Subpar - Jeff Ma shares the true story of MIT's blackjack team 'bringing down the house' in Las Vegas

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

On this week's episode of GOLF's Subpar Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz are joined by former MIT blackjack team member Jeff Ma for an exclusive, in-studio, interview. The basis for the main character in the movie '21' reveals just how accurate his story was portrayed, the craziest comps the casinos would provide his team and his current career in the golf industry. -- Troon Access is the ultimate way to experience Troon. Save up to 50% on tee times at more than 150 courses including Kapalua, Troon North, and Gamble Sands. Subpar listeners can save 15% on Troon Access with the code SUBPAR. Sign up and use the code here: http://Troon.com/access?utm_source=subpar&utm_medium=podcast -- Thank you to Rhoback for being a proud partner of GOLF’s Subpar. Use the code “SUB” on https://Rhoback.com for a generous 20% off your first order. -- Subscribe Now to out YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt5ESUx6omMUsMoEKvMTzlA Shop The Birdie Juice Collection: https://fairwayjockey.com/collections/birdie-juice Follow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/golf_subpar/?hl=en Follow Twitter: https://twitter.com/golf_subpar?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Welcome back to Golf Subpar with Colt Nost and Drew Stoltz. We are not in the studio this week if you are watching on YouTube. The Sleazy Man is in Florida and I'm at home in the nice cool weather of Scottsdale rocking my Roeback hoodie because it is finally putty season and thank you to Roeback for being a proud partner of golf subpar. Use the code sub at rowback.com. That's R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com for a generous 20% off your first order. All right, Sleas, let's get this thing going. No golf to talk about this week.

tour was off. They returned this week at the Worldwide Technology Championship down in Cabo. But I got to address something very important that recently happened. Oh boy. Here we go. People Magazine recently announced the 2024 sexiest podcast host, and it was the Kelsey Brothers. Did we finish second? I haven't seen the whole rundown of the list, but they finish first and I'm not happy about it. I haven't seen the top five. If we're not in the top five, then the People Magazine just lost all credit. ever sliver of credibility they had remaining, it's gone. They've become part of the fake news media.

Good. Congratulations to the Kelsey's. Good to see some good shit happening to those two. I haven't heard much for me. I mean, those two are everywhere right now. We got game shows coming out. We got tons of commercials and Travis still playing Jason in the studio. They're tough to miss right now.

So good to see them, you know, have something nice happen to them after the $100 million podcast deal. Yeah. And also Jason appeared on game day this past weekend up at Penn State, went out and tried to do the Pat McAfee kicking contest, and his Tim's did not go so well. But did you happen to see what happened leading up to that where there was a fan being rather rude? Oh, yeah, with the phone incident. Yes. And people are hating on Jason Kelsey for this.

I'm like, why do people just think they can say whatever? I mean, that's a grown-ass man you're attacking over there. And he threw your phone down. He's lucky it didn't get way worse than that. You should get a medal of honor for showing restraint that they only got a broken phone. a broken face. I don't know when we entered into the world where you just think you can say whatever you want, whenever you want, and not have any repercussions. Was it Mike Tyson's line that said, people have gotten way too comfortable saying shit and not getting punched in the face?

Yep. That's a great. That's exactly right. That kind of happened with him with the plane incident when the guy behind him was just chirping his ear off finally and then Mike turned around and just beat his ass. What kind of dummy do you have to be to just chirp Mike of all people? Yeah. I'm going to pick Mike Tyson, the scariest dude, the history of mankind. By the way, he has a fight coming up. I've been seen in his training videos. Yeah, he's terrified. He's 50, whatever.

I don't know how many rounds he can go, but if he hits you, it'll still hurt. I believe that's November 15th in Dallas at Jerry World will be the only time anybody in their scores any points. But, yeah, that was going to be fun to watch. I can't wait. 10 to 9. Every round looks like the Cowboys fight. God, we suck.

It's so embarrassing right now. I mean, I don't even get excited for Cowboy games. It used to be like I'd wake up Sunday mornings. I'm like, all right, here we go. Now it's just like, yeah, we're probably going to lose. Showed up in Atlanta. Got our ass whipped again. Dax on the sideline saying, we fucking suck.

I mean, you got picked up. This is just a disaster. You can't say anything on the sideline anymore. That's why they all put their hands over them. Just assume a camera's on you at all time. I saw that and I was like, oh, boy. From the guy that they just promised a trillion dollars to, probably not what you want to.

Can we commiserate for a little bit then? If this is what we're doing since we don't have one last Dallas Cowboy thing. Okay, yeah, go. We were down like 10 points. It's fourth and two. We have a $260 million quarterback. And we got our punter trying to throw a fake punt pass out to the right. And it looked like me trying to throw it.

I mean, that thing was wobbling. It was a wounded duck. It was horrendous. Everybody started to text me like, who does Mike McCarthy think he is? Dan Campbell? I'm like, shut up. I don't even want to talk about it. That shows you how much faith we have in our offense right now.

What did the deck? What is it? A hamstring? Yeah. I was on the plane during it. All right. But he did it during a throw. Well, he wasn't even running.

I don't know, Slease. Okay. I'm over it. Hey, if anyone can empathize with you, I'm making a quarter billion dollar boo boo. Yeah. Yeah. You're looking at them. You know what I mean?

I'm not saying it's a boo boo. Our team just sucks. We have no one. You can guess every play they're going to run right out of the gate. Our top two defense players are hurt. Can't stop anybody. It's not just DAC. I'll say that.

It's not just him, but 260 mill for him feels a bit aggressive. Yeah, you better go ahead and earn that. Since we're just venting on things that suck, TCU sucks, and it's sad to watch. We're like the Cowboys. No, we're not because we score a lot of points, but we just say, here, do you want to run it for 12 yards every single time? Right between the circles, go ahead, go ahead and do it. We're soft. We have no heart.

I'm the exact same way. It used to be like I would build my Saturday around like, oh, what time this DC play? I'm going to be watching. And I'm still watching it, but now it's just more like a hate watch, just a depressing watch. Because I know even if we win, like we won a couple games, like it's just prolonging the inevitable of mediocrity, which we've turned into. And it's tough weekend. By the way, Broncos got their shit kick too. At least SMU won a big one.

SMU won a game. We had something. SMU played awesome. 3133 at halftime went on to finish. Pit off, which was very fun. Got to mess with Larry Fitzgerald and our buddy Tyler Paco a little bit. Yeah. About SMU just running all over Pitt.

Awesome to see. They are up to 13 in the country sleaze. Ooh, is this? Just on the outside looking in. Oh, third. I mean, I mean, it's just going to come down to you got to beat Miami, I think, in the ACC championship game. Yeah.

So we got three games left. Let me pull it up for you right here. I know we got Boston. I saw it's Virginia, Boston College. Boston College is next week. And someone else that's not scary. So, yes, Boston College, Virginia, Cal. Cal.

The fighting Max Homas. Okay, if it comes down to the Max Homers, we're going to have to, that could be stressful for me. Between him and Thomas Sulo. Yeah, there will be some comments exchanged on that. You see Bryce in the house with the U.S. over trophy, just getting after it. I mean, they were, he was embraced. He was embraced by his people. Was it a good look or?

I only saw the clips. I just saw, like, the little Twitter of him right now in the call. I think they had, like, a convertible. He was in with the SMU cheerleaders. He had the trophy. Then I saw him in the stands with it. You know, all the students were going nuts. I don't know if it was a bad look or good.

It looked like they loved it. I didn't see it live. I just saw the clips. He's not scared of getting some attention. I'll tell you that. He just recently posted a video, him standing on the side of a street corner, holding up some sign about show this to your friend. If he three puts all the time or something like that.

I'm like, what does this guy doing? He's got free time. It's working. I'll give him that. It is working. Yeah, you can't hate on it. He's the most popular dude. The world is his YouTube page has exploded. He's a major champ again. And he's got a lot of time off and he's got a lot of money.

Shit can be worse, by the way. I can think of worse scenarios to be in. In other enormous golf news called Scotty Shepler, put his Yukon up for auction, benefiting charity. Did you see this? I did. I don't know if it's closed yet or not, but leading bitter for a good while. Mr. Hello friends himself, Jim Nance.

Yeah, did you see how it all, so they were down in Houston doing this reception. And obviously, Nancy was the host interviewing Scotty Sheffler and they were talking about it. And the top bit, I mean, this thing's old. It's got over 300,000 miles on it. The top bit at the time was like 15,000. And Jim just comes in. He's like, you know what? Let's get this going 50,000.

So I don't know if he ended up with it or like you said, the bid's still going. But Nance just said, let's get this thing out of the dirt and raise some money for charity. Yeah. What kind of guy he is? Yeah, I don't think he even wants the Yukon delivered to his house, probably. I think he just wants to give some money to charity, but it could be a nice little collector's piece. I want it to be delivered to his house at Pebble Beach, and at AT&T this year, I would like him to drive it to the TV compound. The things are old trusty, dude, 200,000 miles on that bad boy.

