Finally Gain the Edge: Life Lessons from America’s
Most Notorious Card Counter

My job was to beat the casinos and get away with it. I flew coach, packed disguises in my carry-on, and slept in the backseat of my rental car with a rolled-up hoodie for a pillow, stuffed with rubber-banded stacks of ten-thousand dollars each. I used math to gain my edge at blackjack and turned the tables on the house until I had walked with a million dollars. Griffin Investigations named me the Most Notorious Card Counter in America, a designation I only learned after a chance run-in with the director of surveillance for a major casino chain.

I played more and won more than the others on my team. The infamy of the Church Team has been told (New York Times; NPR’s This American Life; The Simpsons; docu-film Holy Rollers, The True Story of Card Counting Christians). But now I am setting out to tell my story, which is about more than splitting tens and angry floor managers. It’s the story of how a Baptist preacher kid, failed writer, and unserious employee was transformed by a thing called Card Counter Mindset, which taught me to pay attention and rearranged the way I went about my work. Yes, it made winning at cards possible—but it also made everything possible.

Creative minds in business and leadership are always fine-tuning their strategies for success. I’ve got some wild-but-true card counting stories, I’ll even share tips and secrets from the world of beating blackjack, but my path to success transformed my thinking about success. In my talk I aim to provoke, engage, and challenge you and your team to apply Card Counter Mindset to real-world business practices and methodologies. What is anchoring your purpose and vision? What is truly worth fighting for? How do you deal with the pressures of navigating your goals? I am curious to discover if the business and life principles I extracted from Card Counter Mindset will also inspire your momentum.