Bad influences are everywhere. They get you to drink too much, gamble too much, indulge in nefarious substances, and to sometimes go over lines that you figured you didn’t want to cross. Often, they cost you money in the casino pit or at the poker table.
I know one guy who goes so far that a mutual friend said he should have a warning label tattooed onto a visible area of his body.
But then there are the seemingly bad influences who are actually good. There’s the guy who got me onto a card-counting team and then convinced me that investing in the team was a smart idea.
It seemed nutty and reckless, gambling on gambling, but it actually proved profitable – until it wasn’t. That, however, is another story entirely and not his fault.
I always put cryptocurrency evangelists into the category of bad influences. I never fully understood it and always viewed it as a pyramid scheme at worst and a random game of chance at best (put up your money, spin the wheel, take your shot). Putting cash into crypto never seemed smart to me. Then I watched Bitcoin inch toward $100,000 and scratched my head.
It’s no surprise that most every savvy poker player I know has a pile of crypto. The sharpest advantage player in my orbit – a guy who’s won at blackjack, sports betting, even god damned slot machines – told me years ago to buy just $10,000 worth and see what happens.
A poker player by the name of Bryan Micon did as well with crypto as most anyone. He fell into buying it when the introduction of cryptocurrency crossed with the shutting down of online poker in the US. After getting involved with a crypto casino – a site that used untraceable crypto instead of plain old cash – called Seals With Clubs, he felt compelled to stock up on coins and let’s just say that today he does not have to hustle jobs at burgeoning poker sites.
He suggested, back then, that I buy some crypto and play on the site. I poo pooed it. Clearly, a missed opportunity. He was a fantastic influence.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Trump Bump in cryptocurrency and what the winners are spending their money on. I wound up meeting one of my sources soon after, when I was in Las Vegas for the F1 race. The source, a cool woman named Charlene, was there as well – a PJ (her lingo for private jet) to Vegas was part of her crypto splurge.
Over lunch at the fabulous Wally’s at Resorts World, she of course suggested that I dip my toe into cryptocurrency. I was reluctant as ever, until she said something that would have shut the door for most but piqued my curiosity.
“It really is gambling, isn’t it?” she asked.
With that, she slipped resolutely into the good influence category. If it’s gambling, from what I know about people who win at stuff, there must be an advantage play for crypto – not just buying it, blindly holding tight and hoping for the best. But, instead, a way to play it like every other beatable game.
Canvasing a few friends who have actually made loads with crypto, and asking the right question that I should have asked years ago, I found out that the play is not unlike coloring up when the count hopelessly plummets or ditching out from a poker cash game after Andrew Robl suddenly shows up and sits one seat to your left. You just need to know when to do it.
Realizing that, I did buy a bit of the meme coins that Charlene and the couple of others recommended (reassuringly, they were, more or less, the same coins). I’ve been given marching orders on when to hop out and it’s been fun to watch the numbers move around.
Am I going to get rich off my tiny cache of crypto? Probably not. But it’ll be cool to get involved and hopefully make a couple bucks by knowing what I’m doing while random gamblers – Charlene calls them the normies – plan on getting lucky.
Michael Kaplan is a journalist based in New York City. He is the author of five books (“The Advantage Players” comes out in 2024) and has worked for publications that include Wired, GQ and the New York Post. He has written extensively on technology, gambling, and business — with a particular interest in spots where all three intersect. His article on Kelly “Baccarat Machine” Sun and Phil Ivey is currently in development as a feature film.
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