil Ivey, sort of the the tangential guy here almost he's just a vehicle. Really, it's about a mysterious young lady who is exacting revenge on the casinos, not only in Nevada but worldwide. As it turns out, Chunyan Son. She is known as Kelly. I am not spoiling anything. By the way, folks listening were like, oh, you're giving away the whole bodcast. No, trust me, listen to the podcast. It is done so well. Uh, Kelly herself is in that as well, Uh Chad Millman, and done so eloquently and beautifully by Rose Eve left Rose. Let's pick it up then, so she hooks up Kelly does with phil Ivy. This is the whale of all whales. So it's one thing to have whales. Now you're talking about someone who can take this to a whole another level. And the two of them, after that initial snap, who that their for their first experience doing that, she proves to feel that she can get this done at Mini Bakara tell us what happens at Crockford's. Yeah, so you fill wires a million dollars or a million patterns, I suppose, and that helps, right, Initially they're on the very very beginning. Um. But basically they walk in and you know, they start to make requests. So this play hinges on a series of requests, and if any of them go wrong, the entire play sort of crumbles beneath them. What they want is they want to play Mini Baker Up. So they want a game where they don't touch the cards. Um, they want a shuffle machine because they want to make sure that there's no turn in the shuffle. Um, they want a specific set of cards. You know, they don't and they do this all very subtly. You know, they don't walk in and say like, all right, here's what I need. You know, I need these cars that I can read, I need this, this, this. They sort of play up this whole stick, right. They pretend to be super superstitious. You know, they're referring to lucky hats and lucky cards and lucky dealers. You know, at one point, um, still Ivy, if you watch the surveillance footage, pretends like he doesn't know where to put the chips on the table, which is, I mean to me, kind of hilarious because phil Ivy definitely not to interrupt you. But I guess that's what's one thing, and there's that there's they ask for a Mandarin or Cantonese I believe speaking dealer as well. It's phil Ivy. How is it Crockford's has to know who phil Ivy is? How is it that they acquiesced to every single one of these demands? I mean, that's the really wild thing, right, you know, it is one of those things where once you lift everything to somebody, like we're doing, it's sort of so obvious, but this is a over the course of hours. Um. It's also you know, they're losing. It takes a lot of time and money to set this play up, so as they're doing it, they're not winning money, you know, so they must think like, okay, well this must be fine. And also it's really hard to say notice theil ivey um. I think that that's like a huge element of this, you know. And yes, he's a bank roll, but he's also kind of the sort of powerful guy in the room that if you're a dealer and you tell phil Ivy, no, he can't have what he wants and he says, all right, I'm leaving. You're going to get in trouble for that. You know. That's like somebody who's gonna ask you, hey, wait a minute, you know what happened to this millionaire high roller that we just had in this room? And you have to say, well, I wouldn't let him have the thing he wanted to be left. You know, no one wants to be the dealer um. And so there's there's that element too, you know. And there's also an element of Phil has I think, in a very genius way, cultivated this reputation UM as someone who will lose money at craps at baccarat. He sort of cultivated this image that if he's not playing poker, he's just playing for fun, he's just losing money. I don't think that that's what's going on um And I think the casinos are foolish to think that that's what's going on. But they do think that when he walks in and he's not playing poker, he's just there to have a good time. They don't. They would never think that, oh, maybe he's doing you know, maybe he's got to play um And and Phil has done a really really spectacular job of cultivating that image of coming in and making it seem like he'll just drop, you know, half a million dollars or a million dollars on something like that. Um, you know, there's lots of things other things going on there. But you know, when you read through the transcripts from court, he says at Crockford's the London casino, it's very clear that the casino really thought they were just there for a casual game. They were just there to kind of have fun. So when you take all of those things together, you wind up in a situation where not only is it difficult to say no, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious reason. You know, they meet these requests out over hours. They're losing money. You know, why would there be anything suspicious. It's only suspicious after they start to win a ridiculous amount of money and then they start to think, oh, wait a minute, what has happened. Uh, it's it's incredible. Uh, you know, and even one of the demands from the podcast that was that was so unbelievable as they took a break. Finally they want two million dollars over a long long ish period of time, based on the total amount of time they were and they said, we're going to take a break, but we want the same deck, cards, same dealer, everything when we come back. And that's when they went to town over the next three hours when they returned. But that's that's the most amazing with oh yeah, still, yeah, you can have all of this. That's great. I know it's Phil Livy, but it is interesting what you said there rose because that human element, it's Phil Ivy. And then even though there's these casino you know, a casino ought to know better, there's this thing where you just don't want to upset a guy like Phil Ivy. And it is true. You know, I think Phil Ivy a lot of poker players are known as poor sports bettors, for instance, and so the fact that he's cultivated that image, what a scheme, you know, it's amazing to think about that. So so finally Crockford's you know, they do change the cards. That's when Phil and Kelly walk out. Phil thinks and Kelly does that they're going to get the money, only to find out later Crockfords looks at surveillance footage, one of the guys discovers the grandfather trick that you were talking about before. Oh, they must why would they want the cards? Dealt in that certain way, and Crockford says they're not giving phil Ivy the money. Borgata in Atlantic City was the other casino where they did this over four different occasions. Borgata