Las Vegas Professional Gambler Documentary

in the middle of the Mojave Desert one of the most storied cities in the world this is Las Vegas The Fortunes are one and lost where lives are made and destroyed where The House Always Wins until it can't a lot of pain out here in Las Vegas a lot of stress a lot of fear Wham the bottom of the barrel one Gambler preyed on the casinos at their weakest moment and walked away with more than 15 million dollars in a single winning streak people say you do play perfectly Don if you have an edge if you play long enough over a large enough sample size of hands you're going to win eventually he swings the math in his favor did he cheat is it locked or simply skilled I'm Trish Regan join me for the story of how one blackjack player found a whole new way to beat the odds 40 million people flock to the Vegas Strip each year but most only get a peek at the spectacle that is Las Vegas you see it all you need to be a high roller willing to spend a hundred thousand dollars a hand someone like Don Johnson Don is as they call him in the industry a whale meaning he risks millions in the casinos and makes millions too he's a legendary Gambler he won 15 million dollars in one street from some of the biggest casino brands in the business his game is Blackjack and he hits the casinos just when they can least afford it when Don Johnson walks in a club dancers show off his initials and celebrities pay their respects the scene is all engineered by the casinos because they want to win his money I want Don to show me how he beats the casinos at their own game hi Trish so nice to meet you my guide to Las Vegas treats the casino like a battlefield he studies the industry its strengths and its shortcomings to know Las Vegas he says you have to start at the beginning so where we're heading right now Fremont Street Old City where all of Vegas started you come here and gamble uh more just to play around and have fun come down here because it's nostalgic gamblers often learn to play here because the bets are low and it's relaxed friendly the first Vegas casino is opened here back in the 1930s this is history this was the beginning of what ultimately became the biggest threat five miles south enormous tourist-filled casinos flash their glittering lights this is the famous Vegas strip and it lives up to its reputation gaudy but above all full of Promise possibility excitement two giant companies dominate The Strip MGM and Caesar's entertainment the last time Don played at a Caesar's property he walked out the door with four million dollars in blackjack wins since then the company is shall we say less welcoming upper management at Caesars took a position that my type of business isn't something that they want to build a portfolio on in fact it's the exact opposite I wonder why maybe long term they just determined they can't make money off of someone like me I can accept that that's fine he says he's been barred from Caesar's for life is that because he's too good we can't nor would we bar you from coming to the casino what we won't do is solicit him with expensive inducements to come to the casino while Gary loveman the CEO of Caesars may not offer Don perks anymore nearly all the other big companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Don just to get him in the door so if they want you to spend and they know that you can spend big they'll make it really easy for you to be here the catering to high-end players starts before they even think about coming here they'll bring a player from the east coast to Las Vegas the MGM property has the Mansion which is 29 Villas under a climate-controlled dome and you get to stay for free well nothing's free it's all factored into the game I'll give you a little secret inside baseball on on casinos Jim Murray is the CEO of MGM he owns 10 Vegas casinos and Don is getting Perks at every one of them let's say you're going to spend about a thousand dollars theoretically we're going to win 200 from you about 20 percent of the money you you circulate so the house Engineers a statistical advantage on average you'll lose end of the money plan so are there certain games where you have a better Edge over the player than others the best chance of beating the casino is with baccarat and that's followed by a perfect strategy of blackjack playing straight up craps and then every game in between has its different set of holds if you play the big six wheel that wheel that we always stick right in the front of the casino you don't have much of a chance my guys are going to hate me for saying this because we do really well on that if the house wins so predictably how do casinos keep gamblers coming back theoretically 200 I can comp you to induce you to come out here I'll give you about eighty dollars worth of stuff and the more money spent the more money casinos make now move the math up to a whale if a whale is going to theoretically lose two hundred thousand dollars I should be willing to give him eighty thousand dollars worth of stuff but you can't eat that much caviar you know even if I fly you from point A to point B I'm probably not burning eighty thousand dollars worth of fuel so the margin on the high end the margin on the whales is higher high rollers generate an estimated 25 percent of all Gaming revenue on the Strip but here's the thing you have to have their length of play the longer people play