Dustin Marks

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listening to of Sleights and Men.

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Daily Magician Production.

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Hello and welcome back to Of Slides and Men. You’re joined by Jacob and today I have a fantastic guest, Dustin Marks. If you don’t know who Dustin Marks is, Dustin Marks is without question, one of the most successful blackjack cheaters in history. He possesses an uncanny ability to remain calm under pressure and a talent to perform undetectable sleight of hand under fire. He was employed as a blackjack dealer by several well-known casinos in Las Vegas during the 1980s.

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While under the watchful eye of the casino surveillance systems and pit bosses, he beat the casinos and was never caught, which is quite the impressive part at the end there. Dustin has also been the author of several well-known books, including Cheating at Backjack and Cheating at Backjack Squared, a book which was updated in 2016. And he’s also a magician, a performer. He’s released some really cool mentalism effects I was looking at earlier today, and I’m sure he’s done much more than that.

01:24

It’s a pleasure to have you, Dustin. How are you doing today? I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Jacob. Yeah. Well, I don’t want to, you know, it’s like, I don’t want to like be like, ask the generic question, but I am just kind of like, I’ve been thinking about this all day and I’ve been really excited to hear the story. I’ve been, I’ve been like reading around like what you did and like watching some interviews and stuff, but I’m excited to hear the story from you. I feel like the most intriguing part will get into the magic and stuff after that. Um, but obviously in the 1980s.

01:54

You were a blackjack dealer and you were beating the house. How did that happen? What’s the story there? Well, story, long story. I got introduced to magic when I was seven years old, little kid. And just when the guy, he was about 60 at the time, got those cards in his hands, it just became real magic to me and I was hooked ever since.

02:22

And I followed the traditional route when I was younger, practiced, went to the library, got books. Then when I was in, especially in college, I did a few informal shows and stuff. But after I graduated, I really got interested in magic. And I started researching, especially card magic and where the best card magicians were in the United States. And most of them lived here in Las Vegas, Nevada.

02:51

So in 1983, I moved to Vegas, not known a single person and not having a job. So I found out that there was a magic meeting every Wednesday night called Gary Darwin’s magic club meeting. Wasn’t easy to find because of course, back then there was no internet, but I finally found it and I walked in there and there’s Jimmy Grippo and Michael Skinner.

03:19

Paul Harris and Alan Ackerman and all these guys I heard of back in the Midwest where I was from. And now I’m, you know, one on one with them live and it was really, really life changing. And they’re very friendly to me. And you know, my knowledge of card magic just zoomed. I went through the sky because, you know, I’m hanging around with some of the best guys in the world. And then I started wondering who was the absolute best with a deck of cards.

03:48

I heard a lot of names like Alan and Michael, but then one name I heard that never heard before and they told me he specialized in gambling slights. I’m just going to call him Mr. CC. So he never went to those Magic Club meetings and he’s kind of underground, hard to find, but he put out back then VHS tapes and there’s a picture of him on the back or at least we thought it was a picture of him. We didn’t know for sure.

04:16

There was a bookstore in Vegas called Gamla’s Bookstore. Had thousands of titles on gambling, magic, con games, et cetera. And I befriended somebody who worked there. And I said, if this guy ever comes in to the bookstore, let me know. So I figured he’d probably come in and that’s the only clue I had of source to maybe finding him. So about six weeks later, my phone rings and Paul is the guy who called me employee of the bookstore.

04:45

Said, you know, I think he’s in here. Well, the bookstore is about 20 minutes away. I got there in about eight minutes. And I walk in and it’s a spot on match. I’m sure it’s Mr. CC. So I walked up to him and I asked her, you Mr. CC. I’ll never forget what he said. He asked, depends on who asked him. So we kind of laughed and we talked for about just briefly, maybe three or four minutes, and then he asked me kind of a strange question.

05:15

He asked, do you have a car? I thought to myself, well, of course I have a car. And I said, yes, goes follow me home. So I followed him to his house. Wow. Eight hours later, I left. He had showed me so much gambling moves with dice, with cards, et cetera, that I forgot just about all of it. It was a brilliant strategy. Well, long story short, we became friends and we became partners and started taking off the casinos.

05:45

So I literally, I turned out by the best who ever lived. And that, yeah, that changes everything. Yeah, that’s insane. It’s cool as well that you just got, I guess just got on a plane and went. Like what was, what were you thinking when you were like, like what did you say to your parents or like your friends and you’re like, I’ll just go to Vegas. What was their reaction and what were you, kind of what were your plans before going? To Vegas?

06:13

Yeah, like before you went and just like no job, nothing, like how did you get to that point where you’re like, oh, I’m just gonna take the leap? Was it just obsession with the art or like how did you get up the confidence to be able to do that? Oh, it’s been pretty confident. I just knew I didn’t wanna stay in the Midwest. Always wanted to live out West from a little kid. I had a fascination from Vegas. So I just moved. I didn’t mean I had a little money saved up, not a lot.

06:41

And I got a job not in gambling or anything. The second day I was here in Vegas, but it was an obsession to be one of the best. And, uh, you know, if you want to be one of the best, you got to hang around the best, you just have to, and back then, you know, there were no downloads and of course, no internet, no DVDs to speak of and very few VHS tapes. So you had to be, you know, in person. But once I got here, I was kind of on my own.

07:11

And of course I was very secretive. I didn’t tell anybody what I was doing. Obviously not my parents, no relatives, no friends. I think that’s one of the keys why I didn’t get caught. I didn’t go out bragging about it or talking about it to Will after I retired.

07:31

Wow, that’s amazing. So in terms of like, when you hit the ground, like, and you get there, right, and you’re okay, you have this goal in mind? How did you? How did you actually like, find, obviously, like I said, there’s no intent, nothing like, did you just start asking questions? How did you actually like end up in that circle that led you to Mr. CC in the end? Well, going to Gary Darwin’s Magic Club meeting, that already had been going on for about 15 years.

07:59

So that was really the catalyst that led to everything else. I was there every Wednesday night for a year and a half. Never missed a meeting. Because I was learning so much. And it’s just really a fascinating time in Vegas and in the Magic. Yeah. And how did you find out about the club? Was it just kind of common knowledge at the time? Or how did you ask the right questions to find out about the club in the first place? I probably asked some magicians.

08:27

Again, Gary didn’t advertise it really. It was kind of underground. He had to be a magician to join. There was no fee though. It’s just a really good place to come meet other magicians and learn. We had, everybody was there back then from close-up guys to Ziegfried and Roy. Well, not so much Roy, but Ziegfried would be there some. Even Copperfield would come in when he was in town. So, I mean, this was like the best of the best.