Still ticking. It's wild. American made. Love that. Shout out to Nancy. Yeah. Tuesday. Tuesday.

Here we go, baby. Big day. Yeah. Should we get into some politics? I got, here's my take on politics. Yeah, who'd you vote for? Everyone just leave me the fuck alone. I'm so tired of the texts and the calls.

I don't know if it's because, like, Arizona's like a battleground state or what, but the amount of spam phone calls and text messages are bordering on criminal right now. Well, Slees, we are filming this on Sunday evening. And so far, just today, I have had at least 10 political texts where it says, you know, at the end, type in stop to opt out. I'm like, God damn it, stop everything. Just leave me alone. And then during football and everything else you watch on TV, every single commercial is a political commercial.

I'm like, we all just please leave us alone. Go away. Your TV commercial is not going to sway my vote. I just want this thing to be over with. I'm interested to see who wins. I'll be tuned in Tuesday night. It's going to be a juicy, juicy Tuesday. Although Arizona, we take like two weeks to figure out who won our state,

so we're still in Stone Ages. Yeah, but I'm interested to see whoever wins. I'm wondering how the loser takes it. I don't think it's going to be that gracious. Just a very, just a, hey, well-played, good game. It's a little handshake line out there. Speaking of all the, like, staying on the calls for a minute, has anyone in the history of voting gotten a phone call that's a recording of somebody talking about a candidate?

Like, you know what? I was going to vote for the other guy, but now after listening to this voice recording, I just, I just, you just got me. You flipped me. Like, it seems like so much wasted time and money. nobody is listening to those things and nobody, it sure as hell not swaying anybody. If anything, I think you could be like, this side calls me too much. I'm going the other way.

Well, I don't know which side's calling me because I just don't answer. I don't answer it and then hang up. I don't even let them go to voicemail. But Tuesday will be very interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. But on some much better news, you and I, Friday night, Arizona Cancer Foundation for children, we were in the building there. They raised a ton of money for a great organization.

And I will say there are some golf items up for bid. And how about, we talked about the Rider Cup prices on here and on our Sirius XM show. There was a package for tickets to the International Pavilion, which is air conditioning, and there's bars in there. It includes your food. It does include your booze. But we talked about how crazy the prices are. They sold two sets of Rider Cup tickets to the International Pavilion for every day of the Rider Cup.

22,000 a pop. 750 feels like a bargain, doesn't it? God, damn. I love it. Hey, but it's for the kids. It's a very good call. That's in the same vein as Jim Nance spent a 50 grand on a 2,000 mile Yukon. That's worth 50 miles.

I think it was, hey, I want to go to the Ryder Cup, but also I'm looking to help out some kids in need. They do a fantastic job with that event. Shout out to Max Homa and his wife, Blasey, get involved in that deal as well. And it's turned into a monster thing. Coles Wendell performing this year afterwards, too. It's a real event. It was awesome. Always fun to be there.

Raised a lot of money, which was great to see. look forward to going back every single year. All right, let's get to our guests this week because this one's a different one for us, and it is a lot of fun because you and I, we like to fire. We like Las Vegas. And nobody does it better than this man right here, Jeff Maugh, who is now the chief digital officer for Trune Golf, but lived a rather interesting life.

He was the head of the MIT Blackjack team back in the day. Here's Jeff Maugh on Golf Subpar. All right, if you are a man or woman who enjoys making a Wager you're going to find today extremely fascinating. Joining us today, we have the basis for the main character in the book, Bringing Down the House, the movie 21 of the MIT Blackjack Team, now Chief Digital Officer for Trune Golf Man, does it all. Jeff Ma in the house.

Jeff, how are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. It's going to be fun. Yeah, a little gambling. Coming from two terrible gamblers, this is right up our hour. This is way more exciting than talking to Gary Woodland about golf. Wait.

You know what's going on in that wonderful brain? Not even close. But the Trun Golf, you're going to be. Golf for yourself. You got, pick up the game, got more serious about it during COVID. How did you find your way from what you were doing prior to this, which is also very interesting, to now with Trun Golf? Yeah. So right around when COVID started, I realized, like, I just had my second kid.

You know, no one was doing anything socially. And I was like, I got to do something. So I was like, I want to try to get better at golf. I had been someone that had played for many years, but I only played two or three rounds a year. And it was mostly as a vehicle to go drink with my buddies. And so I was like, I want to get better at golf. And so I started playing and practicing. I started taking lessons.

And, you know, I got from like a 22 down to a 14. And then when I, when COVID ended, during COVID, I was working Microsoft. And when COVID ended, I was like looking for something new to do because, like, there was a lot happening in the world. And, like, golf seemed like a really interesting opportunity because there just seemed like a lot of parallels between what I had worked in the hospitality industry for a little while, like helping hotels price their, rooms. And I was like, it's kind of similar to golf where golf needs to be better at pricing their rounds or better at like understanding how to run their business. And so I saw a ton of parallels. And so I looked for an opportunity. I also knew with like two young kids, there was no way I was

going to start another company. So I wanted to join a company with some kind of scale. And Trune has like this unique position in golf where they, you know, have relationships and manage up, you know, around 550 golf courses. So right away, you have distribution. Right away, you have customers. And like, I started talking to Tim Shantz and some of the TPG guys that own Trune and really started, you know, kind of like convincing them that I could help them by building out technology for them that would help them better connect to golfers and really help golfers play more golf and enjoy more golf. So it just become a natural thing. We need to be a part of that. Then we could play 850 member guests a year.

Yes. Yeah. They're not going to be hard to spread them out. But they have multiple member guest events. I'm sorry. We don't have to spread them out. One a week is all. How's your game now that you're going to play? So that's kind of what I want to get to a single digit. So I get invited to member guests. That's kind of like my goal because I heard you guys say this on the podcast. The other, it's member guest season.

And I want to be part of that, right? Like I want to be able to play member guests. So that's kind of my goal. But unfortunately with this trune job, which you think would cause me to play more golf, I actually play less golf because I'm unfortunately working, which is a tough thing to have to do all the time. I think your sweet spot in the member guest world would be with like a really good player. Someone like a plus handicap.

They love guys on your team with 14 pops. Are you trying to sell ourselves right now? You know what I mean? So if you belong to any club, I'd more than be willing to complain. I'm high variance. I'm dangerous. But if you could just chip in a few, like that's where I think that's the sweet spot, the sweet spot for you.

Yeah. Well, all right. I like it. I'm going to put that on my. Yeah. Don't get too much. Maybe get to a single digit, but still claim like a 12. Yeah.

That's the real sweet spot. Well, you obviously love to play. You also like to make a couple wagers on some golf. your podcast is a gambling golf podcast. Yes, it's called Bet the Process. I do it with Rufus Peabody. Rufus is probably the number one golf better in the world. Is that his real name?

Rufus P. Buddy. That is a sick name. Yeah. That's perfect, isn't it? Yeah. He's a wizard. He's a wizard. He's a wizard.

He's a podcast. It's just Rufus is a dog's name because that's a dog's name. So, yeah. So y'all break down pretty much every professional event. Yeah, well, we don't do, we do golf around the majors, usually. We do like, right now we're doing a lot around the NFL. So we've been doing. a lot with some of the new, it's a, it's a cross section between analytics and sports betting. So it's,

it's pretty like nerdy. Like we get into like the data and things like that. But we have people on, like, you know, Kevin Clark. I don't know him from, from ESPN. And we have, you know, we've had a bunch of analytics guys on. One guy that was actually like amazing it. He actually models like tails. So like outcomes, like very low probability outcomes that might be higher probability than you believe, which is a really good way to beat same game parley. So same game parley's are something that like the, this is different than I do it. Same game parlays are like, you know, they are the reason that all these sports books are doing well right now. Because typically the hold or the advantage that they have or the average better is so high.

But this guy actually knows how to model these things. He was actually, he writes this like newsletter and he was talking about how he thinks that like this week, he was saying before the game that James Winston gets, we'll get the ball downfield, and the Ravens have struggled with people that throw the ball downfield. And he was basically saying, like, take a shot on the, he was basically saying, same game parlay, James Winston overs, and the Brown's money line. Wow. And like everyone was on the Ravens on that because like, oh, Jeff, that had been helpful a few days ago.

Yeah. Well, you know how we do it? We look at it, but oh, that seemed fucking sucks. And then we bet the other one. That's a good way to do it. I've had eight in a row on our show. Yeah. There go.

Maybe you just don't know how much time I actually spend. Yeah, I need to see your models. Maybe me and Rufus exchange some text. I'd like to see your models. His model is in his mind. Yeah. It's like a computer in his mind. It's a lot.

Like how much time we all spend or for him since if he's breaking down a game like actually like leading into the weekend? Is it hours upon hours upon hours or is it just? Yeah. I mean, he spends, he spends, it's his full-time job. Yeah. Like these guys that are, we have on. It's their full-time jobs.

