If you love card games like blackjack, the chances are that you have watched a movie or two about it already. Indeed, there’s no shortage of epic movie scenes involving blackjack. There, professional players live the high life and are also nearly infallible. Except, of course, from that moment when the protagonist flops big time, just to add the necessary tension to the plot.
However, Amazon’s Prime Video documentary shows how the life of a real professional gambler can look un-Hollywoodly. Documentaries – from Attenborough’s nature shows to Theroux’s eccentric interviews – show an unfiltered angle. Professional gamblers often face loneliness, rejection, and downswings. Read more about it below.
Start Counting
Inside the Edge is a documentary about a professional blackjack player in his card-counting adventures. Blackjack enthusiasts are familiar with the concept of card-counting. The mathematician Edward Thorp was the first to devise a counting card technique. Such a technique sent ripples across the gambling community back in the 60s.
His book Beat the Dealer explains his principles and teaches the brain to calculate the next card with incredible precision. This method shifted the edge from the house to the player. So, many casinos started changing some rules.
The classic blackjack game, upon which this method was created, uses only one deck of cards. Now, casinos use up to eight decks. Also, they use complex shuffling techniques to prevent card-counting. Still, it’s possible to find land-based venues offering the classic version, and that’s what you’re going to see in this documentary.
Persona Non-Grata
Casinos don’t like smarty-pants. In fact, most of them invest top dollar in security and surveillance systems. The main goal is to prevent malpractices and what they consider “unlawful gaming.” Counting cards isn’t the same as rigging a roulette, which is an actual crime. After all, there’s no crime in being good at maths. Regardless, no casino tolerates such practice and bans card-counting players on the spot.
This documentary follows the professional card-counter KC while he outsmarts casinos and gets kicked out of quite a few, too. KC is on the top of his game, making him quite infamous among casino managers. Some venues don’t even allow him to get it, but KC is resourceful. Inside the Edge also shows how he must disguise to enter some venues, a trick that doesn’t always work.
All Real
Inside the Edge includes plenty of footage from hidden cameras. So, the audience can be sure nothing was staged. Indeed, that’s one of the most powerful features of this documentary. It shows the real life of a professional gambler.
Doing the Maths
The documentary contrasts glamour and exhilaration with boredom, downswings, and angry guards. So, if you felt compelled to change your life entirely and put your heart on the cards, think again. Even extremely talented players like KC go through rough patches. KC admits that his life is a rollercoaster, winning and losing thousands of dollars in the same day.
Still, you don’t need to know Edward Thorp’s work by heart to have a lot of fun with blackjack. Let alone dodge corpulent security personnel to have a lot of fun with blackjack. To try your skills at the comfort of your house, you can also log to nettikasino-ilman-rekisteröitymistä.com to get first-hand real gambling experience.
Counting Out
Inside the Edge goes straight to the heart of blackjack and casino lovers. Still, the only Hollywood-like thing in the documentary is KC’s talent for counting cards. If it inspires you to dust off your cards, there’s plenty of quality material online about the nitty-gritty of card-counting. Anyway, it’ll help you see this professional in more realistic and non-glamorized colours.