08:55

Yeah, you cannot get much better. No, you can’t. Yeah, that’s insane. I guess when you were there, because I feel like there’s one thing being there, right? But then there’s another thing to really take advantage of those connections as well. So when you were at the club, what did a meeting look like for you? And what did you go in and do? I mean, obviously you don’t have to reveal anything specific in terms of theory or whatever, or methods or whatever that you were learning.

09:26

What was your attitude going in and how did you kind of solidify those connections once you were part of that community? Oh, my attitude was I’m a student. I want to learn everything possible from these guys. So I, you know, kept my mouth shut pretty much. So trying to impress them, which would have been a joke and, you know, learn from them and they were real open to teaching and, you know, Jimmy Grippo would show.

09:55

magic to anyone. Michael Skinner was really friendly. Alan Ackerman, we’re still friends today. Darrell became good friends with him. So I mean, it was like a who’s who. And everybody was very friendly and open. And I, again, I didn’t, you know, try to tell these guys what to do. I listened and you know, was very appreciative. And I think that was one of the keys to being accepted.

10:24

Now these guys, I don’t want to make this upfront and very clear, they were magicians. They were not card sheets at all. Right. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I feel like that would be pretty crazy if you suddenly just start implicating Copperfield in this. Oh no, no. Actually, I never met David Copperfield because it was a pretty big meeting, usually 40, 50 people.

10:52

And they break into groups, the close-up guys would be in one group, the stage magicians, etc. And there’s a little interaction, but that’s just the way humans are. We, as farmer cliques or groups, kind of stay together. Yeah, that makes sense. That’s pretty cool. I think that’s a really good point that you kind of pointed out. A good point that you pointed out. A good point that you brought up. About kind of just being willing to listen and not trying too much to kind of…

11:21

Show off I guess like not show off but I guess like you weren’t there to impress you were there as a humble student And I think that is what’s impressive I think I think a lot of the times like especially like when I go to magic conventions You can see people like like I don’t know they’ll see like quantum or you so like David Blaine, right? Or whatever and they’ll be like, oh, I need to go show them this right like oh and this might chance to like impress right and like you were saying it’s like

11:45

like it’s not like it’s no judgment or like being rude it’s like you’re just not going to but sitting and listening um and being a humble student and being like open and and to them i feel like is like a really key part of it like just yeah like keeping that humble student mindset right and i guess is that something you would say you’ve kept like throughout your life is that kind of student mindset yes i’d much rather be a student than a teacher you know nothing interesting

12:15

It always begins with a question. Yeah, I love that. I like to learn. I mean, I’m still learning. That’s one of my great joys in life is to learn. Yeah. I guess for you right now, what are and I’ll get back to the story because I know I left people on a big cliffhanger, but I wanted to come in and dive into some certain parts of what you said. But I will get back to where it went after meeting Mr. CC. But.

12:42

I’m interested to know like in your current life right now, what interests you or what are you learning about? What are you still learning about? What are you reading about right now? Lots of things human nature. I study that you know psychology because that yeah We employ that when we’re beating the casinos deployed in magic etc. Etc. That’s probably one of my greatest Loves is study of human nature, you know studying mentalism. I know mentalism and gambling demos pretty far apart

13:12

But I really like it. So, you know, I could have one show of minimalism, one show of the gambling, expose. That’s what I’m constantly learning about and studying. There’s so many just unbelievably, unbelievable good principles. And then you tailor it to yourself. You know, you don’t want to copy somebody direct, copy the method, but then it’s all in the presentation. You can take a $50,000 trick. If you don’t present it right, it’s going to be a flop.

13:42

You can take a $5 effect and present it correctly, and it’s astounding. It’s all, you know, presentation, screenwriting, scripting the presentation, you know, knowing where to be, you know, if you’re on stage, the lighting, the music is very important. It’s all a big, you know, production, even though it might not seem like it.

14:06

That always gives a person something to work on. One day they’d be working on the scripting, another day the lighting, another day the music, et cetera, et cetera. And for you, if people are interested in these topics, like for instance, you’re talking about like human nature, where would you suggest people start that journey themselves? Number one guy in the world, five New York best time seller, is Robert Green with an E at the end.

14:35

Got a lot of YouTube videos. This guy’s the real thing. He understands human nature. Uh, if anybody, if anybody, most people are going to be magicians. I’m sure they know Danny DRT’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. Every motion, every word, he knows what he’s doing and it appears like he has no clue what’s going on. And I love that. I can’t get away with that. It’s just not my personality, but I really, really admire.

15:05

him. Yeah, agreed. I feel like that’s something like Pit Hartling talks about, where it’s like, um, he talks about this like performance versus non-performance mode, and how you can control the audience to think that you’re not in performance mode when you are. And I feel like that’s something that Danny Dorotis just does so well. Like, he’s just such a genius at like, oh, he dropped the cards. And you’re like, oh, it’s funny. But he’s in performance mode. He just doesn’t have any idea that he is.

15:32

Yeah, that Penn and Teller is just on, it was unbelievable. And I happened to go to Penn’s book signing. We talked briefly about Danny and Penn thinks, Penn Gillette thinks Danny’s the best card magician in the world right now. Oh yeah, he’s, that vein of like Spanish magicians like Juan Tamariz and Edo Tears, they’re just, they’re mesmerizing to watch. And like you said, it’s so hard. It’s like.

15:59

to you can’t you just can’t match their performance style, right? Like, they can get away with it. And they have that such like, extreme nature to them when they perform. But I feel like it’s funny, like, when I first watched my first like Danny Doherty is like, performance and like learn the methods. You just you try and apply it, you know, you try and put that like voice on where you’re like, and then you realize like, no, or at least for me, I realized like, no, this is not gonna fit my performance style. But the theory that’s behind it, like you said, it’s just insane.

16:29

I mean, he’s incredible. I could talk about Dimension with him all day, but I don’t want to do that. At least until my beer I have him on. But yeah, anyway, thank you. I guess getting back to where we ended up in the story. So you meet Mr. CC, you have this amazing experience where you get to go back to his house and he teaches you all of this and then you move forward into this place where you’re working together. Can you elaborate a little bit more on what that sort of looked like?

16:58

Oh, sure. So we meet, we kind of stay in contact and then things weren’t going real well. As out here at the time, I believe she’s still my girlfriend. I didn’t marry her. And we were real close to moving back to the Midwest. So we’d never been to California. We figured, you know, we’re close being in Las Vegas. So let’s go to California. And I wanted to go to the Magic Castle. And it was just pure luck, at least from my, you know, mindset.

17:27

that Mr. C.C. was gonna be at the castle. And he said, he found that I was going, he goes, well, here, we’ll hook up and I’ll get you in. Cause he, even at 25 years old, he was already treated like royalty. So we go into the magic castle and people were wanting to see him and talk to him and stuff. And this is before he became really well known. He was still really underground, but a lot of the insiders knew who he was. So, you know, it’s just an amazing experience.