That's what they do. They spend all the time building models, looking at data, improving models, breaking games down. Is it hard for you guys being like, all right, Rufus is the best golf game? Let's just use that, for instance. Is it hard getting bets down? You know,

casinos, can they identify like, hey, these guys are too good? It is hard getting bets down. Like, there's a lot of, you know, like, these people, like, have a network of people to get down money for them because they can't get it down themselves. And, like, that's a lot of what the, professional betters are lamenting about like the legalized gambling in the U.S. is that all these sports books are, you know,

banning them if they win, right? They don't want winners to come in there. And so, yeah, so it is tough. Like part of the game is figuring out how to get down quietly. Yeah. I'm curious about the golf, because I think golf's just so fascinating because you have 144 guys out there and anyone can win at any time.

You have no idea what's going to go out there for the most part with weather, bad breaks all here and there. And like to break it down for a guy like that who's not out there every week, seeing what's going on in person. Like you don't know if Scottie Shephler tweaked his neck before he went out there and teed off on Saturday. Or maybe you do. Maybe that's why you're great.

Well, I think injuries are what we call like information asymmetry, meaning like you know something or that the rest of the world doesn't know. I think that's a tough thing to do. You need like insiders. Like you guys probably know this kind of stuff better. You know, there was a story of, I won't say who it is, someone we know, who is playing with a famous golfer and saw that golfer just. in his head shanking and kind of told us like, hey, this guy's not playing particularly well.

And so, you know, that matters. That's like a little sleeve of the rest of this data. It's tough because sports betting, there's no real regulations around the concept of like insider trading or anything like that. Like what information is fair? You know, like that's, I think that is like a general worry of sports betting. Like if you have like a trainer of a professional team knowing what's going on and passing information out. And I think that's something that like leagues need to be very, very wary of. But yeah, injury information is huge. And like, you're not even top.

Like, just even some of the stuff they're playing around now in college. Like these college kids are injured and no one knows about it. No one talks about it. Do you think college, I mean, sports gambling is just going to continue to go up and up and up? Yeah, I do. And there's too much money at stake. And, you know, we don't even have like Texas or California legalized yet. So when those do, that's going to be a huge opportunity for these sports books to grow.

It's about the oldest industry in the world pretty much gambling. Yeah, I mean, and the thing is a lot of the regulations still kind of suck. The taxes are big, so there's not a lot of innovation. But eventually, like, a lot of these companies are going to, like, fail. And so probably there'll be other companies that come in and they'll probably have to lower the barrier to entry for these guys to come in. So I think there's going to be growth. I think there's been some consolidation, though, because a lot of these small companies are going to fail. So you're going to consolidate.

You're going to have, like, two or three big books, you know, Fandual, Draft Kings, whatever. But I do think there'll be room for some challenger brands to come out eventually, hopefully, like, that do things differently. Like there's companies that are doing exchanges. So they're not like you're betting against the book. You're betting against someone else. And those are interesting. Like obviously there's some of these other companies that are kind of like

skirting the lines a little bit of sports betting, whether it's like underdog or prize picks. And like those are like different kind of sports betting. So it'll just be nice to see like more innovation. Right now there's not like a ton of innovation. Same game partly is they're like the biggest innovation that's happened. And you know, they're like preying on a lot of the mentality that we all have.

We want to bet a little to win a lot. And we also have a narrative in our heads about what might happen. They're like, oh, yeah, we want, you know, DAC over Cowboys' Money Line, CD over, that kind of stuff. Our same game parlay is kind of like the sportsbook equivalent of slot machines in a casino where it's like, I'm going to put a quarter in, but I can win 50,000. I mean, I think it's more similar to like lottery mentality a little bit. Like I'm going to bet a little to win a lot. I don't care if the odds are shitty. Like that's the classic thing with like long shots in horse racing are.

bad bets usually because as humans we don't know the difference between bad odds and really really bad odds and so we're happy to take really you know like you'll hear people so like oh it's great value this this was 100 to 1 or something like that well probably should have been a 1 so it wasn't really great value makes sense interesting same game parley is so fun though yeah but i laugh at my buddies that bet with books or whatever and they're like oh I'm about almost to my payout number so they start betting six and seven game parley's I'm like dude you couldn't pick one game right with two teams involved how are you going to get six or seven yeah they're nuts yeah yeah sports betting but it's I'm glad it is finally the taboo has been kind of lifted,

and now you can do it. Once they get Texas and California, it's going to skyrocket. Let's go to another form of gambling that we love. I know you talk about this a lot, but as I mentioned, you're the basis for the main character in the movie 21, the MIT Blackjack team. I mean, there's nobody our age that doesn't know about that. And I believe, were you the one that took the story

and like, hey, this would make a great book and movie and initially pitched it? So Ben Messerick was a writer. He'd written six books before, but his career is kind of out of crossroads. he had business school applications out, was contemplating not being a writer anymore. I said, hey, Ben, I got a great idea for your next book. And says, what is?

And I said, well, me and my buddies from MIT, we go to Vegas and we use Matt to beat the casinos. And he kind of, like, gave me this glossy look. And he's like, I don't think anyone wants to read a book about a bunch of MIT nerds. And then, like, I don't know, a month later, we took him to Vegas. And he goes, oh, my God, it's so cool, we should write a book about this. And I'm like, oh, yeah, great idea. And then we went to his publisher. We said the same thing.

Like, hey, we got this great story for Ben's next book. And she was like, you know what? it sounds like an interesting story, but it sounds like a, you know, a magazine article. No one wants to read a book about a bunch of MIT nerds. And then we didn't listen to where we wrote, Bring Down the House, became a New York Times bestseller, someone that we no longer talk about, read it and really liked it and wanted to turn it into a movie.

And so we ended up turning into a movie called 21, which was number one in the box office two weeks in a row, made $150 million off a $35 million budget. You know, Bring Down the House was a New York. Times bestseller for over a year. It's, it was, and then Ben went on to write the accidental billionaires, which got turned into the social network and which won an Oscar. So Ben won an Oscar, but like I basically made Ben who he is today.

That's right. Ben, give him an Oscar. Yeah. I have an Oscar theoretically. And, I mean, Astero. Honorary. So let me ask you this, because I have read the book and I've actually rewatched the movie again yesterday just before this.

Oh, thank you. Did you see my beautiful scene in there? Yeah. You're a great deal, by the way. I am. Jeffrey. Thanks. How accurate are they?

Is the book maybe more accurate than the movie? Are they both? I mean, so the book is pretty accurate in many ways. And then the movie kind of like takes a lot of the actual story and just like bastardizes it. And it's because of the vehicle, like a movie being two hours and, you know, like having to appeal to mainstream, they got to like dumb all these things down. Like a classic thing is like I took my dad to the premiere in Las Vegas. And when we were walking to the premiere, I was like, dad, I got two things. a bad news for you and he said what is and I said well in the movie I'm white and you're dead so

like because they they made me from a single which one's worse yeah who's more pissed uh I don't know he had a hard time figuring out which he's more upset about on that one so good that's so good that's beautiful how did it all get started like in the movie obviously they recruited you you come and play was that was that pretty realistic uh yeah so I had a couple friends that were doing it and they were my roommates and like every weekend they were like leaving and I'm like where the hell you guys are going and they're like we're going to Vegas because we're playing blackjack and I'm like okay can I can I do this and they're like yeah then finally they told me how much money they were making and I'm like oh can I really do this and so I started I learned and got recruited

kind of like taught and eventually you know really you know moved up the ladder to the point where I was like the leader so how many how many people were on the actual team and like and how long did it take you to where you were. There are a lot of different teams. So like a lot of people will say, oh, as part of that team and there was a lot of MIT blackjack teams. My core group was probably like six or seven of us. And then there were also people that kind of like came in and out over the years. We did it for about seven years. So there were people that came in and out during that time. It's like the seals. Yeah. So was this like the MIT, you said there's a bunch of different teams. Was this like a known thing at MIT like all the students knew about this? Or was this hush,

I don't, I don't think everyone knew about it. It definitely wasn't like hush, hush. It was, people didn't talk about it that much, but it was like, again, if you go back to the error, which is like probably like 1990 to 2000, there are going to be like a litany of people that were part of this or know about it or had heard about it. You know, it's like it's like somewhat like of like a secret society, but that isn't that secret, you know, kind of thing. All right. Take me through first trip to Vegas. Go to the squad. Yeah. You're getting ready to go in.

Yeah. First time to play. What was it like? Mirage. Mirage. back when the Mirage was the shit. It just makes me so sad that it's like, I used to say the mirage was the most tropical place in the world,

even more than any place in the tropics. It was like, you know, waterfalls. And so we went to the Mirage. We're staying in like a two-floor suite in the Mirage. Everything was comped. So this is like what I remember because I'm like 21 years old. And like I'm like, I was like, I'm born Chinese immigrants that were pretty poor starting out.

So I'm very cheap at the core. So the idea of like, room service in itself was amazing. And like a lot of times back then you could get all these comps. So people would buy like really expensive bottles of wine because like, why wouldn't you? Even though when you're 21 years old, you're not enjoying wine like that. You don't even know what wine is. But we went in and we played at the Mirage.

