California casinos bear little resemblance to their flashier counterparts in Nevada. There's no clamor of slot machines and spinning roulette wheels, and there are no themes except perhaps the lucky dragon motif, which is repeated to dizzying effect on the carpets, in the elevators and on the walls. These casinos aren't designed to pull in tourists who'll throw down a few bucks for kicks. They attract serious players who come not for an all-you-can-eat buffet or a free show, but for the sole purpose of gambling.

In a game of pai gow poker, bets are placed before each of the seven players receives seven cards. One of the players shakes the dice in a special container that is slammed onto the felt table, the louder the luckier; hands are placed face down on the table and then turned over one at a time by the dealer. She quickly determines the winner, and chips are pushed across the table. There's no clapping or commotion; no one jumps up or throws punches in the air. Every face at the table is as blank as the next. The dealer shuffles the deck and the game starts over.

"Nathan" made his debut on this scene at the age of 24. Tall and Caucasian, he must have been a conspicuous figure as he walked into a card room for the first time and took a seat at a poker table. He placed $60,000 in chips on the table and slowly but deliberately proceeded to double his money. It was the beginning of his career in the gaming industry and his first job.

Nathan declined to give his real name because he is no longer a professional gambler and doesn't want his past to hurt his chances of getting a new job. But he says he was just six months out of college and in search of some direction and a steady income when his friend "Eric" (also a pseudonym) told him about his job working for CORE Capital Management as a professional gambler.

Nathan's parents had brought him up with the sense to know that gambling was a loser's game. He assumed that Eric's company must be running some kind of scam. Eric explained the difference between what is defined as cheating in California -- introducing something new to the game such as new cards which might be marked or chips that don't belong to the casino -- and using your brain and powers of memory. In other words, said Eric, it's not illegal to count cards and use sophisticated mathematical formulas to give yourself an edge over the competition. Eric's explanation was convincing, and besides, Nathan owed his roommate three months rent. He decided to give it a shot.

Sitting at a table with a deck of cards and pen and paper, Nathan took all of two days for his training, which mainly involved learning to count cards. Despite his lack of casino experience, he had a good head for numbers and was soon only playing at tables where the minimum bet was $100 or more. Sometimes he bet $10,000 on a hand. He didn't win every time he played, but just over 50 percent of the time, enough to make the company a profit. Although he didn't work on commission, his $20-an-hour salary was generous for a 24-year-old graduate with no work experience. After three weeks on the job he was able to pay his roommate back the money he owed him.

Professional gamblers wouldn't last long in Las Vegas or Reno. The odds are stacked against you when you're always playing against the house; if you do start to win consistently, you're asked to leave. The presence of professional gamblers in California, however, is not only tolerated but encouraged by many casinos.

Companies that employ prop players, such as CORE, are able to operate in California because state gambling laws allow casinos under the stipulation that patrons only bet against each other, not the "house." The California casinos are usually card rooms that charge a fee of $1 per $100 bet. These fees, known by players as the juice or the drop, are the primary source of income for the casinos and cover the cost of providing services such as cashiers and dealers.

Prior to 1998, California's gambling industry was mostly unregulated. CORE, says Nathan, was one of the first companies to see the potential for operating a profitable business out of the casinos while staying within the boundaries of state law. It began operating in Southern California in the early 1990s and pioneered the field by arming its players with proprietary techniques for playing popular casino games such as pai gow poker. CORE's rapid success soon spawned copycat companies with names such as Network M and the Bankers Group.

Walk into just about any of the larger San Francisco Bay Area card rooms any time and you're likely to see one of their players at a pai gow poker table sporting a name tag and a large rack of chips.

But the edge that professionals such as Nathan have over other players at the table is small. To profit from it, CORE's employees must play 24 hours a day, seven days a week, working in shifts and playing with the highest possible stakes. The casino owners often want them there because they draw other players to the table, push the stakes up (and therefore the fees) and keep the games going on a slow night. In the good old days, before CORE had to compete with other companies, casinos actually paid them up to $25 an hour per prop player.

In pai gow poker, CORE's game of choice, someone has to play the part of the bank. Whoever plays the bank has slightly better odds of winning, which explains why in Vegas the bank is always played by the dealer. In California, the bank moves from one player to the next after every two hands. Professional players are trained to wait patiently until they have the small but significant statistical advantage of playing the bank, at which point they will take greater risks and place larger bets than most other players at the table can afford. Although they may appear to lose as often as the other players at the table, eventually they come out ahead.

The best professional players are not compulsive gamblers who may give in to the impulse to place a high bet on the basis of a hunch or an impulse. Professionals can't afford to believe in luck. Nathan says he was one of CORE's top players because he was able to maintain some detachment from the game and the large quantities of money that passed through his hands. He stuck to the formulas and only increased his bets when it was his turn to be the bank. "It was a job," he says. "I never thought about the money that much; I got numbed to it really quickly."

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