17:56

First time at Magic Castle with basically a legend. And I guess I went to the bathroom and my girlfriend was there and told him, you know, we’re moving back to the Midwest. Is there anything you can do? So we get back from the Magic Castle, back to Vegas. He calls me up, says, come on over. He teaches me how to deal the game of Blackjack in two days. Third day, I had a job.

18:24

dealing blackjack in a downtown casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

18:30

That is so freaking cool. Yeah, and you know, I was a decent dealer. Of course, I could handle the cards pretty well. And I mean, he really taught me what to look for and stuff. So that went real well. At the first casino, I was not cheating at all, but I was analyzing the game every second I was on it to see the vulnerabilities, see the bosses, see what they watch for. So it was a very good experience.

18:56

And I did like a ton of research to know what’s going to work, what’s not going to work. I was only at that break in joint for about three months. That was long enough to really kind of analyze the game and know what would work. After that, I moved up to a casino on the strip. And then I started actually cheating as a dealer. I was also cheating as a player, but not that much and just, you know, not real strong stuff. And I’m glad I stopped that. Cause.

19:26

that probably would not have turned out good. Can you elaborate then upon what? Cause I know people are like, well, he started cheating. And instantly my question is like, so how? Well, before I became a cheating dealer, I was a player and basically pinching and pressing the bat, which means adding to the bat when I thought I’d win, like I had a 20.

19:52

against the dealers, you know, seven or eight up, hopefully he’s got a made hand. And of course 20 beats a 17 or 18 are taking chips away. When you got a 16 against the dealers, 10 up, you think for sure you’re gonna lose. Those are not the best moves. I was doing them very well, but they’re not that strong. And you know, you, like anything, you could get caught. My whole philosophy was the fewer moves you do, the better. If you’re not moving, it’s impossible to get caught.

20:21

You know, the best play that could ever be was my partner would come in and he’d win every hand without me making a move. Now that never happened, obviously, but that would be the best play by far. Never move and win. Interesting. Okay, and so I guess for me, like, I’m like, complete novice, like, in terms of like gambling, card counting, like cheating, like all this like casino scene. I love…

20:48

Like, I feel like it’s kind of funny because when I was a kid, I was like, man, I want to be like a scam artist. And then because I watched like, I watched Oceans, and then I watched like the real hustle, you know, and I was like, oh, that’s just the freaking coolest thing in the world. And then I was like, well, I guess like, I guess maybe a similar journey. Some people was like, second best thing is like being a magician, you know. Yeah, and a little safer.

21:16

Yeah, a little more legally secure. Yeah. But yeah, I’m interested to know like, okay, so it sounds all cool. And you’re using these terms, but I if I can get granular, like, what would one day look like kind of like in, in the thick of it, you know, like, what what was what were you trying to accomplish? What were you doing on your side? What was the person that you were working with doing? And how exactly did you actually cheat? How did you win? If that if that’s a good question? I don’t know.

21:45

Sure. No, great question. I was the dealer. I would have agents, as you guys would know, with partners come in. We obviously pretended not to know each other. We had everything down. It was all on a hat. You know, we were in complete control. There’s two moves I did. You know, you see the movies, they’re doing all these moves now. That’s not how it really happens. You get a couple moves down, you get them down perfectly. And that’s all you really do. Because that’s the smart thing. So the two moves I did.

22:15

First was called flashing. I would flash my agent his card before he made a bet. That’s a big advantage. So let’s say he sees anything through a two through nine. He does not have an advantage, so he bets small. He sees a 10 count card, 10 jack, queen or king. He’ll bet medium and whatever that is. And then if he sees an ace, he has a 52% starting advantage, which is huge. Yeah, you’d absolutely destroy the game.

22:45

So he’d make his bet. So he’s getting really good betting correlation based on the card that would be the first card he would get at the blackjack table. Then as I tucked my whole card, I would flash him his first hit card. So now he knew what was coming. He was sitting at first base, which is the first person to receive cards at the blackjack table. So he would never double down unless he got a 20 or 21. So he won virtually every double down, which is huge.

23:15

He would never bust with one card. If I had a six up and he had, I’m sorry, if I had a 10 up, he had a 12 and he saw a 10 coming, he wouldn’t hit because he was a dead loser. So he wouldn’t bust near as much. So I gave my agents a huge advantage. Just with the flash, seeing the first card before he placed the bet and seeing his first hit card.

23:42

We figured that was about a 33% advantage, which is, you know, in card counting terms. Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s like they would die and go to heaven if they had that kind of advantage. And this was consistently, this wasn’t just once in a while. Because I would flash every hand or every card, unless, and I want to get too involved here, unless he already knew something. So that we would win. And the nice thing about that though is…

24:12

We wouldn’t win every hand and we didn’t want to, that would be a towel. So, you know, we would win or my agent would win, but it’d be kind of ups and downs, he’d lose some hands, win some hands, he’d always win overall, but it wasn’t where he went in every hand. Cause that would be suspicious. Right. The second move, which is even stronger is I knew how to stack the deck. So I could absolutely positively give you a winning hand, you know, every time without any problem, I was.

24:41

extremely good at that. I’d practice, practice, practice, and I didn’t have to look at my hands. There was no hesitation. I mean, I had that down about as good as it could be down. Now, with that kind of power, you have to be responsible. So I wasn’t stacking my agent, a hand, a winning hand after every shuffle. That would be a tell. So I’d probably stack, depending on the play, maybe three or four.

25:11

stacks per session. So back then, I believe I was probably on the game 45 minutes. And then I take my break. So in 45 minutes, he get three to four stacks, which were dead winners. A lot of times blackjacks, but not every time. Again, that would be a tell. He gets a 20 against my 18. He wins. Of course, blackjack back then paid three to two. So if he bet 500, he gets 750. So that’s how

25:40

we never had a losing session because it’s just pretty much impossible with that kind of edge. But we took it, you know, we kept it where we weren’t beating the casino, you know, just destroying them at that with those moves because I felt it was a lot smarter and safer to have like five agents who I trusted and they would win but not win that much. So they wouldn’t get backed off or barred from the casino.

26:11

Because if my agents got backed off or barred, then I’d have to get new agents, and then new agents and new agents. And eventually I would pick somebody who’s gonna roll on. And I didn’t let that happen. You get 40, 50, 60 people, it’s just invariable. Somebody, maybe they have a prior charge hanging, drugs, et cetera, and they’re playing, let’s make a deal with the DA. We never had any of that.