statistically the house is going to win which is why casinos will do just about anything to keep the whales playing easy Transportation very easy Transportation a nice room beautiful rooms alcohol well there's always alcohol food so whatever you want yeah they're going to try and customize a package if the player is big enough they're going to try and give them what he wants problem is Don Johnson is no ordinary whale because the more he plays the more he wins his biggest single night was at the Tropicana take me back what happened I beat them big I think a lot of it just had to do with a huge bet that you can put down when I had a three four five six seven eight hundred thousand dollar hand out there I won those very very difficult to lose if you win those big bets he racked up 5.6 million dollars in season it spread through the entire town and then when I woke up later on then I'd gotten several phone calls from different casinos asking if it was true and yet the you wanted to come play at their place sure I think at that point they felt a look I mean he's wanted there why not get them to come in over here we'll see if we get them to lose part of it back for all of a back but Don rarely loses he went on to gamble at two more casinos during that trip and won another 10 million dollars before he quit I guarantee you anybody at home watching this right now probably thinks the counting cards that's how he did it is there more to it than that monkeys can count cards card counting alone is not going to get you all the way there I knew that I had a better chance of winning than I did of losing against them so I took advantage of it people say you do play perfectly done if you have an edge if you play long enough over a large enough sample size of hands you're going to win what gave him an edge he says was knowing the game players and most importantly understanding the odds on the casino floor so it's all just math all of its math everything on this casino floor is math just like a Wall Street trading floor you're trying to find an efficiencies in the way they offer their games and when you find an inefficiency yes you got to take advantage of it Don found an inefficiency in the casino's perk system sometimes they give away too much there's a natural Collision of interest between the marketing side of a casino and the operation side of a casino the marketing side of the casino wants to buy the business they want to give away as much as possible to try and get players in if he could resist all the superficial enticements the casinos dangled in front of him Don realized he could negotiate something far more valuable it will test you test you a lot that's hard how Don Johnson turned the perk system to his advantage when we come back the Bellagio one of the most dazzling casinos on the Strip a lot of people gather right here we're outside the Bellagio hotel and they gather here because this really is one of the best views in all of Vegas you can see pretty much the whole strip you've got everything from Caesar's Palace there all the way down Treasure Island the Venetian back there and of course the Eiffel Tower high rollers come to the Bellagio's hide nightclub to enjoy one of the most expensive perks in the city wow I like this table absolutely gorgeous really neat what makes this table worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a night this red button okay here we go wow now I believe it you know it cost them 10 grand every time they fire these things though I just want to keep hitting the buttons the Bellagio and its sibling property The Mirage transformed the Vegas Strip in the 90s both were designed by one man Steve Nguyen they made him the most legendary Casino magnate alive today what it takes to Dazzle everybody today is a hundred times more ambitious complex and challenging than before when is the Nemesis of every whale on the strip because he's always inventing new Temptations to keep them in the casino from nightclubs to shows to celebrity chef restaurants and they're all coming here for the experience we've trained the public and raised their expectations a good thing a good thing for Steve Wynn because because when Don Johnson's on a winning streak he had to win new clubs to celebrate what is it about his properties and that are different than everything else here Steven's a perfectionist it's as though spare no expense if you build it people will come the winnings and they do they do thousands of them show up in these clubs when was an unlikely candidate for the most influential Casino developer in history how does an English major from the University of Pennsylvania wind up becoming Casino mogul the question even more appropriately how does a boy of opportunity take up a life of crime he can joke about Vegas's criminal history he was one of the first Casino Moguls without ties to the Mob winds casinos are financed by Wall Street and inspired by high-end hotels of the 1950s especially the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach I would go on vacation to the final blue and I would watch the people behave in this place with such Joy and happiness it was utopian and the guy that built the place and he marched around with his beautiful wife and the only thing that I could think of is it's good to be king and that's that's what it looked like to me he eventually would become king of Las Vegas but he started out small