You know, like in the first trip, you usually aren't the person putting out the big money. You're something called a spotter. So you're like kind of walking around the casino looking for a good table, counting the table, signaling for the big player to come in and bet. And then you kind of watch them bed. And obviously, like, because you call them in, you have some investment in your mind about how they do. So you watched how they do and you hope that you do well. So when you call them, are the signals that they use in the movie?

I think it was like scratch your head or something like that. Behind the back. They go. Was it where the like signals that they used in the movies the same is y'all and like the words like Poole meant eight or whatever? Exactly. You could do this. True. Basically.

They don't like my action in Vegas, Jeff, dude. Yeah. Poole was a like we had all these code words. Trimble. Yeah. We had all these code words. and we did do these hand signals. And everyone's like, oh, that's so obvious.

And it's like, no, just look around a casino and see how many people you see with their arms folded or see how many people you've seen at a table with their hand up by their face. That's all we were doing was things that anyone did anyways. That's sweet. When you first went, are you using your real ID at this point? Or were you guys under like aliases at the start?

Are you with the law enforcement agency? Yeah, you want to see my bag? I don't have to disclose that. This is an entrapment. So back in those days, pre-9-11. they were not very tight on IDs. Like they were so you could often give like a fake name and a fake birth date that you could use to play under. And nobody really cared.

Like they just wanted something to track you with as you played, but you didn't have to give you a real name. And then after 9-11, like everything changed. Like IDs became much bigger. And most of the time if I got ID it was because they didn't want to make sure I was over 21. Although if you're throwing out a lot of money, they don't really give a shit. Were you ever worried like this could go really bad? Like we could get in big time trouble for this. I mean, it's not illegal.

Yeah. No, no, it's just, they don't take casino rule. It's just like what, like, what do they say in hangover, masturbating an airport, or masturbating a plane. Sorry. Yeah, thanks, Obama. It's frown. It's frown.

It's frown. Obama was not a ball. Yeah, I thought Obama. It's frowned upon in casinos. And it's because I don't like to lose money. But yeah, we had to run in in Shreport, Louisiana that I'll remember forever where we, like, showed up there. We'd heard, like, you hear like, just like you guys.

are like, oh, you just new great course. Like we have Black Desert in Utah. It's supposed to be a great course. I can't wait to go up there. But like, you hear about these new games or new places and like, we would hear about them. Like, do you guys ever like, does anyone ever like, oh, there's a great skins game where these, all these guys that think they're terrible, that think they're great and you can

go take some money. There's a few around here. Yeah. There you go. So it's the same thing. There's like, oh, there's this new casino and Shreport and you can beat it. So we, we heard about it. We flew down there.

We, I think literally, there's four of us that went down there. We're like ready for our weekend Shreveport. I think in like an hour and a half, we won like 60K at this at this place, never betting more than 2K a hand. So we're just like crushing it, right? And we're like, oh, this is like when you do that much at one place, you kind of like don't want to wear out your welcome. So we're like, let's go check out some of the other casinos. So as I'm cashing out, it's just taking forever to cash out. So I don't cash out.

And then I actually don't even think I cashed out at that time. We leave the boat. We go to another boat. When we go to the other boat, we like, immediately get on there and they're like, I can see they're like looking for us, right? And I like, I'm standing on the edge of the pit

and I see that like this thing comes off. This is in the 90s. So it comes off a fax machine. And it's like four pictures. And I can kind of make out one of my pictures. And I'm like, oh, shit, we're done.

So I like signal people we're done. Kind of walk off there. We kind of get, I can tell we kind of get followed off there. And now I have all these chips from the original casino that I need to go and cash out. So I'm like, all right, this is not going to go well,

but I go to cash out. And they like, literally take forever to catch me out. I'm like sitting at the cage with a baseball hat on, kind of pulling it down because I don't want them to be able to film my face and like have a good view of my face. So I'm just sitting there, sitting there, sitting there. And finally, you know, I get my money. I'm walking off. This casino guy follows me. He goes, Mr. Ma, you know, what we, you know, and I was like, what? He's like, we don't want your action. You know, and I'm like, it's fine. I get it. So I'm walking out. He's go, no, we really don't want your action. And we don't

want you to come back here. I'm like, okay, fine. So we're walking off. As I'm walking off, this truck pulls behind me with this dude who's like got a suit on, but someone else driving him, and there's like a shotgun rack in the back of the pickup truck. And they were like following me off the property. And I'm like thinking to myself, who's going to notice that Asian dude disappears in Shreveport, Louisiana? Like nobody, right? So it's like, I was definitely scared. They like followed me all the way off. When we got off the property, there was a cop kind of waiting there, even menacingly, like looking at me. And then we just piece that. out. So that was like probably the closest that I felt to like real danger.

So you never got dragged in the back like in the movie. No, but there are people that that did happen to where that got taken to what they call the back room. So the problem with the back room is so they can never take you to the back room against your own will, right? If you basically say like I want to leave, they can't do anything about it. But if you go to that back room, they will interrogate you and they will make you sign something that says that if you ever come back under their property, you're trespassing. So if you ever do come back, then they can arrest you.

So if you ever in your run-ins, Drew, as a car counter, just tell them that you don't, you don't want to go to the back room, you'll just leave. Yeah, I always just say, no, I just want to go home. Yeah, tried to drag me back there. How late in the game was this Shreveport trip? Have you worn out all the Vegas Casinos? It was pretty late in the game.

It was like, I did for about seven years. It's probably six years in. It was towards the end. And when you first started, I guess, like, what was your average haul? You guys load up your six, seven guys from MIT go to Vegas for a weekend. Yeah, I mean, we would probably win. You know, our biggest weekend ever, we won, like, over half a million. But, you know, our biggest loss ever, I think we lost a couple hundred.

And then you can kind of do the math in between, you know, the average event was probably, like, up between, like, 80 to 100K or something like that. So would you all just try to get to a certain number and then leave town, or was it just, we're going to play? No, I mean, you would play a lot. You would play a lot of us based on the conditions. Like if the conditions were good, meaning like there were a lot of other people betting big money so they didn't notice you. Or like, you know,

there are times where you would literally like get close to running out of money. So you don't want to, you don't ever want to run out like because that that's very unoptimal or suboptimal. So you do have to like kind of manage your money. So if you lose, there is a chance that you would cut the trip short. But if you're up, you would probably keep playing as long as the conditions were good

because you want to like go for the jugular. Yeah. Is it feeling? for this to be done in today's day and age or with the facial recognition stuff and all that like limited after a couple trips um it is it's it's feasible but i don't think your life your self life is very long in this day and age yeah they probably catch you pretty quick and ban you like can you go into any are you allowed i play in craps and then i'll play blatchek every once in a while at a casino if like someone that's like kind of famous wants me to go play like simian rice wanted me to go play with them so i wouldn't play blackjack with simian rice because like that's a great story to play blackjack with simeon rice and they let you he yeah i was only betting like a hundred bucks so it's not like they left i don't think they even know at that point they're not even like looking for me and it was at a casino that i've never really played blackjack at so it was it was fine i was just up with a bunch of casino people and we were talking about this whole thing and

i mean even if you lose right now and they they think you're counting like they'll cut you off yeah they wouldn't they would cut me off really quickly like the places that they know me well like win or cosmopolitan or something like that, they would cut me off really quickly. But I know a bunch of idiots to lose a lot of money and they think they're counting and even they've been cut off. Yeah. I'm like, he's down a couple hundred thousand. Why wouldn't you let him just keep playing?

Yeah. I mean, they're just, they're, they are like similar to like sports betting a little bit. They're like overly worried about losing to people they consider to be sharp. Like there's a lot of people that sports bet that are not sharp at all that they say are sharp based on a couple plays they make. You know, like someone's copying something I bet or something roof. his bets or something like that, you know, they could get labeled a sharp even though they're not. Yeah, did anyone just ever tell you like, oh my God, the guy that comes in and bets the big money

after that gets hot where people, I mean, you don't have to know that you're counting. Just like, this dude's hot. Yeah, I mean, not really because like what's funny about Blackjack is everyone has their own system. Everyone has their own. Like, they owe, like, people think they like to win in Blackjack, but they actually just like to be like right. You know, like, there's so many times people will say like, oh, you shouldn't take that card and be like, no, no, no, trust me. I should take that card.

I know what I'm doing, right? but like everyone always wants and like it's the classic confirmation bias thing where like you know someone will be like oh don't hit that and if you like hit it and win they're like oh you know you're right you're right yeah right yeah right it's right and wrong not I feel like we all have those stories too of just playing and you come home and like you wouldn't believe this hand I lost or this hand I won yeah do you have a couple of hands that stick out in your mind like you want a shit ton on and one one you're like oh my god that was devastating yeah there's probably two one is like story I've told probably millions of times where I sat down at a black tie table at seizes palace it was like my first year playing and the math called me to bet two hands of ten thousand dollars so i did and i got basically like a couple hands that i would like i got a pair of nine so i split that i got 11 so i doubled that on one of the nines i got a two to make 11 so i re-split so i doubled that so i 50k out dealer pulls a black you know backdoor 21 right so i lose 50 000 dollars this woman behind me shrieks oh my god that's my entire mortgage. I was like, where the hell do you live?