26:40

And that’s why, because we kept it smaller, fly under the radar, you know, but these guys were coming in. But sometimes I had three agents a night coming in. So for those three rounds, I was moving the whole time. And I enjoyed that. I was like in my zone. I, I just was completely comfortable. Was not nervous. Didn’t look like a good dealer. Didn’t look like a bad dealer. I just looked like I was a guy coming in, doing my job, going home at night.

27:09

Um, the best compliment I could ever get after I left a casino, you know, just quit or whatever is nobody remembered who I was. They just didn’t remember me. I didn’t make many friends. I didn’t talk much. I just, one of those guys went in, supposedly dealt the game on the square and went home. So I didn’t want to, you know, didn’t want people remembering me. Wow.

27:36

I briefly interrupt this podcast to just share a little self promotion with you if I could. If you’re enjoying what you’re listening to right now and you think that maybe you’d enjoy more of our content, please head over to thedailymagician.com. There you’ll find 24 classic magic books for free and you’ll be signed up for our daily emails where you can hear and get more content just like this. Thank you very much for listening. Hope you enjoyed it so far.

28:04

and like I said that’s thedailymagician.com slash books claim 24 class imagined books for free and you’ll also be getting daily contact from us with more incredible content just like this it’s interesting because well all of it’s fascinating but um what you’re saying about like this small group of people is something that I think about like quite a lot because it’s I don’t know I remember listening to this like interview with Snowden where he’s like

28:33

by the way I’m not comparing you to him anyway, but I was listening to an interview with Snowden and he was saying how like all like real conspiracy is a group of like no more than like five people because like the larger the group gets the more chance there is that it’s just that something’s gonna come out. Absolutely. Yeah and I think that’s exactly what I’m hearing from you is that exact same principle right where it’s just like it’s just statistics like if you have 50 people

29:01

working for you and doing stuff with you, then there’s, yeah, there’s 50 times more chance that one of them is going to crack. Oh yeah, that’s the thing. Here’s an interesting story about that. Occasionally we would, I’d be involved in big plays, you know, 15 people. Now some of them I knew real well, but some of them I didn’t know at all. So we all had code names. I didn’t want to know their real name, they didn’t want to know my real name. And that worked out really well.

29:31

We never had any trouble, but that was the way to do it. And to this day, some of these people, I only know them by their code name. I don’t even know if they’re still alive or around, but yeah, the core people, of course I knew, you know, we were actually pretty good friends, but we did these big plays. Yeah. You’d have different people and you know, some of them were really good. And some of them I was thinking, wow, I wish we, this guy was not in the group. Just, you know, uh,

30:02

But luckily nothing bad happened. So what would like a 50 person plate look like? No, 15. 15, okay. I was like 50. Yeah, one box. Okay. Yeah, 15 yellow. Those were the computer coolers back in the eighties, which was like Star Wars kind of stuff. Cause there weren’t even really computers around much in the eighties. Do you know what a cooler is? I do not. Please explain. Okay.

30:29

Before the computer coolers, a cooler was, I was dealing the game with a regular deck of cards. You would come in with a pre-stack deck of cards. You know, everything matched, the backs and stuff. Ah, basically we just exchanged cards. And then I would deal in the players or agents would win every hand. That’s a cooler. Now the essential thing with the cooler is the cards.

30:59

have to be shuffled, of course they’re false shuffled. But the cards have to be exchanged. That’s what the casinos look for. That is the computer cooler. Now with a single deck, you can do the move pretty much invisibly. But with six decks, it’s impossible. Nobody in the world can switch six decks without it being seen. Well, the computer cooler changed all that. There was no switch.

31:27

What would happen, this is fairly complex, but you have a blackjack game. Everybody’s sitting down at that game as part of the team. It’s gonna take off the casino. The dealer’s also in on it. The boss is not necessarily in on it. The eye in the sky not in on it. So you had, say, five people sitting down playing virtually no money. So there’s no attention at the game. Then you’d have one guy standing up right behind the person at first base, which I was a…

31:57

player at first base, but the guy behind me actually had a hidden computer on him. Now, nowadays, you know, it’d be nothing, but back in the eighties, that was really a feat. Yeah, that’s big. Yeah. It always, we’d always do it in the winter so he could wear a coat because a motherboard was strapped to his back. He had the input in his pocket, not the toes because it was just, you didn’t want to make any mistakes. And then he had a wire.

32:27

an earpiece in, he had long hair, so they might see the wire, because it would talk to him eventually. So what he was doing is recording every card. Now this was a face-up six deck game, so it was easier to record the cards in a face-down game. And the dealer’s in on it, so we would pace it or time it. So our dealer would come to the end of the, you know, not really six decks, they cut off about a deck.

32:56

end of the five decks and then he had to fall shuffle six decks, which sounds really tough. But what we would do is instead of having a guy like me do it, who, you know, gets the job and in three months gets beaten out of 152,000, which would be suspicious. We get somebody, recruit a dealer who is at the same casino for five, 10 years, perfect record. They are less suspicious.

33:26

And what they would do is simply do the sky shuffle, which is created to beat the sky in the sky. Because the surveillance cameras are straight down, looking straight down on the blackjack tables, especially back in the 80s. And back then you had one camera for three games. So they were, you know, wide angle. And all you do is sky shuffle.

33:54

you break the deck like you would, you just riffle down the first half and then the top half and it goes on top, easy. Won’t fool anybody at table view, but we’ll fool the eye in the sky. Well, of course, all of us, you know, we don’t care. We’re down with it. We would have the couple of what we call turns walking near the game. So if anybody would stop.

34:22

And for any reason, start watching the shuffle. They would cut into them, talk to them and distract them so they couldn’t watch the shuffle just in case. I don’t think it ever happened, but we had that taken care of. Then right before my buddy or the dealer would start to shuffle another person, part of the team, we call them the fake BP. BP stands for big player.

34:47

would go to a game diagonally across in the pit and buy in for about 10,000 cash. What happens, all the attention goes to that game. The boss is the eye. So they’re all watching that, which nothing’s gonna happen there. It’s a diversion. And our dealer is false shuffling that six decks. So basically those cards don’t get shuffled. Now the brilliant thing we did is we would time it, actually I was in charge of this, we would time it so

35:16

As he’s shuffling, the new dealer who’s not down with the play would come in, tap the guy on the shoulder, which is standard procedure protocol. Well, once you start shuffling, you finished the shuffle. So we knew the new dealer would never get to shuffle. However, after the cards were put back in the, uh, shoe, the new dealer would actually deal off that shoe and lose virtually every hand.

35:45

So they were more suspect than our dealer. And the nice thing about this play is once the money hits the table, and here’s what happens. Say the five of us, the sitting at the table, dealer starts to shuffle. We kind of stand up, we do stand up. That kind of gives a little shade blocking the shuffle. And we’ll pretend like we’re together. And we pretend like we want to go to eat.