working in his father's bingo halls in the early 1970s he took over the Golden Nugget Casino in Old downtown but it wasn't until he opened Mirage in 1989 that wind got to show off his talent for spectacle outside a volcano explodes every night I think every developer demonstrates what he thinks of the public by the product he creates if you believe that people have discretion that they know the difference and will respond to it then you'll dish it up to them even if it costs more with the confidence that it'll pay off he says that kind of fun is the key to winning in Las Vegas keep him entertained and gamblers will lose every single one of them my father was a problem gambler he knew he wasn't going to win he just liked the game more than the money we'll go and grab the biggest players in the building I'll ask them off the Record to tell you why they're risking 50 000 a roll on dice why are you doing it do you have some purpose in money yes to amuse myself I like the game have you ever worried that you've had a problem with gambling you know you worry at times yeah you know you want to make sure that uh is your mind sound and it will test you I'll test you a lot that's hard how do you know when to stop I mean if you're up a million you're up two million what keeps you going to 5.8 million they ran out of chips Don says he wins because as much as he may like the clubs he doesn't let the Vegas lifestyle distract him instead he stays focused studying casinos looking for signs of weakness a couple of years ago he noticed something that would give him the Ultimate Edge I don't see as many big players as what I saw just five years ago I don't see the big action not in Vegas that just a result of the economy I think a lot of it as a result of the economy and I think a lot of the Asian players are playing overseas now so all the more reason for casinos to try and woo someone like you to get you in the door yeah man the recession left casinos vulnerable to an attack by a killer whale like him are you exploiting weaknesses where you find them I'm not doing anything different than what a very smart hedge fund operator would do on Wall Street he sees an efficiency in a market and he starts buying stock 0.25 million in the span of what less than 24 hours probably around maybe 12 hours at Night Las Vegas looks Invincible but fly over the strip at dawn and its secrets are revealed these steel and concrete skeletons have taunted the city for five years evidence of the biggest commercial real estate bubble in history and its spectacular implosion there's an awful lot of uh a lot of pain out here in Las Vegas a lot of a lot of drama a lot of stress a lot of fear MGM CEO Jim Morin is halfway through building a casino complex eyes of a small Wall Street crashes Banks stopped calling us back and we had 10 000 construction workers working on site and the banks stopped lending so it was very difficult four more Casino companies abandoned projects mid-construction do you think it's had serious and drastic and Lasting change on Vegas the recession in Las Vegas Stripped Away the scab that was covering that the companies many of them had a capital structure that was reckless in the tour and naive Steve wins luxury Towers now look out over the ruins of the echelon a casino project planned by the Boyds Vegas's oldest casino family in the your entire time in Vegas have you seen anything like 2008 never never seen anything even close to it Bill Boyd and the fellows that work for they're really nice people right thinking people they drank the Kool-Aid a little bit on this multi-use development but many in Vegas blamed Steve Nguyen saying it was he who started the commercial real estate bubble the new strip is it's like the house that Steve built before wind built his gambling palaces Vegas casinos were nearly impossible to finance most funded by millionaires or the mob and they relied on slot machines for Revenue I had a clear understanding of what to trust and what not to trust and it wasn't a slot machine win brings new ambition to Vegas targeting players with expensive taste these people have a pent-up demand for the good life now in my parents age there was a Cadillac a mink stole and going to Las Vegas or gambling and gambling was part of the good life that's what the swells did he turned to Wall Street and offered investors junk bonds High interest loans that incentivize them to risk everything on his Grand Vision when he did his Masterpiece of Bellagio with the Bellagio Fountains and you really get to go in and experience it both Mirage and Bellagio blew through their budgets MGM ceased the properties in a hostile takeover when had and lost you want to criticize or find fault with guys like us it's easy we're so flawed in many ways that it's a it's a turkey shoot if you want to go after us but his instincts were right his first strip casinos triggered what some might call a Vegas casino arms race suddenly banks are writing blank checks to anyone willing to tear down an old casino and build one to compete with Steve Wynn the Boyds a Vegas family known for building small local casinos are inspired to tear down the old Stardust on the strip thank you so this was all blown up in 2008 to make way for one of the biggest casinos the strip had ever seen cover 88 acres and cost a staggering 4.8 billion dollars four times the cost of Mirage three times Bellagio and almost twice what