But, you know, and then, and then, uh, and the math calls for you to bet three hands of 10,000 then. And I, I did it. And I got, you know, and I was like, this is like the classic, like believe in the process, all this kind of stuff. Um, similar, I got like a soft 15 dealer out of six up. So I double that. I got another 11. I double that. Um, dealer flips a 10 to make 16. And it gets a five to make 21. So I lost another 50,000, lost $100,000. ours and two hands and like was devastated so my question is i obviously reading the book and watching the movie like i know how the counting goes but when you said the math calls for two hands or the math calls for three hands yeah how do you know that well so that's complicated normally you

just bet two hands of at when the when the count or when the odds are in your favor you usually and there's other people the table you just bet two hands but at the end of a shoe um or if table maximum is so much that you need to get more money or so low that you need to get more money in the table, you would go to three hands, right? Gotcha. So they're very, you don't go to three hands very often. It's either at the end of the shoe

or when you're maxed out by the table. I'm ready to go back to Vegas. Did they do the thing? I want to go back with you though. Yeah. Did they do the thing like in the movie where they say, hey, there's a local game.

You're going to do it. And then they, I think they put the bag over the head and said, what's the count? Did you have any sort of like initiation or have to prove yourself? No, I mean, the closest thing was like, there was like this China there was like this party in Chinatown that friends of ours were kind of running or friends

of friends of ours were kind of running and he calls us he's like they have blackjack down here is like this like group of like rich Asian guys that were like holding this thing in Chinatown and so we went down there and we just like wiped these guys out and at the end of the night they were like didn't know how they were going to pay us and we felt really bad because these are just like random people that were just trying to have a for fun casino we went down there and wipe them out that's probably like the closest thing but there wasn't a real like again And that's like a dramatized thing. It's Hollywood.

Yeah, yeah. The guy that played Choi in the movie. Yes. What was he like in real life? Because in the movie, he is incredible. Yeah. He's gotten a pretty good. He's had like, he was in like Disturbia.

I don't know if you remember the movie. Shia LaBuff. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. He's a good guy. It's funny. He's like his character. I mean, taking all the free shit that they had hotels and everything.

His vibe was funny. I mean, if we redid it, we'd get Jimmy O. Yang to play that. Yeah. I think he'd be perfect. We want to redo the whole movie. now with all Asian actors now that it's like okay to be Asian in Hollywood. So now we can, we can do that. Like now that it's a crazy rich Asians change it.

Like we can actually, it's cool. Did you get any say in the casting of who played you? Yeah, no. I mean, I got so much crap. You're playing you. You should have a little say. No, but like nobody, nobody knew why I was at that point. Like, it's not like, it's not like I'm Lance Armstrong and like they're having a black

guy play me or something like that. This is like, I'm not anyone that people know at this point. And for me, I just wanted the movie to be a good movie. you know like I didn't care about that accuracy I probably care about it more now than I did then but yeah no I hadn't no say I feel like it feels more authentic it would have felt more authentic if the dude was Asian you know I mean yeah but I mean like you know not to get like all political but like back in those days like it wasn't like male male Asian lead wasn't gonna carry a number one movie in the United States right that's just the reality and like again

that's I think that's changed like but like at that time that was that was a reality We're ready now. Run that thing back. Exactly. That's what like, yeah, we have like people in mind that might be able to do this. Like, it'd be good. Can I be a dealer? Yeah, sure. I just want to be a dealer in the movie. We'll get you guys all.

Yeah. We'll get you guys all extras. Yeah. Yeah. But preferably speaking, you know, obviously. Obviously. Yeah. Was it like going back to Boston with tons of cash as a college kid?

I mean, if you can buy pizza for your friends, you're a hero in college and you guys are coming back with thousands on thousands. Yeah. You know, we were pretty frugal with the, money when we went back to Boston. Although I guess, yeah, I guess over time, like the first thing I ever bought that was like really expensive for myself was like a watch, you know? And, but, you know, like, it's weird. And you guys probably know this from the people that you know that are gamblers. The way you live as a gambler where your bankroll is like you're kind of like your personal

wealth. If you're way up, you know, you can't really spend like that because if you go way down, does that mean you don't spend on anything, right? So you have to have some level of the guys that get ruined or the guys that really like live that life where they go up and they bet a lot or is it spend a lot and they buy like good bottles of wine all that kind of stuff and go crazy so i think as kids we we tried not to do that did you really get robbed well done did i really get robbed no no that was that was made up i was mad at that professor good yeah he didn't yeah we did have like a weird falling out with that professor um the real characters of governor named john chang and and it was It was kind of shitty how he was portrayed in the movie because he's a really good guy and he was like a really good mentor to us.

But there was a time like ultimately where we as a group decided we didn't need like senior leadership anymore. And so we kind of like moved out on our own. And he was kind of like you still need me. But that was real like the ring leader. That was a guy. Yeah, that was real. But again, like he wasn't a bad person or character. Like it was just time for us to move on and that was all.

Gotcha. Do you play poker? I feel like the skill set you have with like card. I mean, counting's different. but like memorizing in math. I'm not a huge poker guy. Like I've played some. I mean,

I know you guys know like a lot of the poker players. Poker like had that life like after I was kind of done with the Blackjack stuff. And Blackjack is very different. Blackjack is super rigid. All the decisions you make are super rigid. I guess like with GTO game theory optimal now in poker, poker is like a little bit more rigid too. So maybe I could do it more or get into it.

But one of the problems that I always have with poker is that like if I played a friendly game, with people, I'd feel shitty beating them, right? Because like, I've used to wagering lots of money. And, you know, then if I would lose to these guys, I'd be annoyed, so I'd want to win, right? So it's like, there's like a no-win situation. At what age did you know, like, okay, my mind is pretty ridiculous. It works a little different than a lot of people's. You know, I don't, I mean, I don't, my dad is really smart. And so I, like, got a lot of, like, analytical and, you know, from my dad. I don't know. I always was interested in, like, risk. Like, I played post. poker. I went to a boarding school, so I went away to school when I was 13, and we used to play

poker every Saturday night there. So I started playing poker with my friends at, you know, age 13. I always have like risk. I have that. I have like the gambling gene in me. So, like, how old were you when you knew you were a genius? I'm still waiting to find. Just hang on for it. Yeah, I don't, I don't think like, honestly, like, I went to MIT. I'm like reasonable at math. But I think like, the genius moniker is probably a little bit overplayed. in terms of like that's not how I think like what what like what I'm most proud of is the wide range of things I've done in my life you know and I think like this trune thing is like this perfect example of that right it's like I've done all these things and now I've been able to like

come to a place like trune and try to build out you know a business for them in in like I'm proud of like what we're accomplishing there and I'm proud of like being able to do this in like everyone wants to work in golf right like and I'm getting to work in golf that's that's great like that's everyone's dream right is it hard replacing something that i got to imagine like the rush going to casino especially at that age and being like we're going to win and we're going to win a lot of money that's got to be hard to replicate in the corporate world what i what i miss most about that those days is like the camaraderie it's like the yeah it's like the you know having flying to Vegas with five of your buddies and knowing you're going to kick the teeth out of the casinos like

that is that's that's what i loved and i missed that right and i missed that right And like that's one of the reason I think I like to do startups. Because when you do startups, you, like, form a team and you, like, have a goal and you really try to go after things. That's what I mean, like, my favorite way to play golf is to play, like, best ball, like, two man, you know, two on two best ball. Like, that's, to me, the perfect way to play golf. Like, I love playing with a teammate. And, like, you know, it's like that part of it is what I love. You mentioned the startups.

How many you've been involved in? I've been involved in four that I've kind of, like, started. There's another one that I was not I didn't start that I was involved in, but yeah, four. And then you worked at Microsoft. Yes. For a good stretch as well? No, I was there two and a half years. I was at Microsoft.

I was at Twitter. I did a short stint in the hospitality business. I actually started in the late 90s a golf instructional company that was, we had seven of the top 15 golf instructor signed up to do exclusive content for us. So it was like Jim McLean, Hank Haney. Chuck Cook, Jimmy Ballard, all these guys. And, you know, it was way ahead of its time. Because in the late 90s, video was super expensive on the internet. And no one was paying for subscriptions.

And like content was not something people would pay. Like, it was just terrible timing. But it was a really good idea. Like we had like, you know, 30 second to 90 minute videos on like, sorry, 90 second videos on things like, you know, how to get out of a fried egg lie or something like that. Yeah. And you would subscribe.

Yeah, like today's day and age. Like that's all on YouTube. That's the whole model. Yeah. Yeah. Subscription. Yeah. Nice.

