Advantage Players

Renowned magazine writer Michael Kaplan has penned dozens of stories on advantage players. Known by gambling cognoscenti as APs, they are people who employ various high-level techniques to legally and brilliantly beat casinos and racetracks at their own games.

In the pages of Advantage Players, you’ll meet the undisputed greatest APs. They include the poker genius Phil Ivey, baccarat millionaire Kelly Sun, Don Johnson (not the actor, but the gambler who beat Atlantic City for $15 million), the founder of the famed MIT blackjack team (named John Chang, he inspired Kevin Spacey’s character in the movie 21), and the world’s greatest sports-betting furniture salesman who’s known as Mattress Mack.

But Advantage Players isn’t limited to gambling. The book also examines the AP strategies used by winners in life’s other games. They include an art dealer who turned the gallery scene upside down, a stripper who earns $300,000 per year, the attorney who got Mike Tyson sprung, the extreme magician David Blaine, and movie directors the Safdie brothers. Going further, while taking the measure of its world, Advantage Players doesn’t shy away from masterminds who cross the line from advantage plays to outright illicit money grabs.

In Advantage Players, readers go on a deep dive into the world of superstars who ply their trade ingeniously, devise strategies far from the public eye, and walk away with the gold.