Wynn paid for Encore and win I don't know that Echelon was the right idea for them what would have been wrong with a brand new Stardust it was a great name something simple like that how about a 2500 room Stardust would have knocked everybody out no they had to build five hotels do you think in your heart of hearts there's an element of being a gambler yourself in business when we imploded the Stardust and started building Echelon we couldn't foresee the recession coming and when we shut it down in August of 2008 we thought well we'll we'll be down for six months to a year at the most and then we'll restart nobody predicted what came next including Steve Nguyen I had just opened two and a quarter billion dollar Encore I mean if I had benefited from timing at moments of my life this was payback time Wham hello December 22nd 2008 I mean the bottom of the barrel wind struggled but MGM was on life support the company had gambled nine billion dollars on City Center more than any private commercial real estate project in history so you rolled the dice we rolled the dice we were all in we were all in our stock went from 100 to two the banks said you know we're done my financial teams two dollars a share we went down to 1.81 actually a dollar 81 to share oh my God because people felt that if if City Center went bankrupt that MGM couldn't be far behind struggling Las Vegas was doomed but City Center opened defiantly in 2009. we restructured we raised 23 billion dollars of of capital where'd you get the money Mr krakorian several other Equity investors that believed in US believed in the team banks that did know us they get a lot of debt a lot of these companies have a lot of debt yeah how you know at some point how do you grow your way out of that I I don't know the answer to that the crash in Las Vegas sends shock waves through the entire casino industry by 2009 The Fallout is being felt across the country in Atlantic City casinos are desperate for quick profits and willing to offer whales major incentives Don sees this as his opportunity but right now he's no whale he's just an average blackjack player who needs to improve his game I don't look at myself as a professional blackjack player I only became a short-term professional blackjack player because they presented a deal that was so good that it was worth buying how Don Johnson transformed himself killer whale next less than two hours from the Atlantic City Boardwalk over the Pennsylvania border sits the small town of Bensalem home to the Parks Casino and home to Legendary blackjack player Don Johnson by on the woods going back on this side and the casino owns everything on that side Dawn shocked the the gaming industry by winning 15 million dollars at the blackjack tables but he'd been prepped for this moment Don learned to gamble here in rural Pennsylvania not at the blackjack table but at the racetrack he started out as a jockey you don't look like a Jackie hates I don't know those days it's a different lifetime ago you're a little tall a little broader six one to something you must have been the biggest jockey they'd ever seen I weighed 108. his days is a jockey numbered Don moved on finding work as a gaming regulator before becoming an employee at the old Parks racetrack work your way up and you're managing and then you're operating you become a CEO of a track and you're running things for a corporation and what's the next natural transition for me was is I'd never really crossed over to the player side that much but he wanted to gamble like the pros I've watched them as a regulator observe them I observed them as an operator of a racetrack but never actually participated with them in 2003 he quit to become a professional horse better he'd run sophisticated mathematical equations in an attempt to predict race outcomes it made Blackjack look easy and he started playing cards in Atlantic City to relax used to playing casinos before but more just recreationally not really for Big Money 25 bets would be a hundred dollar that would be a huge bet but over time he became a regular player those bets group soon he was wagering fifteen thousand dollars a game talk a little bit about Atlantic City how do you walk into some casinos in Atlantic City in the span of four months time and collect 15 million bucks it was a time when Atlantic City was I I think they were desperate for business and they were over pitching some of the games Atlantic City casinos owned by MGM the Boyds and Caesars began calling doc offering fifty thousand dollars in free bets just to get them in the door the deals were so good Don suspected Atlantic City was in worse shape than any other gambling city in the country Vegas has enough critical mass and they have a huge convention business some fairly major properties that can do a lot of cross marketing with different properties they own around the country now the but the cross marketing strategy that keeps Las Vegas strong also steals business from Atlantic City Vegas casinos anxious to grow profits outside the strip are pitching small Regional casinos throughout the country states hungry for tax dollars are embracing these casinos every single one of them overall I call it a win-win it's going to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in Revenue let's do gaming right and let's take the first step this year for Atlantic City New competition means big losses since 2006 16 