How Two Las Vegas Insiders Started Cheating at Blackjack — And Never Got Caught

Most people fantasize about beating the casino. Dustin Marks and The Kaiser actually did it.
Episode 1 of the Cheating at Blackjack podcast is where it all starts — two men with a combined 55 years of casino experience sitting down for the first time to tell the story they’ve never fully told before. One cheated the casinos from the inside as a blackjack dealer. The other spent decades working inside those same casinos protecting them from people exactly like his partner.

The Credentials

Dustin Marks is the author of Cheating at Blackjack and Cheating at Blackjack Squared, starred in the DVD Cheating at Blackjack: The Real Work, and has appeared on numerous television shows and podcasts. Over four years in the 1980s he was involved in approximately 500 different cheating plays at Las Vegas blackjack tables. He was never caught.
The Kaiser brings something equally rare — 50 years inside the casino industry, starting as a dealer and rising to an executive level. He knows how casinos think, what they look for, what they ignore, and where the blind spots are. He was also Dustin’s agent for roughly a year and a half, involved in approximately 150 cheating plays himself.
Together they represent both sides of the table simultaneously — the cheat and the man paid to catch cheats.

How It Started

Neither man planned a career in casino cheating. Both came to it through magic.
Dustin was seven years old when his father took him to see an amateur magician — a 70-year-old man who became young again the moment cards were in his hands. Something clicked that never stopped clicking. He taught himself card magic from library books at a time when YouTube didn’t exist and you had to actually read to learn anything.
The Kaiser’s path began through his ex-father-in-law, one of the first trade show magicians in history. Thrown into the deep end one day in front of Paul Harris, Louis Simonoff, and Daniel Cross — three of the biggest names in card magic — he performed a packet trick while shaking so badly it was almost unwatchable. The bug bit anyway and never let go.
Magic led to sleight of hand. Sleight of hand led to gambling moves. And gambling moves, in the hands of the right people at the right time in 1980s Las Vegas, led to something else entirely.

The Name Nobody Had Heard

The moment that started everything came at a magic club meeting run by Gary Darwin. Dustin asked around — who was the best with a deck of cards? He heard names he already knew. And then one name he had never heard before, spoken in a low whisper.
Mr. CC.
Reclusive. Never came to the meetings. But reportedly the best in the world with a deck of cards, especially gambling moves. That name — and the mystery around it — set everything in motion.

What’s Coming

Episode 1 ends with a teaser that sets up the entire series. Imagine sitting at a blackjack table knowing your first card before you place a bet. 100% betting efficiency on that first card alone. And then — knowing your first hit card as well.
That’s not a fantasy. That’s exactly what Dustin and The Kaiser did. Every single time.
The statute of limitations in Nevada for casino cheating is three years. They stopped over 30 years ago. Now they’re talking.
Watch Episode 1 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V91OkQztTCY