Going back to Vegas. Yeah. Another time. After one of the big nights you win and everything, what was like one of the wildest nights out you had? One of the wildest nights out. I mean, like my wild nights are more now the Vegas I do now as a grown-up where we're actually going to clubs.

Like the sad part of it is that we just didn't, we didn't party that much because we were, we were like very focused on winning. We weren't really allowed to drink. You know, like, we had. at times, though, where we'd be at parties with, like, Michael Jordan or Dr. Jay. Like, I met Dr. Jay shook his hand, and my entire hand disappeared. Yeah, that's humbling, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah. Wait, you grab all of these paws when we're finished. You see these little critters. I have pretty small hands, too. So how do you do anything? Yeah, that's pretty, that's pardoned with Michael Jordan. How did you get introduced? Like, how did they introduce you?

We're like, hey, here's Jeff. He's, yeah, I mean, like, a high roller. Like, so definitely, like, as time has gone on, I've gotten a chance to meet like tons of celebrities through this who were really interested in it. And like I said, like people are always like, oh, let's go play Blackjack together. You know, like back, you know, I played a blackjack at the MGM back with like Robert Orry. And like Robert Orry had like his rings on. And he was like, you know, he was like, I was like, hey, can you rub this ring for good luck?

And all this kind of shit. And like, you know, Dominique Wilkins, like I played crafts with Jalen Rose. Like, you know, like, and it's funny, we played crafts with Jailen Rose. He's like, huh, he can't shoot in craps either. That's great. By the way, I'm fairly confident. I've seen MJ play some blackjack and he does not count. Maybe, who knows?

He just goes by some feels. Who knows? His chip stacks are rather big. More of a feel guy. Yeah. I get it. I get it. I mean, dude, your story is so fast.

Did you ever think at the time when you were doing this? I don't know if this just seemed like standard operating procedure for you guys. Like, hey, we're doing something really fucking cool, like beating Vegas. Yeah. I mean, not many people could say they've done that. Yeah, I mean, again, like I, there's a lot of these moments that I've had in my life where I'm like incredibly lucky to have had these experiences. And Blackjack is one that when we were doing it, it was so heads down. Like it was a grind.

We were working our asses off. It was not, it was not easy, right? Like people would think, oh, you're just walking a casino. No, no, you're grinding. You have a small edge over the casino. You've got to play lots of hands to win. So it was a grind. But I do reflect on it.

And that's like one of the reasons I wanted the book to be written in the movie. Like it was almost like, like this really happened kind of thing. Like so it was like it was definitely something that like I reflect back on now. And I'm like, wow, that was a pretty amazing time. What were the sessions like? So say you fly out on Friday. Like how long are we playing? You sleep at all all weekend or is it just go, go, go?

Yeah. What's funny is like we would time our play based on when we knew there'd either be lots of action or people that weren't really. like very good in the casino, meaning like the workers were not like people that were actively, like the executives were not looking for card counters. So oftentimes that was like a graveyard shift, which starts at like 4 a.m.

So we would play like early morning sometimes. We'd play late at night sometimes. Sessions were usually two to three hours because you didn't want to go much longer than that because you got to stay fresh. But yeah. Yeah, because I mean it's just focus.

It's like work. It's like work. It probably realizes it in the movie. But like, dude, getting ready, being good enough. to even go there and do it and attempt it, getting a bankroll, staying disciplined and not like being like, oh, fuck it, I'll just bet more on this one.

Yeah, people would go on trips and they would like fail their test. So they wouldn't even get to play, right? Because they were, you had to pass this test to like every time you were going to play just to make sure your skills were still sharp. Damn. What happens if you lose the count? You just get out. Does that ever happen?

Are you guys just too good? Yeah, it happens very rarely. But if it does, you probably just walk with me too. Is it even possible for you to step foot in a butt on a, blackjack table right now and not know the count if they deal car like it just has to just trigger like plus one I would be sitting there counting yeah sick wouldn't it be fun for Vegas like no dude you're too good yeah it has not happened no no they're just like would you like another drink and I get you a room the same thing happens in sports betting I'm telling you

like that idea that people tell you're too good it's it it's not fun it sucks you're just like this like revenue source that I had is now gone I'll tell you this I have a buddy you know them very well, big time sports scambler. The same thing you're talking about, it's hard to get money down. He called me, he's like, hey, dude, do you have an account on this sports book? I want to play some bets through you. I'm going to transfer you a bit. All this shit that I didn't know.

I was like, yeah, dude, let's go. One week, golf bets, five of them. Yeah. The next week, we put X amount of dollars on it. The next week, we go to fire it again. They cap it at 200. Yeah. And he's like, damn.

He's like, I should have thrown in it in like a few non-sharp plays, basically. in the lineup last time so it wasn't so obvious but it took one I was blown away yeah I was like one week out I believe it yeah I believe it crazy good friend I got you know now it's like dude this is this sucks because he's gonna give me a little clip of it but I was also like this is kind of cool you just lost we're too good yeah that there's a lot of that opportunities like that people are always looking for opportunities to get down and now with legalization there's more more places to get down but those legal sports books are really paranoid and they really yeah I got to think they they get

rid of people very quickly. All right, let's get to the E9. Here, we have a little fun with this. Probably give me some more gambling talk, if I was guessing. This is sweet, though. I'll let you start all this. I love it. I'm fascinated by all this.

Well, we asked two here. One of my mind's kind of coming, so we'll just do. You get to trade lives with one person. You get to live in their shoes for a day. Oh, it's only for a day, huh? You want to stretch? Well, so I know you asked this question. I thought a lot about it, and I feel like a lot of the answers that people get are

kind of lame. Okay. Yeah. Michael Jordan, like whatever. Mine is my dad. And the reason it's my dad is because my dad, like, he is, you know, brought us here. So the story of my dad, he literally came over on a boat from China and took a bus from Seattle to South Bend, Indiana, where he was going to do a master's at Notre Dame in chemical engineering.

So he didn't, and never been in the United States before. This is what he does. He has like $50 to his name. He bought two hot dogs on that trip to eat, but was so nervous about it that he couldn't eat their hot dogs. So he didn't eat anything in the whole trip. And he's like, but he built this life for like me and my sisters and my family. And it's incredible.

And the sad, the reason I want to live a day in his life is I want him to have like enjoyment because he really hasn't gotten to enjoy. Like he's, you know, not doing great now. He's older. My mom passed away. had a stroke when she was 70 and then and then passed away when she was 80 and like he had to care give for like my dad never has had a chance to really enjoy himself so one day I just want to be him so I can go get like wasted and just have a freaking great time yeah just have a really great time a day and have I mean I'm sure he feels like he had a great life like I'm not I'm not saying like my dad lives with like regret but I just I would love to be able to live a day with my like to show my dad how fun life can be did he have any idea all this was going on what was happening No, I mean, yes and no. Like he kind of knew, like, my mom kind of like made jokes.

She's like, do you have a tree in your backyard that you shake to make money? And like, they would like find like weird receipts or things like that occasionally. But when the book came out, I actually handed him a copy of the book. And I said, Dad, I know you've heard a little bit about this black check stuff and whatever. This is the whole story. But keep in mind, it's a book. Anything you don't like was probably just made up. Right.

Yeah. Anything you don't like was creative liberties. You might be the only guy. We're not huge readers. Look at that out there. I've read the book. I've read the book. This may never happen again unless it's Dr. Su.

Hey, if it's about gambling, though, I'll read it. My brother gave it to me. He's like, read this. And I read it. I was like, oh my God. And then the movie came. I was like, yes, this is sick. That's a classic book.

That is the book. Like, people say that to me all the time. That's the only book I've ever read. That's the last book I read. I read the Billy Walter's book. So, shock. They have something in common. You have a problem.

I just love the life of gamblers. I think it's fascinating. I don't want to be one, but it was. We didn't talk about, you've done some work for the San Francisco 49ers, Portland Trailblazers. Did you ever get an apology from the Portland Trailblazers for when they took Greg Oden, even though you told them they should take Kevin Durant? No, have never gotten an apology. And I wouldn't really say like, when you talk about these things and like I think Kevin Pritchard, who was the, you know, the GM at the time, does not like me talking about it being that clear that I said, don't take him. but we had a model.

Our model said take Durant. That was what they paid us for, was this model. And they chose Odin because Odin was a big guy that, you know, was injured during his one year in college, had to shoot left-handed, all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I don't know if you guys have heard Greg Oden stories, but there was some pretty good Greg Oden stories. What kind of stories? I mean, I know he never played. I remember him coming out of. Supposedly he liked to drink something called Petrenacy.

Is that Patron and Hennessy? Uh-huh. Wow. How did you figure that out? Yes. Yeah. You guys know Shane Badiere. He's a member of Pine Valley.

You know that, right? He's a golfer. Just gone to Pine Valley. He told us the story. And then we were at a dinner together. And then we decided to be a good idea to try to recreate that. We went to a club and we ordered a bottle of Petron and a bottle of Hennessy, mixed him together. And what do you think the result was?

A terrible. Terrible. It's disgusting. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like, it's not like, oh, magically, this would be. No. It's terrible.