local casinos have sprung up around Atlantic City and they're all siphoning players and profits from the boardwalk I think Atlantic City they're losing too much of their business now there's just too much competition in surrounding states started with Delaware Pennsylvania's put a lot of pressure on them New York has gaming now they're soon to be expanding in New York it's just a matter of time before it's going to go back to being a Beach town Atlantic City is a very challenged place yes what's your take on AC right now I am concerned Jim murrin is the CEO of MGM which co-owns Atlantic City's high-end Borgata we want to make the city come back do you worry at all that there's a lot of saturation in that market I do we have to be very targeted we have to remember the lessons learned in the recession and not repeat them not grab every Market just because it happens to be there not be a glutton for development mgm's rival Caesars has an insatiable appetite for building CEO Gary loveman has built casinos in Pennsylvania and Maryland that will compete with the company's own Flagship in Atlantic City well City that's the poster child for why it's been tough because there's been so much Regional expansion you're part of that you've got casinos everywhere well we do but it's a complicated problem in every instance we're an adjoining State legalizes and puts pressure on an incumbent state of course that's a business problem we have to solve loveman a former Harvard marketing Professor argues Regional casinos are nest as they drive business back to his Vegas properties a lot of locals are hopefully loyal to the brand so you're a Cleveland guest you've been treated very well at our place there now you want to go to Las Vegas you have two options you could just be a traditional purchaser online of my competitors offering or you could call your Cleveland host who would engage with his or her colleague here and arrange exactly what you want the right check and experience the right room type the right event access and that's the proposition that we want to deliver it's a proposition that does deliver for Vegas and it's part of the reason profits there only declined slightly in the past few years while Atlantic City lost 40 percent of its revenue and it's why Atlantic City's casinos were desperate enough to offer high-state gamblers like Don Johnson whatever advantages they wanted what happened to the old expression The House Always Wins the house can't always win you're going to see big swings when you let people bet 50 000 to 100 000 a hand once you're ahead of the house a couple million dollars why not just keep flying find out exactly how Don Johnson did it coming up Atlantic City winter 2010 crime rate's rival only those of Detroit Casino profits are in a free fall casinos will do anything to win back high rollers it's the opportunity of a lifetime for newly turned blackjack player Don Johnson he's about to stun the gaming industry walking away with 15 million dollars the key to Don's success what he negotiates with the casinos up front he'll negotiate for high-end players if you're playing big enough and they'll negotiate the discount policy how else do you have to be playing three hands five thousand fifteen thousand a swing 15 000 a swing may not get a player VIP treatment but when done how many terms did they offer you the right game with the right odds for the right discount policy why do you think they gave you such a big discount and change the rules because they were giving it to other players and they had some success in beating some other players don't realize who knows exactly what terms to negotiate for starters he wants big bets they were letting me play 25 000 a hand by three hands so 75 000 a swing at 75 000 a swing it's not that hard to win four million dollars it's four million dollars I didn't have four million to lose that was the key he doesn't have formal form a 20 rebate on all his losses if he gambles 4 million he'll only lose 3.2 over the entire course of play that matters I haven't worked in a property that's actually in my mind been dumb enough to get themselves in that situation Mark Oppenheimer negotiates with high rollers for the Parks Casino frankly some casinos haven't paid enough attention and have made millions of dollars for Don because they haven't thought through the map don't these casinos have mathematical algorithms models that they've put in place to make sure that someone like you can't come in and walk away with nearly 6 million bucks in one night I think they need to have made an evaluation on you as a player some kind of track record some kind of file some kind of past performance where they've now judged you as a player and said this is a player that we think we can beat why would the casinos think they could beat Dawn in the case of Don Johnson why is it that your Casino would be willing to negotiate terms that would not be as favorable to you but would really benefit the player more why do that well we tried not to do that past a certain point I mean we're doing this hopefully in a completely dispassionate mathematized way Caesars granted Don's request based on a record of his past performance visits somehow get logged in the computer so a particular person who plays extremely well there's a note on on their profile yes the note on Don's file said he was a mediocre player how did you suddenly become such a