did pay them and now they want their money back, right yes, which to me is like an extra layer of absurdity are where It's like it's one thing to say, you know, we're not going to cash you out, it's another thing to say, actually, you came here four times, did this play four times? We didn't even realize it until Crockford figured it out, and now we want you to pay us back. It's amazing. So now the one thing that didn't come through in the podcast, and I know that you probably didn't want to inject yourself into this, but how do you feel about this? How do you feel cheating to you or hey, look, casinos you have the advantage play all the time. This is just making the advantage, by the way to the tune of a six percent advantage in favor of the card player when they do this. How do you feel about it? It's funny, you know. I went into the I went into reporting this and I tried to keep it really open mind. I was like, you know, I have my bias going in and I just want to see what people say who can convince me. And in reporting I kind of oscillated a little bit back and forth, but I eventually come down on the side of of not cheating. You know, they never touched the cards. The casino could have said no at any point. If they had said no to any of the seven or eight requests that they made, the whole thing would have ended. Um. I think that there is an element, you know, and I this is a terrible analogy, but um, if you go into a store and something's marked the wrong price and you know it's kind of supposed to be more expensive, you're not gonna be like, oh, excuse me, I think this is the wrong price. You know, you're gonna you're gonna take the price that it is. I mean, it's a little different. It's more like conning the checkout guy to like ring you up at the wrong price. But even that, you know, if someone gives you a deal at the checkout for whatever reason, I mean, is that stealing? You know, Like I feel like to me, you know, there is a hard line between a casino said yes to everything. You know, it's not like they did something that the casino didn't know they were doing. You know, it's not like they marked the cards. It's not like they used information that casino didn't have. Casino could have done a ton of different things to stop this. They could have said no, or they could have used cards that weren't cut improperly, or they could have introduced a turn in the shuffle. I mean, there's so many ways becauseino could have prevented this. That to me, you know, I think you get hit, you you take it, and you say, okay, you know what you got us, and you fix your game. And I think that's just sort of how it should be. Because if you if you say this is cheating, then that's also a can of worms. Right. You end up in these conversations about is card counting cheating? If a dealer is drunk and showing you the whole card, is that now cheating? You know? How do you how do you deal with that? It's it's uh, you know, I think everybody in this room and everybody listening agrees with you because we are of that ilk that we don't believe it to be cheating. Um. Vinny Malayula, by the way, a gentleman sitting alongside who is the gone gaming odds maker in a house here at at at the South Point Hotel casino. He his head is ready to explode because he can't believe the casino let them do this. Sequentially, I have to be Honestum and Rose hit on a key point. They asked, and the casino agreed. And not only that, they don't min they don't even touch the car. They don't touch. So at the end of the day, here's what happens. You Sharper sharp Filiva is sharp Sharper's calculating and everything he does. The first that's the first. The second thing is if there are certain requests, they have to be known ahead of time, and you have that conversation in advance, not as you go. At Crockford's vetti, well we're talking to Rose Eva left, the producer of a coat of sorts. Rose, the I guess letting you go with this. The other really key cog to all this, and maybe we sort of buried the headline is this is less about Phil than it is about Kelly. And there is a healthy dash of racism and sexism in this, isn't there? Yeah? Yeah, right? And that's you know, we can ask how do they get away with this? How did they get away with this? That's the big question, right you know, whether or not you think it's is almost the secondary question. The first question is how did they get away with this? And the answer in a lot of ways is, you know, we talked about Phil being hard to say know to, but it's also that he's with this woman who no one knows who she is, and casino and all the casino executives I talked to and all the surveillance guys I talked to agreed, said, you know, when an Asian woman walks into their casino, they just, oh, don't worry about it. You know, they would never have thought that she was going to be dangerous. They think that women aren't really sharp gamblers. They think, particularly that Asians are really superstitious and that they're sort of suckers. And Kelly knows that and she played that up to her advantage, and that sort of when we talk about how did they get the dealer to say yes to this, that's a huge element too, because they look at her and they think, I'm sure she's just kind of an idiot. You know, they don't think that she's you know, in her words, you don't have any idea that she could banger up their casino. You know, they don't think that she's dangerous. And you know she's still up there. She still plays because because you know, still haven't quite caught on. They all think that Phil is the masterminded, Bill is the guy they have to watch out for. And you know, when I want to visit Kelly, a couple of times in Vegas, she was just coming back from trips or she was still out there. She's still gambling, she's still running these plays. Kelly could be in this casino right now. Rose for all for all, Yeah, exactly, It's amazing. Rose Evil Left the producer and the narrator of the latest thirty for thirty podcast. It's called The Queen of Sorts about this young lady Kelly and phil Ivy doing their thing and phil Ivy and Kelly appealing London Court ruled in favor of Crockford's phil Ivy appealing that ruling trying to get their money, uh from that particular escapade. Rose really appreciate aid it all the success all congratulations to you, a Queen of sorts. Everybody should check it out. Congratulations to you, Thank you, thanks for having me. Left from ESPN thirty for thirty. You gotta listen to this, Benny, you will die. I've been following a story. I have not heard the podcast yet, but it's uh, it's very very interesting, very intreating,