36:14

So as soon as the shuffle’s done and the cuts made, we decide to go to eat. And the BP big player comes up to the game and we don’t want anybody but him at the game. So he kind of nods or, you know, gets attention of a boss says, look, I want to fire up. I want to play $3,000 a hand. I want a private game. So the boss will make the game close it down so only he can play. So now the cards are recorded.

36:45

The BP is the only one at the game. We have a new dealer who’s not down with it. And the guy who had the computer now is standing off in the casino where the BP can see him. And there’s only two signals. The guy with the computer has to give the BP. One is how many hands to play. BP can play one, two, or three hands. And how many total hit cards. So he might get a signal two and three.

37:14

and have three hit cards. What the software and the computer was told to do is figure out a way to have the player win by varying the number of hands and the number of hit cards. And there were built-in rules, you can’t hit a hard 17, you gotta hit at least till you have 12. So there were no kind of really weird plays. And we would win 97% of the hands, we wanted to lose a hand or two.

37:44

So yeah, it was just, I mean, just stacks and stacks of money. It’s like the opposite of slots, man. Like the RTP just goes through the room. Yeah. So we did about a half a dozen of those in Vegas at the time. Wow. And the casinos didn’t know what hit them. Again, this was like Star Wars stuff. Nobody even thought of computers and casinos. Yeah. I had computers in blackjack that way. I mean, there were the, uh,

38:14

the card counting computers, but this took it to a whole different level. Yeah, that’s crazy. And I guess around that, I mean, around that time, like, yeah, computers just were not even close to developers. They are now, right? Cause that was still around the time that people didn’t even think like computers would ever beat someone at chess. Right. And so it makes me think like around that time, it must’ve been pretty like incomprehensible to think that a computer could

38:39

generate even could even generate that could even let you win 97% of the time. And I don’t know if I’m right in that, but I feel like that would be pretty incomprehensible. Yeah, exactly. Most people didn’t have personal computers. This was like 86, 87, you know, computers didn’t become popular in the home till probably the mid nineties. Wow. So it was, yeah, this was cutting edge back then.

39:04

Yeah. So it, uh, and so that’s the example where you had 15 people and some of those people, you know, I don’t remember them. I hardly remember their code names. Uh, but you know, when you’re taking off 150, 200,000 and that’s 1980s money, which is a lot of money, it’s worth the risk. We, um, never had any real heat doing those. I mean, the BP’s, you know, had, uh, stories like they were big jewelers or.

39:34

you know, sold yachts or, you know, multimillionaires, which they weren’t. But that was the cover story. We used, I was too young. I was never a BP. I was in my twenties. I looked like I was about 19. So you wanted somebody older, more established. Yeah. Cause the casinos are always looking for the young kids. They are more suspect than the older people. Yeah, that makes sense. You, that is the Suncott kind of type. You don’t want to do that.

40:04

Yeah. Wow. And so I guess like over your time, well, I have two questions. But first, I guess over in your time, like, let’s say like a normal session, right, where you’re just working with one of your, like, five agents, right? It’s just like a normal night. How much would you look to take in this kind of subtle way? And how often were you doing it? Oh, on an average, of course, there were variances, but you know, around a thousand. It would depend on the casino how much

40:33

you know, uh, allow before they really started, uh, watching. Right. So say a thousand a night per agent. Now, some nights I didn’t have any agents. Some nights I had three agents. And was that every night? Not every night, but most nights. Wow. We would, here’s the thing they do back the casinos would do back then, which was really advantageous for us.

41:02

The bosses would come in from six to two. I would deal swing shift because it was busier and you want it busy. The dealers didn’t get there till eight o’clock and they would deal till four. So if an agent came in at nine o’clock, the bosses on say the swing shift would see him, but he could come back at three o’clock in the morning and the swing shift, I mean, sorry, the graveyard bosses would see him.

41:31

different sets of bosses and they never talk to each other. So you could get, we could get two plays in on the same night with the same agent if we wanted to. So that was just another way we would make it more deceptive.

41:53

interesting how did you how did you hide your lifestyle right because like you’re saying you’re like this 19 year old looking kid who’s making i don’t know i guess i don’t know if you split 50 50 but like even if it was that sometimes making like sometimes making tens of thousands in one night right and i think like you said you kept like a very low profile um but i’m sure like you said like you for a second you were thinking oh i need to move out of vegas right you were talking about like we were going to move back to the midwest so because there’s nothing for you there how

42:20

How did your lifestyle change and how did you keep that under wraps? Actually, it didn’t change that much. I just, I knew it was not a smart thing to, you know, buy home. Suddenly turn up with a Rolex. Yeah. And that stuff never really appealed to me that much anyway. Right. So no, I just kept it in cash and, uh, just lived a normal lifestyle. So that was never a problem for me. And I don’t think any of the main guys. They, um,

42:50

Yeah, they just weren’t into that flash and all that stuff, which was smart and good. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I guess so I’m thinking I’m sorry if this is like kind of like this is what I think about with this sort of thing. And you don’t have to answer this, but you talked a lot about like human nature and stuff. And I guess like I know that for me, like, this is like it’s weird because like with casinos, right? We watch these movies like Ocean’s Eleven and whatever, right?

43:20

And it’s like, for me as well, it’s like you’re rooting for like the scammer, right? Which would technically be the, we should be like the thief, right? But it’s like human nature to root for what would be under like legal terms, like the bad guy, right? And so I guess for you, how, like, is there any, like, I, I guessing, like, I don’t know how to say this, like in a way that isn’t like, I don’t mean this in any like mean way or anything, or any rude way, I’m just interested like.

43:48

for you, how do you deal with that dichotomy in your mind where, you know, like, legally speaking you are, you were like a thief, right? But morally speaking, it’s the casino, right? So this is the feeling of like, well, the house kind of deserves to lose, like they make enough money already, right? And it’s like, it’s a shady business anyway. So like, how do you deal with that dichotomy in your head? And kind of how do you justify it? I’m not even saying you have to justify it, but do you know what I mean? I’m kind of just getting at what

44:17

What drove you to do it and why did you do it, I guess? Ah, the thrill of beating Goliath. I was David David Goliath. That was number one. Number two, see how good I was. That was the ultimate test. You fail, it’s bad news. And back then, I’m not saying now, but back then, and I dealt in different casinos, overall the dealers retreated really poorly. It was really rough back then.

44:47

So I didn’t have any guilt by taking their money. None. What I did, and this is gonna sound pretty crazy, but intellectually, of course, I knew I was cheating, obviously. But emotionally, I just told myself this is the way I’m supposed to deal the game. And I think that’s one of the main reasons I never got nervous. Go in there, deal the game, do the moves. Now, again, we would try to do a few moves as we could.

