Las Vegas gambler beat casinos out of $15M. Now she’s telling her story

LAS VEGAS — One in 300. That is the average number of blackjack dealers that professional gambler Gina Fiore discovered that flashed their hole card — or unintentionally exposed a portion of a facedown card that should stay hidden during the dealing process. Working up to 16 hours a day scouting those dealers was well worth it to Fiore and her teams of advantage players. She said they used that edge to beat casinos in Las Vegas and around the world out of $15 million over 20 years, including $97,000 in cash that was wrongfully seized from her by a DEA agent at an Atlanta airport. The former UNLV student and Green Valley High School graduate also overcame long odds to get her book, “Advantage Player: A Memoir of Blackjack, Backrooms, and Beginnings,” published. Fiore sent queries to 101 agents before she found one to represent her. But she didn’t land a book deal until last year after a woman who watched a short documentary on Fiore at the Tribeca film festival introduced her to a friend who owned a major literary agency. Fiore, 48, secured a TV deal for a possible HBO series based on her life before she wrote her book, which came out Oct. 27. Riley Keough, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter and Emmy-nominated actress for the Amazon Prime Video series “Daisy Jones &The Six,” signed on to play Fiore after listening to a podcast Fiore did on The Ringer podcast network. The book not only takes readers on a roller-coaster ride through Fiore’s career as a pro gambler, but it delves into growing up in a dysfunctional family, being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and a custody battle for her son. The Review-Journal interviewed Fiore — who started her career as a dealer at the Hacienda (now Hoover Dam Casino) and Monte Carlo, and Agua Caliente in Palm Springs, before moving to the other side of the counter — about her life story. The answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. Review-Journal: What exactly is an advantage player? Fiore: It’s just the industry term for professional gamblers. Advantage players or APs. Card counting is a very simple thing to do. There’s a card counter, which they obviously play with an advantage, but anything above that you’re an AP. There’s an advantage player community and it’s very, very small. RJ: Would you recommend a career as an advantage player? Fiore: No, absolutely not. I start my book out with a disclaimer that I do not recommend this. It’s just a hard way to make a living. I feel like I didn’t really have any other choice. In 2026, you can absolutely still make money as a gambler playing with an edge. But it’s definitely hard to have a normal life. I had no social life for a very long time. It’s very isolating. RJ: When and why did you decide to write a book? Fiore: I started writing the book a decade ago. I used to play a lot of poker and started writing an anonymous blog about my poker sessions. I just like writing and kept working on it. I think writing might be the only other thing I’m qualified to do besides gambling. I’m older now and more willing to leave the gambling to the side and start trying to get into writing and entertainment, where before I just couldn’t do that. I was completely anonymous. RJ: Do you still consider yourself a gambler or a writer now? Fiore: My goal for the last three years has been to make more money writing than gambling. I have failed that goal every year. I think this is my first year that I’ll actually do it. But I still gamble. I bet sports. When I was pregnant with my son, I didn’t want to be in the casino, so I started getting into sports betting. I’m betting NFL right now, mostly, for my gambling. But I’m also promoting the book and I have a Substack I write. RJ: When were you introduced to gambling and when did you decide to pursue it professionally? Fiore: My mom was a dealer when I was a kid, so casinos were very familiar. She dealt in (Lake) Tahoe, so I’d run in and say hi to her before I went to the arcade while she was dealing a game. We moved to Las Vegas when I was 14 and my mom and I would play video poker a few times downtown. I’d have my sunglasses on but, of course, I had no idea what I was doing. When I was 21, she taught me how to deal blackjack and then I got a job dealing. A couple of years after that, somebody at my job was quitting to count cards for a living and it was a light bulb moment for me, because my mom had told me about card counting when I was a teenager. I was like, ‘This is a thing that you can do for money?’ And that was it. I became obsessed with learning. I started deep diving and going online and going on these forums and talking to people. I would go to the Gambler’s Book Club in downtown Vegas and buy all these books. RJ: When was the last time you had a real job? Fiore: I moved to Palm Springs to deal in one of the casinos there and I quit when I was 24. That was 24 years ago and I haven’t worked a real job since. But I learned more than card counting. I couldn’t quit my job just to count cards. It’s not that strong. I learned how to hole card blackjack games and I learned how to sort cards, edge sorting. I’ve done a lot of stuff but it was mostly learning how to hole card and then I was like, ‘This is enough for me to quit my job.’ RJ: If the HBO series gets greenlit, is there a part of your story that you’re worried might be misconstrued? Fiore: They can do whatever they want with my story. But the one thing I said, when we were working on the show with the writer, is the character can never cheat. They can never do anything illegal in the casino because then they go from advantage player to cheater. RJ: Deadline reported in August that Keough will star in “Advantage Player,” a gambling-themed HBO series inspired by you that will be written by Will Graham, the show-runner for “Daisy Jones &The Six.” How did you connect with Keough on the project? Fiore: Someone gave her agent a podcast I did in 2021 for The Ringer network, and Riley really liked it and wanted to do something. Eventually she brought in (Graham), and we started working together and developed the pitch and now HBO made a developmental deal for it. I don’t have any more information. I’m very involved in the creative side, but I’m not in HBO what are we doing next talks. They’ll let me know. RJ: Keough came to Las Vegas in 2023 to play blackjack with you and follow your signals. What was that experience like? Fiore: There was a writers strike and she came down with Will Graham and a couple of producers. We went out and Riley was the big player and she was all about it. She understood it because we’re writing this thing and they’re like, we need you to know it and feel it. So she came and bet and it was awesome. It was so fun. She’s great. She’s not pretentious at all. She’s all in with this and she’s the sweetest person, and so is Will Graham. They’re both like the best people I could be working with. She’s a really good actress and I don’t know that she necessarily gets the attention for that rather than being Elvis’ granddaughter. It never comes up in conversation. It doesn’t define her. RJ: What can people expect when they read your book? Fiore: I’ve exposed more about advantage play and playing with an edge than any other gambling book ever written, as far as I know, and I’ve read a lot of them. I give away a ton of gambling information, the actual inside secrets. But it’s also a memoir. My elevator pitch is that gamblers will love this book, and then they can give it to their mom or their wife, because women read memoirs. ___