By the way, Portland Trailblazers, I mean, they don't have the greatest track record drafting players. They shouldn't be. Yeah. I mean, again, like they took Brandon Roy, like the numbers again on him. He was going to be hurt. He was going to be hurt. But everyone thought that he was, they thought that there was a real big injury risk. Well, the way I tell the story is you told him to take Kevin Durant and they didn't.

Sounds like you did. That's how I've told the story, too. So let's be honest. That's the best part. Yeah. Yeah. All right. My next one, you've kind of covered.

He asked you, like, your worst beat, you went through the hands of the $50,000. So give me, if you have one now that you're into sports gambling, if you have a bad beat and outside of blackjack that stands out. I mean, you guys see that Hail Mary that happened this recently? Last week, the commanders? Yeah. Yeah. I had the second half under in that game.

And if you remember what happened in that game, it was what, there was like, it was, it was 9-0 at the first half. And then it was like 12 to whatever, 12 to 7. So there's only been like 10 points scored with what 27 seconds left or something like that? You did get lucky on the fumble though when they handed it to the offense of 100%. Yeah. Like that was. I mean, bad beats are funny because you just there are there's a litany of them.

But what really are bad beats like, you know, the bad beats are really those ones where, you know, you have this team like plus say like three or whatever. And then they lateral it 18 times on the last play and they score on like someone fumbles and scores. That's like a bad beat. Pitchy-pitchie Woo-woo. Yeah. That happens. It was terrifying. I used to bet on the Celtics to win the finals every year and finally it worked out.

Oh, there you go. But like there were some bad beats there, I felt like with the Celtics. In golf, just quick sidebar. When you guys are betting, are you betting like tournament winners? Are you betting head-to-heads? Are you betting top 20s? Yeah, all of them. All of them.

Yeah. I might have had some bad beats on Ludwig this year, you know, where he looked like pretty good and then not so good. I'd keep firing him, though. Yeah. I think he's got a chance. He's pretty special. He's got a chance in this game. Slightly a bright future.

Do you think he should slow down a little bit? Like I feel like, I feel like that day, like that he, he like was so fast that day. Like he got like frustrated and like. Which day we're talking about? The Scottish where, it was the Scottish where McIntyre got that ridiculous relief. Oh yeah. And then like Ludwig went on to bogey that par five where he basically was like, you know, he was in reasonable position. on that hole and then he chunked a yeah anyways i'm not going to question anything that guy does

because he's going to be a winning machine i'm never going to tell a professional golfer to slow down yeah they're so bad at your rhythm yeah you just go he's he's he's had a golfer over time that's just like been like a good luck charm for you a money maker for you i mean zander yeah zander recently yeah it's been been good call on that yeah i mean good he was he was uh he's the classic like you're a choker until you're not right and like he actually like we've done some analysis this is like fourth rounds were not bad it's other people had outplayed him and so he's taking some tough beats like in terms of guys just going off like he didn't lose it he shoots 68 some guys shoot 64 like this whole argument in the trailer at the pjah championship the cbs guys they were talking about how he can't finish and i had the

same information you did about the fourth round like guys the guys that beat him average like 66 on sunday yeah like they just go out and shoot great rounds sometimes you can't sometimes you just get beat yeah yeah but he's proved that that yeah he's so good he's going and it's cool as shit which is what I like we did this thing on our podcast um well actually with Rufus where we did a draft of every uh uh uh like a draft of all the golfers like I don't know like each person took like eight golfers and if your golfer wins a mass a major in the next five years the other two people have to pay you five hundred dollars so like who would you know obvious first pick is scottie term stuff scotty

Right. Ludwig. But then it's like when we did the draft, which was about a year, a little over a year ago, my next pick was ROM at that point. But now that looks like, now the second next pick is probably Xander, but then Ludwig and like it's a pretty, you guys should do that at some point with someone. I like that. It's like a longer term.

Eight years? Just five years. So five years going forward, you know, and like literally we have like, you have to Venom like right the minute after the tournament ends. It's pretty fun. I thought it was pretty cool. The memorial this year and Jack Nicholas was in the booth. and they were talking about who he thinks could be the one to challenge Scotty.

Because at that time, Scottie had a massive hold on the world number one. And Ludwig had played one major championship at the time. And that's who he picked. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, yeah. People that see it day and day out, just like it's different. Yeah.

And he's young. Shit, he just started. Yeah. I remember walking with him, he had just turned pro as Detroit, and he was playing with Fowler on Saturday. And, I mean, this is the first time most people had seen him play. And Ricky's coming up one of the holes. He's like, yeah, this kid's got it. I mean, it's just, it's perfect, everything he does.

Well, there's also this theory on some of these, some of these Scandinavian guys that don't get to play year-round that they have more opportunity for, you know, they didn't play year-round growing up, right? So they have more opportunity to get better now that they're playing year-round, obviously, and they've been playing around. Yeah, they've never had all the opportunity,

basically, to get as good as they possibly can. So there's more trajectory for them. We just raved about the guy for 15 minutes now, but I do nothing. I'll take that back. I'll take the other side if you want. All right, you answered another one of mine, which is the scariest moment, Shreveport. So I'll give you this one as we talked about casting in the movie.

You get to go back in time. You're playing yourself. You get to pick your love interest. Who would you like to share a screen with? Woo. Wow. Yeah. That's, God, when is the prep for this?

Life comes out of you fast. Yeah. I mean, the name that comes to my mind is Kate Beckinsale. Classy, classy pick there. I like that. Yeah. I feel like she'd be good on the tables too. Yeah.

Get away with a lot. I mean, Kaye Bosworth was pretty damn good as a love interest. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can't complain with that casting, right? No, that was good casting, but if you were playing yourself, I was curious. Who do you want? Beck and Cell is a good pick.

Beck and sell, yeah. You look great in front of the fountains or, you know, everything looked great out there. All right. Next one. Best thing you ever got comped. Ooh, I'll tell you the funniest thing. Yes. One of my buddies was so, like, kind of cheap that the MGM Grand had opened these, like,

movie theaters right next door, and he asked the casino host if they would comp in movie theater tickets. And he was like, this is a big ass. I'm going to have to run this up the ladder. I was like, I've never really had this request, but, you know, if you keep the receipt, I'm sure we can comp you. Yeah, it's actually free, dude. You just go over there. I don't know.

Like, there were so many. things like i think like the sweets like the we never got i never got like a private jet i think if they sent a jet to get me that would have been among the best things um the sweets that you would get were insane um you know the obviously you get amazing comp dinners and wine thing like that i mean we would for a long time we went to every boxing match right and this was during the big tyson comeback kind of thing so we were there i was there for both holy field fights When he bit his ear off? You were there for the original?

Oh, shit, yeah. Yeah. That was an eerie, eerie moment. I could still remember watching that, like, where I was. I was in, like, elementary school. Yeah, that was like the clap. That was when the shooting happened, too. Tupac, I think, wasn't that when Tupac got shot in Vegas or Biggie or one of it?

I mean, like, yeah, and then there was a, they had to shut the MGM because of the shooting caused a riot and, like, they tipped over a table. This is this whole story. This actually happened when the movie, they tipped over. a table at the MGM grant a crap table everyone grabbed chips and so they changed out their thousand dollar chips which we had a shit ton of wow and so we had to basically find ways to to get those cashed out when we didn't have ID and things like that and you know we had a lot of we had like hundreds of thousands of dollars in MGM chips that I forgot about that like the tipping over that I was like

I don't know what you do in that scenario how do you prove like yeah I actually won these I didn't just jack these off the floor you yeah we had to do a lot damn to do them That's cool. I got to come up with, is the best fight you saw in Vegas, Tyson Holyfield or give me some other ones? Best event you've attended. Yeah,

I think Tyson Holyfield, you know, Foreman Moore was pretty good just because Foreman, Moore was like this little guy that was like, and then all of a sudden Foreman just hit him once

and knocked him down and it was over and that was like a moment. But I like saw like Sugar Shane Mosley back in the day. I saw a bunch of his fight. you know we didn't I didn't I wasn't really around for like Mayweather but like you're pre- Floyd yeah people people didn't really like honestly Jones maybe a little real I saw some I saw some Roy Jones but like people don't care about anyone but the heavy weights the heavy weights are like

the ones that's why like boxing there's no like heavy like heavy weights were the thing you're in the sweet spot I mean it was yeah that was in that era boxing was pretty good nowadays like if a fight needs to be made it's like four years down the road no the fight weekends were the best like you would walk into Vegas you'd walk into the fights there'd be people like lined up. You know, you'd feel like a celebrity because you're walking in this fight. And like we would always have like fourth, fifth row seats. Like we always had great seats. And so it was, it was a feeling like I'm a baller. It felt good. That's one of my like bucket list thing. I haven't done. I want to see like a big fight. We'll go together.