45:17

is you can’t catch somebody if they’re not doing the moves. So if my agent’s at first base, he gets a 20, he tucks his cards real quick. So I don’t flash him his first hit card because he doesn’t need it. Right. So anytime we could cut down on the moves or make them better, as far as that flash, what we would do is we would literally train our eyes to see faster. Wow. So we could see the card.

45:46

that normal people couldn’t see. And then we weren’t giving even a half of the indices, like let’s say it’s a spy, we give about a quarter of it. So you’re getting hardly enough to identify the card and done in like a quarter second. Now back when I was young doing this, I had better in 2020 vision and you just think everybody does. Well now that I’m older, I understand the boss who’s 20 feet away, who’s 50 years old.

46:15

He couldn’t see that card if we told him it was coming. But you know, we were still very, and we had all kinds of subtleties. You know, I could go on and on and on, but unless you see it visually, it won’t make a lot of sense. Well, we had the flash down where it was virtually invisible. Nobody was going to see it, but the agent at first base.

46:35

Wow. And I guess, like, when did you come to the like, when did you realize like, oh, I’m done? You know what I mean? Because like, obviously now, like, you’ve exited from it. And it’s been a while since. So how did it all come to an end? And obviously, because you weren’t caught, right? So like, it’s kind of like a Robin Hood of like, walking away, right? It’s like, so why, why the change? Yeah, why did you step away from it?

47:05

A couple of reasons. Number one, I told myself when I got into this, I was never going to get caught. I’m going to do whatever it takes not to get caught. Now I did this for about four years. It isn’t like I did it twice or something like that. I did, I estimate at least 500 different plays, 500 different sessions, maybe more. But here’s a couple of things happen. Number one, I went to Mr. C.C.’s wedding and I, we knew for a fact the FBI was outside recording the cars that went there.

47:34

Oh my gosh. That was not good. Jeez. So that was, you know, that kind of disturbed me. That’s like the culture of that. A few other things happened. And I thought, you know, I’ve had a good run, didn’t get caught, made a lot of money, and I’m just gonna quit. And I quit cold turkey with cheating. I still kept card counting, but card counting’s legal. So, you know, I wasn’t. Right, yeah, yeah.

48:03

No big deal at all. So, and that was just pure luck. I started out, yeah, well, in the very beginning, started out kind of as half, half ass card counter. Then I went in and nobody knew me. And then I went into cheating. Nobody knew me. Then as I kind of had these associations, I went back to card counting, which is no big, you know, legally it’s no big deal. So that wasn’t planned, but it’s very smart. So then when there’s a little heat on me, they can watch all they want it.

48:31

This guy always doing his card counting. And by then I had stopped dealing. So that, yeah, it worked out well. So it was partially to answer your question, partially we were all filmed at Mr. Cici’s wedding and that I started to think, you know, I had a good run and I don’t wanna push it. Yeah, that makes sense. It’s kind of interesting though, like to have like,

49:02

to have that self-awareness, where would you say that comes from? Because I feel like that’s not easy, you know, like that doesn’t just, how did you kind of like work on that skill? Was it just like setting the precedent from the start? Was that kind of like a big part is like, you said to yourself, I will like not get caught and I will exit if at any point I need to. Like, how did you keep that presence of mind? Because I feel like for a lot of people, they’d be like, well, you’re just printing money, right? It’s like, you’re printing money and you’re stealing from bad guys. So it’s like the perfect combo.

49:32

So how did you have the presence of mind to stop? Correct, probably by reading a lot, a lot of psychology and stuff. And I say I’ve done a lot of dangerous things in my life in a very safe way. I never felt I was in danger, no matter what I’ve done. I was, of course, but I never felt it. So that’s pretty much how I think I kept myself.

50:00

from getting caught into, you know, become, I stayed away from people that were just way over the top, you know, drawing attention to themselves. And this is long before I moved to Vegas. I never cared for those people. I thought most of them were fake. And especially if you’re doing something illegal, those are the last people you want to be involved with. Yeah. And we, you know, I won’t say none of us, but the close group, none of us were like that.

50:29

the outer circle there were a few but not too many and Mr. CC was very quiet, very humble. He was not the center of attention at all. So I guess I modeled myself after him too. And again we were the same age we’re in our 20s. He was an extremely smart person. Oh I didn’t know that. I kind of I built him up as this like mentor figure, which he is, but yeah I had an age. So yeah that’s cool that you were like around the same age. Now I did have another mentor who was older.

50:59

much older, about twice my age. And he taught me a lot of stuff. We never, you know, cheated together, but he was an old time. Burglars he’d call himself, but not, not, you know, just the casino. And yeah, he taught me some stuff too. And, um, you know, it was definitely, I mean, he’s kind of a legend too. Underground legend, but we were, we, him and I were very tight also.

51:26

So would you say it was a mix? Oh, sorry, go ahead. You were the magic, right? Yes. I got sitting right here what he gave me. You’ll find this pretty fascinating. There’s an old black and white photo he gave me, probably in the 50s. On the back, he wrote Eddie McGuire, Walter Scott, and Artemis, who were Walter Scott, phantom of the card table.

51:52

Yeah, so these guys were legends. He’s got another one, Divernin and stuff that he gave me. So these are really cool photos that I guess him and I are probably one of the few people in the world who have them. But he was, again, he was older and he helped me, get my head on straight and stuff. So I guess what I’m taking away from that is like a mixture of surrounding yourself with the right people and then also.

52:21

Reading. Having that, being able to do that introspective thinking that enables you to keep a clear head. Yeah. I was lucky. I love to read. I always love to read. It’s one of my passions. Yeah, same. I try and read like four books a week. I freaking love reading. Oh, great. Good. Yeah. And I think like you said, it really gives you such a clarity of mind if you read the

52:50

Yeah, well, absolutely. Yeah. Well, also, I mean, I could honestly talk about this for freaking ever, but I want to get a little bit into your magic and kind of where you are now. Okay. But thank you so much for sharing all of that. Oh, sure. My pleasure. I guess my last guilty question, guilty pleasure question is, now that you’ve come out and said that you did all of that, how come nobody can do anything about it?

53:20

Statue of limitations. This is almost 40 years ago. Interesting. So I’m honestly in English, but yeah. Number two, you know, how do you know I really did it? I did, but you know, maybe I’m just some guy just BSing about it. Yeah, you know, and you know, most of the casinos, the owners are dead. You know, they were in the 50s when I was doing this. If they’re still alive, they’re in the 90s and they don’t care, you know.

53:49

I mean, they’re in the nineties, they’re thinking about living that something happened 40 years ago. So, uh, in fact, I get sometimes not recently, but I do, uh, author signings, et cetera, with different people. And some, at least one time there was some gaming control agents had written books and gaming control is like the policing here in Nevada for the casinos. So their job was to catch people like me.

