Quote Originally Posted by Charham View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Baron Von Strucker View Post
Jesus forgives a little card counting?

)–“Shackled by a heavy burden/'neath a load of guilt and shame/ then the hand of Jesus touched me/ and now I am no longer the same.”

So begins the popular William Gaither hymn. By popular, I mean Elvis once recorded a version of it, which is what it takes for a hymn anymore.

When I stumbled into a church on the outskirts of Las Vegas one Sunday morning in 2007, I was shackled with my own heavy burden of sorts. I had $80,000 in cash hidden on my person. It was crammed into pockets, stuffed into socks and strapped beneath my clothes. The pastor was just getting his sermon fired up when I slipped into a back row with all the grace of a stiff-limbed Frankenstein.

So much for going unnoticed.



The pastor stopped midsentence and stared my way. Had he cleared his throat or even made an offhanded comment about punctuality, I would have understood. Instead, he called my first and last name into the microphone, and every head turned.

Believe it or not, I had never been to this church. While I traveled to Vegas often, my time was spent in casinos, not churches.

Blackjack is a beatable game. With card counting, perfect decision-making and plenty of capital, you can gain and cash in on an advantage against the house. East Coast college students, known as the MIT Team, used the method to plunder casinos in the 1980s and 1990s, inspiring books and movies and making card counting famous. But people have been employing this winning strategy in casinos for 50 years

full article
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/0...ing/?hpt=hp_c2
the holy rollers documentary about the christian card counters is on netflix. watching it now. its ok so far.
Watched the whole movie, it is not very interesting so can't recommend it. Basically a bunch of younger "christians" got together (they all have hipster beards and drink micro brews, play electric guitars in small churches, etc.) to pool resources and share in the profits. Despite card counting and being fronted a lot of money, it appears they don't make money in the end. They rely on the christian angle to keep everyone honest and not skim profits off the top. Basically whatever you make you put back in the pool. Pretty obv what happens, people steal and the pool falls apart. I think the term is affinity scam, but basically people let their guard down when they think they are dealing with someone "like" themselves, same religion so no way they would steal from me.... one thing struck me about their technique, they hit these casinos hard with tens of thousands of dollars and get kicked out pretty quickly.