great blackjack player probably helps to have some friends that understand the mathematics behind each of the games shortly before taking Atlantic City for Millions Don hooked up with a team ivy league math phds did they help figure out how to best stack the odds well yeah the different mathematicians have different skills the mathematicians turned down Bloomberg television's request for an interview but Don says they coached him making him into what the casinos consider the perfect Blackjack plan I walk into a casino what are the odds I'm going to get versus the odds you're getting you're probably going to play a game that's 300 percent worse 300 percent worse 300 percent worse the odds a player like me is going to beat the house about 49 so while I may strike it lucky I won the longer I play the more likely I'll lose how discouraged still I believe in the statistical analysis I do and statistical analysis says even though the house has the edge I can improve my odds if I improve my game I want to win you want to win you need to do some studying before you go in where everybody can get the basic strategy card in the gift shop it's going to make you at least a better than average blackjack player this is a basic strategy table it lists each card and tells players when to hit hold and double down only problem casinos don't allow a lot of these moves so once Don secured the right advantages and discounts he turns his attention to the rules of the game you tweaked two or three things one way or the other enough a game goes from being negative to positive once Don negotiates his Edge it's time for battle at the blackjack table and make a mistake that's in your favor you're going to collect Donna those are like free bets art of Casino player continue every Casino Gambler in Atlantic City knows when you play at the blackjack table the odds aren't in your favor The House Always Wins and the rules are set in stone but what if you could change the rules and twist the odds if you change one of the rules one way or another in favor of the house or in favor of the player it's going to change the odds of the game Don Johnson did what gamblers dream about he turned the table on the dealers stole the house Edge and the casinos never saw it coming some players have specific you know desires or wants Smith is CEO of Boyd Gaming which co-owns The Borgata his marketers were so anxious for Don's business they allowed him to tweak the rules of play whether they want to touch the cards or don't touch the cards or whether they're dealt a certain way and in large part if it doesn't affect the odds of the game and it is not in violation of regulations that are in place then the customer can be accommodated but when Don played at the Borgata the rules he negotiated helped him line his pockets with five million dollars so walk me through the rules that they gave you that were so advantageous to you I'm standing on soft 17. if the dealer gets an A6 the dealer has to stand on that hand instead of taking another card so if you're sitting with an 18 19 20 or even a 21 you're going to win doubling on any two cards some places have rules that won't allow you to do that they will only let you double if you have a 9 10 or an 11. splitting hands up the four hands you're going to split the hand because you have two twos this is where the doubles the splits you can split this against the dealers too you can split up the four times and I've done it it happened that night at the drop I'd split up the four hands with doubles I had an eight hundred thousand dollar hand and it hit even with his rules the 20 discount and the big bets Don negotiated the house still had a tiny Advantage there is a house Edge built into it about 0.253 tenths of a percent not satisfied with those odds Don figured out how to tip the game in his favor you need to be better than the dealer because if you can beat the dealer you can beat the house there aren't enough players that come in that they're going to deal a hundred thousand a hand to they're nervous and Don keeps them nervous by insisting on complicated side bets and hand signals like surrender if Dawn gestures like this and the dealer doesn't notice it's a free bet for Don so you had to establish upfront all these rules before you even walked in to play the game yes so a lot of the dealers aren't used to dealing these rules they often make mistakes and make a mistake that's in your favor you're going to collect on them those are like free bets I like the pressure David Darby has been a dealer at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas for eight years he sees a lot of high rollers like Don what's the biggest winnings that you've ever seen millions millions but how does a dealer know if a player is trying to trip him up you know right away if it's a brand new customer you've never met you feel them out so when the odds at the table are nearly 50 50 it comes down to this psychological warfare between the Gambler and the Dealer so how does that unfold if you're the dealer and you start noticing that those bets are getting sizably larger do you call your floor manager the dealer has is empowered to do many things slow down the game call in a supervisor they could take a break they could change dealers do they teams they do not much of course they don't does it get emotional it's not an easy thing to do to sit there and play for hours and hours