54:19

And this one guy, especially, he was around when I was cheating. But at this, you know, author’s book signing, we just talked like old friends. He wasn’t, you know, mad at me and I wasn’t mad at him. We just understood that’s what we did. And, you know, no repercussions or no bad vibes at all.

54:43

Interesting. I find that quite an interesting thing, like, especially in what you do in that card count scene, that there does seem to be almost like a mutual respect, not from everyone, of course, right? Not from everyone, but… Right. There’s oftentimes seem to be a mutual respect almost between like the commission and like the ones that are coming after you and those that do it. I don’t know. Yeah, absolutely. I talked at Willy’s World Protection Gaming Conference a few times and I’ve talked to…

55:12

you know, surveillance directors and stuff and nah, we get along fine. No problem at all. That’s awesome. But I never like, you know, say I never rub it in their face at all. That would be so rude. There’s no advantage for that at all. That was just being an asshole at that point though, isn’t it? That’s nothing to do with guard counting. I think they think I might come off like that and I come off completely different. And I think that kind of…

55:42

Disarms them and kind of goes wow, this is not who I expected which is exactly what I want Present day or back, you know 35 years ago when I was cheating the casinos. I just didn’t seem like the type of person do it Yeah Wow Okay. Well, thank you. Yeah, that was that was not just kind of guilty question because I was like sure how does this work because I’m like

56:05

you know, it’s interesting, it’s fascinating, I’m like, how can you just speak about it? But now that you’ve explained it, it makes sense. And I guess I need to brush up on my American law to know what the Statute of Limitations means. I guess that means it was too old, you can’t investigate it, and without proper evidence. Yeah, and there was no real evidence. It was all slight of hand. Right, exactly. And you were good at what you did. That’s another part. Except for the computer cooler. But everything else was slight of hand.

56:34

The tapes are probably long gone. They’re just nothing. You know, I’ve never worded.

56:41

makes sense. So in terms of where you’ve gone from there, obviously it’s hard because it’s your life right? I don’t want to just skip over 30 years of formative experiences, but in terms of where you’ve come from this card counting place to where you are now with your magic and stuff, how have your goals transformed and what are you currently working on? Currently working on a show in Las Vegas about my life as a blackjack cheat.

57:11

Nobody’s doing that. Uh, yeah, I actually did it. Never got caught. I can still do the moves and I can speak. So there’s only a few people in the world, you know, that can do that. So I think this would be a natural, especially for Vegas, you know, because there’s 30 million, 40 million tourists a year come here. You don’t need a big percent of those people to still have a big audience. So I’d like to get a very intimate show.

57:39

absolutely positively that everybody could see very well. You can’t see what’s going on, you lose interest. And it would be more, it would be a different type of show. At least this is what I have in my mind than a lot of the shows. It would be partial, you know, showing what I did, not teaching, but showing, but then also like a sit and chat. They could ask, like you’re doing, ask me all these questions in the hands of a writer. So it’d be like sitting down with a card sheet.

58:08

A night with a card sheet where you can actually interact with them. I could even have them come up to the blackjack table and show them how, you know, they saw the card or how to cut the deck to get the winning hand, et cetera. You know, in my mind, that’s a hundred percent winner. People will want to see that. It’s like anything else. You want to stand out from the competition. And this is a, no, that’s exactly what I’m doing. It’s not.

58:36

another magic show or another stage illusion show or another mentalism show. It’s completely different, uh, with virtually no competition in a sense. Yeah. No, I know exactly what you mean. It’s like, it’s you got to carve out your niche, right? And sell you. Exactly. Cause no one else can be you. And so you have no competition. Yeah. And it’s easy. I’m just talking about what I used to do. I don’t have to, you know, obviously I’m going to script it out some, but I’m mainly just.

59:05

you know, talking about the old days and showing the moves, which would be, for me really fun. And I think people would really, you know, it’s a performance. I hope people enjoy themselves. That’s the main thing. I want to entertain them. I want them to have a good evening with me. Yeah. Well, whenever that does happen, I will be there. So keep me in the loop because it sounds freaking awesome.

59:31

The idea of coming up to the table and interacting and seeing what the moves actually look like and seeing you stack the deck and all of that stuff sounds amazing. Yeah. I would love that. So you’ve definitely got at least one audience member. Okay, that’s good. But yeah. Okay, well awesome. I guess to finish out, I mean actually I guess do you want to talk a little bit about your mentalism or kind of like your… Well that’s… You know I would…

01:00:01

Obviously, if you’re a performer, you like to go and be able to perform anywhere that needs somebody, but a different act. The gambling act, you have to have a blackjack table. Otherwise, I’m not going to do it. It just wouldn’t be good. So you know, if you’re going to a corporate thing or somebody’s house party, the gambling thing probably wouldn’t go over real well. I mean, I might talk about and show them some stuff. So the mentalism though, to me is really fun.

01:00:31

believe that you can read their minds and stuff. I’ve always liked that. I studied a lot. It’s just really, really fun. So when I do shows, it’s mainly mentalism. A little magic, but a lot of mentalism. I don’t talk much about the gambling or who I was because you want to be marketable. You want to have, you know, at least two different shows. The best would be

01:01:01

have the show in Vegas and then do, you know, like corporate gigs, either mentalism or, you know, if they’re going to pay me enough, I’ll get a, well, I have a blackjack table, breakdown table and bring it, uh, just, you know, you want to be versatile in your, uh, act so you can fit the needs of your audience. Yeah. And if people are interested in that, um, you can head over to dustinmarks.com click on magic effects and have a look at, um,

01:01:30

your favorite memory. That was really cool. And you can buy it as well. Yeah, I mean, that’s a well-known principle, but I like how there’s a rationale for it. And then on one of the pages, there’s an interview with me and discussing a lot of what we discussed today, Jacob, but it’s a video that you can see. And I talk about meet Mr. CC and some of the moves. It was well done. So that, you know, get a kind of feel of

01:01:59

who I am, you can not only hear me but see me on the video. Yeah. And in terms of I have probably like two more just like guilty pleasure questions if you have time. Oh, yeah. The first one is you talked about selling a company you don’t have to talk about it. We don’t want to but you talked about selling a company recently before we started the podcast. I’m interested to know what what the company was like, how you went about selling it because I’m I love business. I study business all the time and

01:02:29

that sort of thing. It just fascinates me if you are willing to talk about that. You don’t have to. Um, but if you are, I’d be very interested to hear about it and the process that, well, sure. I’ll keep it brief, but little company might’ve heard of Microsoft. Oh, I see. No, no, nothing like that. Why two passions in life, magic and, uh, physical fitness.

