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For the next twenty-five years, until my discovery of the Savannah roulette move in the midnineties, roulette as well as craps would take a backseat to the blackjack move. Each time the team went to work, it began by scouting and then pouncing on blackjack tables. Jerry was always the lead mechanic, but Joe and Duke had also become proficient at the move. When Jerry sat down at a blackjack table, he allowed himself three hands to move. If he lost all three, or didn't move for some other reason, he would cede his spot to the number-two mechanic, Duke, who followed the same rules as Jerry. If Duke experienced the same difficulties, Joe would replace him and take three more cracks at it. In effect, each time third base was vacant on a blackjack table, the team had nine different hands to do a move, which meant its productivity level was nearly a hundred percent-and that before taking into account the other positions on the table.

They functioned like a well-oiled military machine, marching up and down the Strip, popping in two-o-fives on blackjack tables all over Vegas. Joe's biggest worry was that Henry would one day stumble upon them in a casino and discover their blackjack move. Joe wanted it protected like a government's most important nuclear secret. Whenever they were in a casino game and Joe spotted someone he recognized from another casino, he broke off their operation and led the team elsewhere. His theory was that anyone seen in a lot of different casinos was probably scamming something. Legitimate people usually remained loyal to the casino they gambled in. And his theory was even more applicable to persons Joe recognized from other gambling areas.

"If you see a guy here in Reno," he had told Duke and Jerry one night after calling off their blackjack patrol in Harrah's, "and then you see him a month later in a casino on one of the Caribbean islands, you know he's working."

In February 1970, they took their first Caribbean trip together.

It was a big success, so they began returning annually and then biannually. They'd start in Puerto Rico, then island-skip to the Bahamas and Aruba among others. Islander hospitality in and out of casinos was greatly appreciated. And so was the opportunity to unwind at the beach.

The Classon team remained pretty much intact into the midseventies. Joe, Duke and Jerry, who had abandoned the U.S. military, were full time. The girlfriends were part-timers who preferred only going along on the Caribbean trips and the occasional trip to Europe. The blackjack move continued to be the strongest weapon in the arsenal and had been upgraded to purple chips. Craps and roulette moves still played an important role but were relegated to being done only when blackjack moves weren't possible.

By the summer of 1976, Joe, Duke, and Jerry all had a lot of heat in Nevada's casinos. They then decided, after working together for more than six years, that it was time to recruit another partner. That same bicentennial summer I drove my shiny Mustang convert- ible out to Las Vegas.

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