and hours and maintain the type of focus that you need not to make mistakes but you start making mistakes you're not going to get free play they're just mistakes so it requires a lot of discipline a lot of discipline can you encourage them to make mistakes is there something that you when you sit down that effectively helps to intimidate them or distract them we've had all kinds of distractions for dealers have porn stars play with me during the AVN Awards in Las Vegas I've had you know five six seven eight different girls that would pose as a girlfriend so it's just a distracted dealer of course does it work yeah there's always a circus going on to them if the more it looks like one giant party the better it is for my side of the table if there's a distraction they make a mistake what's the worst that can happen I get a free BET it's a great game I bring it on you know there's a reason a dealer doesn't want to say no to a gambler no matter how outrageous his behavior the reason that why we work in this business is because all of our income is based upon tips what we make hourly is is minimum so even if the dealer talks a big game Don says the player is in control they don't deal this type of game often enough for them to protect themselves from making mistakes and make two mistakes in a night three mistakes in a night I got two three hundred thousand dollars in free bets you make too many of those mistakes in a night you can't beat me especially if you're giving me a 20 discount especially if you're giving me fifty thousand walking in and free bets to start off with and you know immediately when they've made a mistake I think I've caught every mistake that they've made that was not in my favor and made them give me the free bet because those are the rules of the game Don has won hundreds of thousands of dollars in three bets by outwitting the dealers it's allowed him to finally erase the house advantage add in the special rules and discounts he negotiates before the game and Don now has an edge over the house so the more he plays the more he wins it's how Don Johnson took four million dollars from Caesar's in a year when the casino giant posted some of its worst losses ever it's how he beat the Borgata for five million dollars more than its owner's total profits the previous year the CEO who authorized his spending limit at the Tropicana fired it's how ultimately Don Johnson took on the casino industry in Atlantic City won 15 million dollars and became the legendary Gambler who beat the house can Don's success be replicated might he strike again coming up find out how Don Johnson believes he'll gain his next Edge over the he's a celebrity in Vegas a favorite at the clubs and a household name at the casino but Don Johnson is now banned at nearly every table on the Strip his 15 million dollar win in Atlantic City may have catapulted him to Superstar status in Vegas but now the casinos want his advice more than his business so he's hit the speaking circuit we need to know you're a player you need to determine whether or not a skill level has changed neither know the people that despite all the advice he offers up Don says many casinos are still vulnerable I heard you actually won another two million dollars at the Tropicana did the chop just not learn their lesson well doesn't that they were still letting people bet big it's for you were in 2008. this used to be a place where gamblers would go on vacation now it's a place where vacationers may or may not gamble while the casino companies turned Vegas into a playground of excess to lurin whales like Don today it's this non-stop party that's bringing back profits lost on the casino floor last year these clubs did 160 million dollars during eight and nine it was the only part of my business in Las Vegas that was growing but casinos can't survive on bottle service alone to boost gambling Revenue win in his Rivals MGM and Las Vegas Sands tapped into the lucrative Chinese market where gambling is part of the culture 70 of your Revenue comes from Macau right now the only thing I could say it's good to be in the right place at the right time on Vegas Genting purchased the Boyd's neglected Echelon site and hope and alerts Macau based patrons to the U.S is planning the first Asian casino on the Strip Las Vegas still represents the greatest vacation package available to World Travelers so I see Las Vegas surviving Don Johnson isn't so sure do you see anything on the horizon for Vegas I mean what's Vegas's future right now I think it's going to be a long time before Vegas comes back to its to its peak days I don't think it's happening anytime soon he's still studying Vegas trying to exploit its inefficiencies from his home in Pennsylvania he's building a software program using data to map out the gaming industry's weak points and reveal where a player like him should strike next well for my life I find it intriguing it's fun you know I love it I enjoy it and I'm going to continue doing it in another life you could have worked on Wall Street not done yet maybe I'll do it in this life do you like Vegas I like Vegas what do you like about it you can love and hate Vegas at the same time

Channel: Vanchize

Views: 2,141,106

Keywords: Las Vegas, Gambling, Professional, Poker, Sports Gambling, Whale, Money, Blackjack

Id: AggSsCrLb9w

Length: 46min 11sec (2771 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2015