01:02:54

And they both manifested themselves in an interesting way. Obviously, you know about the magic now. But I became really obsessed with climbing mountains. Oh, wow. That was another reason I moved to Vegas, magic and mountains. So I wrote all the guidebooks for this area. And then I started a business hiking club called the 52 Peak Club, which is- Wow.

01:03:21

based off a deck of cards. Each time you climb a peak, you get a card. Harder peaks are like the aces and kings, easier the twos and threes. And I did that for that business 11 years. I just sold it last week. I just wanted to get out of it. Some very good, rewarding experiences and some not so good. So we have about 3000 members.

01:03:51

Very active hikes posted almost daily. It’s very well known in Las Vegas, but I felt it was time for me to move on. I’m getting older. Climbing mountains is not easy. It’s tough on the knees, et cetera. I never got hurt. Yeah. You know, but again, that’s the thing I was talking about earlier. Always done dangerous things in a safe way because we’re literally climbing mountains. You do not want to fall. Yeah. But, uh, you know.

01:04:20

I sold that to a good friend of mine. I’m sure he’s going to do really well with it. Um, but it just, my passion was, it was done. I could tell I was done with it and I wanted to, uh, leave it to somebody who could, you know, run it and have success with it. But I, at this point in my life, I want to focus on the magic. That’s my passion. That’s my love. Ah, and that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life. Yeah. I didn’t realize like Vegas, Hudson.

01:04:47

climbing and start till I started watching like Alex Honnold because I know he lives out there in Vegas. Yeah, he moved here for Red Rock. It’s got some of the best climbing now we don’t do what he does. But yeah, we do nobody does to be fair. No, no. I wish people wouldn’t emulate him because they’re gonna get hurt. Yeah, but yeah, there’s lots of peaks. In fact, I named a lot of the peaks in Red Rock found routes to the peaks, etc, etc. That’s cool.

01:05:17

Well thank you for sharing. My last question is, and this is kind of a hard one, because I know it would be hard to pick if you’re a big reader, but if you were going to recommend three books in two categories, one just in general life that have impacted you the most, and then three in magic and card counting and gambling that you think have influenced you the most, which six books would you name in each category?

01:05:45

Well, let’s go with just overall start with the why by Simon Sysnik That’s how to determine your passion and stuff 48 laws of power by Robert Green If you want to be able to control Yourself and people there’s principles and it works and you know same author again Robert Green

01:06:12

What’s it called? I think the psychology of human nature. Really, really good books. You learn a lot. Start with the gambling books. Wow. Obviously my own, if you’re interested in that kind of stuff, cheating at blackjack would be a good one.

01:06:36

Uh, you know, I don’t do as many books in that field as I do in videos because they’re just, you know, it’s just better to see the move and read in a book. Now, psychology is better in a book, but so I’ll just name some people that I really, uh, you know, study, which be obviously we talked about Danny

01:07:06

Jermay, unbelievably good. Looch is very good. Banachek came up with some principles and mentalism that everybody uses. All those, those are all real good. Most of those have, you know, the video downloads now. They have a couple of books out, but the video downloads, cause you can actually.

01:07:33

The nice thing about video is you can see a performance. In a book you can’t, you got to imagine it and it may be way different than you imagine. But in video you get to almost all of them have at least one performance and you know, it’s not staged and it’s, uh, it’s really good. The other thing I do, of course, this isn’t really pertains to your question, but I go to a lot of magic shows here in Vegas cause there’s a lot and I learn every time I go.

01:08:04

whether I’m seeing Frederick de Silva or Xavier Mortimer at the Strat or Banachek or et cetera, et cetera. You know, you got some fantastic performers and you just kind of learn not so much their effects, but how they handle things and you know, the staging, the lighting, the music, et cetera, et cetera. I’ve seen, you know, kind of awkward situations and how they handle it. You know, they’re professionals, they handle it extremely well.

01:08:33

So that makes it really interesting also. I know a lot of your listeners aren’t gonna be in a city where they can see top magicians all the time, but here in Vegas you can, and you learn just so much, which is really helpful. So a combination of books, the downloads, the live performances, I think that all helps to become a better magician, mentalist, et cetera, whatever you’re trying to accomplish.

01:09:04

Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for the wealth of knowledge that you shared throughout the podcast. I’ve really just been, I’ve been enraptured. I’ve just been sitting here. It was like lost. I lost track of time. So thank you. Thank you for the stories. Oh, my pleasure. This is a lot of fun, Jacob. I like talking about it. Obviously you can tell in my voice. It’s, you know, it was fun. It was crazy times in a sense. I look back and it’s almost like, wow, was that me? You know, it’s been a long time. I’m very different.

01:09:33

and older but right now it was me for sure it just kind of seems almost like I’m talking about a movie I saw instead of my real life it’s kind of weird well it feels like that for me too so yeah I get it but not so much because I know exactly but yeah well thank you so much for being so open for answering all of my questions I really do appreciate it and yeah I’m a big

01:10:00

I’m a big fan of everything I’ve heard. Thank you so much. And I just want to give you the chance if there’s anything else you want to shout out before we close out. No, I mean, your questions were really, really good. I thought you asked me some great questions. I hope, you know, I was able to answer them in a way that your listeners will get something out of this. Again, my website is Dustinmarch.com. It’s M-A-R-K-S.

01:10:28

And you can contact me through there if you know, if your listeners have any questions. I, this is my passion, not, you know, just the cheating, but the magic and stuff. I mean, if any of your listeners are gonna be in Vegas, love to meet you, you know, go out, talk about magic, mind reading, whatever. Now I don’t teach as far as cheating moves. I will not do that, but I’ll talk about them if somebody wants to talk about.

01:10:56

et cetera, or, you know, mentalism, magic. I just, when I’m passionate about something, I’m like laser focused, and that’s pretty much all I think about. So for me, it’s just fun. The more people you meet, the more ideas you get. I think it’s a very good thing.

01:11:15

Yeah, well, thank you so much. Yeah, like, it’s been a pleasure. You’ve definitely showed that. And for anyone that wants to reach out, I mean, I reached out to you and I got a response back within like, I don’t even know 10 minutes. So you definitely, you preach what you what you share. I mean, I don’t even know that’s like the expression, but I’ve had that experience. If people want to reach out, it’s definitely definitely worth it. And also, I got a shout out as well. You know, you are a magic mastery as well. Thanks for being part of the membership. Oh, sure. See you in some of those.

01:11:43

those sessions as well. Yeah, I’ll have to, actually I want to participate. I just, I have to look into that.

01:11:52

Yeah. All right. Well, and yeah, I keep saying the same thing. It’s probably because I keep hearing my wife or crying in the background. So I get distracted a little bit. Sorry about that. But yeah, thanks so much. And we’ll end up the podcast. Okay, again, thanks. It was really a lot of fun. Yeah.