We'll go to. Then we'll go count, make a trillion. We'll see how much money we can make. See how long it takes something to back you off. Done. Yeah, perfect. All right. Last one for me. You play Jeffrey in the movie, the dealer. Mm-hmm. How many takes did it take for you to nail your scene? So, a lot. I mean, it really is like, it's like a very, I joke about this because that scene, like,

I was like, oh, you guys, no one ever remembers that scene. So, like, I always have to tell people, like, go back and watch it. It's about 59 minutes and three seconds. So, like, just the scene, right, is like, it's like, you show, like, at first of all, show up and, like, like, wardrobe. Like, I got, like, a,

dressing room and I like put my like outfit named dealer Jeffrey and like it's a big deal that my like look down and they spelled Jeffrey wrong so I got up to the director I'm like hey they they spell my name wrong can we get a new name tag nobody nobody nobody cares and I'm like okay this is where I fit in the over a hierarchy of actors and so I sit there and I'm like you know he's like can you do this can you say this can you say and he's like literally like gave up like having me say that's why most of my lines are off air like they don't show my face when I say something so It took three days to film that scene. The whole scene took three days.

I was there for three days. Well, that's where hell breaks loose too, right? Yeah, there's a lot into that. And honestly, like... Yeah, from that brother from another mother. Making a movie is one of the slowest, most boring things. Like, people talk about this all the time, but it is. Like, these scenes take forever to shoot.

It's like hours and hours of shit for 30 seconds of actual movie time. Yeah. What a fascinating life you live. I know. Yeah. It's so sick, man. We really appreciate you. I got one more.

Oh, good. Yeah. I need to know this because you're the only. only guy that's smart enough that we'll ever have on this to us for to believe you give me your thoughts on AI machine learning are the robots going to take over the world uh maybe i mean eventually i mean i think i think like the ability of robots to do things that humans can do like driving right like everyone's like oh yeah like why would we robots are going to make a mistake you ever watch the human drive some of these dudes i get in ubers with i'm like what am i doing yeah so like there's a lot of

things computers can do better than humans. And we're going to see that more and more. So interesting. But we're not in danger. What's that? Are we in danger? Are they going to take us over? No, we're not in danger.

Okay. Yeah. I don't think you can promise that we're not. I mean, you never know. There's this thing coming up in a few days. What's that? November 5th, I don't know. It could be a little interesting time around here.

Okay. I think that's going to be an interesting day. Yeah. I'm going to play golf that day. Yeah. Jeff, you're a stud. Your life is extremely fascinating. We thank you.

I'm sure you've gone over. the story a million times, but our listeners, ourselves. Yeah. This is fun for us. Can I talk about one thing we're doing at Trune? Absolutely. Yeah, dude. So we actually just launched this thing called the Trune Access Program, it's a subscription program. And the idea of it is to create a community of golfers that are out there.

You get discounts at Trun courses, which is great. So like we have some great courses around here, like Trune North and, you know, auction, southern dunes, all this kind of stuff. So you get a, you know, discounts, 15% discount to play there. You get access to the last minute inventory, but what we really want to do also is create this concept called Truen Access Elite, which creates a community of really good golfers playing against each other where you can find your crew. If you're not lucky enough to play at Whisper Rock or get some of these great places where you can find your great golfers to

play with, we want to allow you to find people to play with. We're going to get like great tea times at places like True North and whatnot for you to go and play against other players. So people should check it out. It's trune.com slash access. I like that. I love it. I love it. I like. that a lot. Best of luck to you. I'm sure you'll be successful in everything that you do, but we appreciate your time, my man. That was, that was awesome. Thanks, brother. Yeah, appreciate it. Wow. What an interview that was, Liz. I mean, I just got back from Vegas, like, 48 hours after that interview from five nights, and I was like, after hearing those stories, I'm like, take me back. I'm ready. Let's go. You think you're allowed back in or have they IDed you?

I think I'll be okay. They're welcome back. Which table would you like? You suck at gambling. Please, for the love of God, come back to our casino. You're terrible. It would be fun to be asked to leave, I think, a casino. Like, hey, you're too good for us here. Never had quite that experience before. But his life, man, what an unbelievable ride. Like, he's obviously incredibly smart.

Would be successful at anything he does, has been successful at everything he does since the MIT days. But I think, Colt, we found maybe the one book that both you and I have read, post elementary school. I read that book right when it came out. I was like, oh my God, this is awesome. Then the movie comes. I mean, everybody, R.H, watch that thing. Immediately wanted to learn to count cars. Immediately wanted to go to Vegas and do it all.

And he actually, he lived the thing. It's a pretty, we do a lot of golf interviews and they're fun. We get to know a lot of the guys. But like these ones are, I find very fascinating because it's something, you know, it's a world that very few people have ever existed in. Yeah, I couldn't put the book down. I mean, I remember, I was like, I don't remember how long ago was 12, 13 years ago probably, but I was obsessed.

And I mean, I've always loved going to Las Vegas, love gambling. But to sit down and hear those stories and how wild it was was so cool. And also, the Portland Trailblazers, maybe listen to the man, Jeff Maugh, because Kevin Durant turned out he's pretty good at basketball. Greg Oden didn't quite pan out. That was a bit of a miss there. Not the only miss in the history of the NBA. That one hurt.

Your franchise could have had Michael Jordan and Kevin Durant and you ended up with Sam Bowie and Greg Oden. Yeah. Could have gone either way. It's just tough. Send them to send that franchise to Seattle. They deserve a franchise. Oh, my God. That's incredible.

All right. Well, thanks to Jeff Maher for joining us and make sure you go check out everything they're doing over there at Trune. That new card they have is going to be awesome. Hopefully going to do something with them someday. Maybe we get you a little bit of a discount if we can. But let's get to some picks this week. So, ladies, I finally lost.

The heater is over. I rode James Winston. He basically talked me into pitch. picking him. I mean, he was so motivating, and then the Browns just got absolutely their ass whipped by the Chargers. Wasn't his best showing for Jamis, but let's not hop off the bandwagon just yet. We need him back and we need him starting for the remainder of the year. More importantly, we need press conferences and leadups to the game. That's what we need out of James. Don't. This won't deter him. He will be back. Colts staying true to form. I lost an amazing

fashion, a lot different than I lost last week. If you recall, I had Duke catching 21 at Miami. I will fast forward through a lot of stuff. Colt is the middle of the third quarter. Duke is leading outright by 11. 17 to 28 halfway through the third. Catching 21. It's a lot of points you're up. Spare you the dates there, bud, but they went ahead and lost by 22.

I have a feeling that could be on ESPN and Scott Van Pelt and Stanford, Steve might be talking about it. 33 point turnaround to lose the thing. In a quarter and a half? Pretty neat. I mean, it was just like, you want to touch it down here you go oh you want another touch that i mean all that do is literally run it forward a few times let the clock take it would have been mathematically impossible but they

couldn't so um i stay on the schneide um all right it's been fun we're on to the next week let's go let's go we're on to the rear view me rear view mirror is so small right that's right that's right it's in the past all right i'm i'm a stick in the NFL the chicago bears suck okay i don't know what they're doing over there they just got smoked by the arizona cardinals by the way Arizona has a dome, which with a retractable roof, and it was hailing inside the stadium because they thought the weather was going to be good. And so they had the dome open and it started hailing, which was pretty awesome. So they had to close it. Tough break for them.

But the cards did get it done. But this coming week, both these teams suck. But give me the New England Patriots plus seven points against the Chicago Bears. Oh, wow. We got a new, we're betting New England. That's where we are in the world right now. Okay. I like that.

The bears are not doing what I. thought they do but i also can't tell like if arizona's good yeah we're not good they're they either look incredible or they look terrible i i can't figure it out really what they're doing uh shout out tray mcbride though getting in the house as well former subparred gas or i'm just staying college where i'm why would i leave hot so hot the water's warm in this college world right now okay uh i perused saw a few things that i like i'm about to the point of just fading myself and going whatever, the opposite of whatever I think. But Ole Miss coming off a pretty dominant win against Arkansas.

They're going up against Georgia this week, and they're only getting two and a half. And I feel like Georgia's been kind of just hang. I still think they're incredible, but like Carson Beck threw, what, three picks last week, which kind of let them hang around for a little bit. I get him to bounce back. I got Georgia minus two and a half. Let's see what we can do here. I have to win eventually.

We just had Braden Thornebury on. he's going to the game, talking about how awesome the Grove is, and now you're just going right against him. It's going to be sweet. It's going to be sweet down there. We need to make that – let's add Grove to the list with Death Valley. I'm in. Twist my arm.

Bet. All right. Well, try to win one game, would you? I want a couple early, but I'm just in a dark place gambling-wise, dude. Our listeners need you. It's just very unlike me to remain cold for so long. But you've got to shoot your way out of it. All right.

Special thanks to Jeff Maher for joining us this week. And if you're out there, reach out to those people at People Magazine. Tell them they made the mistake. Vote in the Kelsey Brothers is the sexiest podcast host of 2024. Maybe it's ours in 2025, Slees. That's right. Minor setback for a major comeback. All right.

Have a great week. We'll talk to you next week on Subpar.