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You can spend about five minutes Googling around and learn that the events in this story happened in the early to mid 2000's, mostly at smaller regional casinos

You can spend about five minutes Googling around and learn that the events in this story happened in the early to mid 2000's, mostly at smaller regional casinos, and no, the participants did not make much money - about enough to be useful to a struggling grad student (as described in the article!). You can find the author and one of her teammates discussing their careers on a podcast from a couple of years ago here: http://bobdancer.com/podcast http://bobdancer.com/podcast But I appreciate your commitment to upholding the proud HackerNews tradition of supremely confident snap judgments uncontaminated by actual knowledge.

specialp 6y ago
Here are some quotes from the article: "Carlo was betting stacks of orange chips we called “pumpkins,” up to $10,000 per hand." "Our Big Players naturally drew attention with their wagers in the thousands." No I didn't read every single story about this ever just the one linked. And yes it is a snap judgement from what I know that it is complete fiction. That doesn't sound like small casino action to me. Also, please let me know about the casino that allows 10k bets mid shoe entry.... I've never seen one. If this was a story written about some struggling grad students that made small amounts of money on small action at small casinos as you claim on your throw-away account I would not have posted what I posted. But alas this thread is about the article posted and I stand by my claim that it is almost certainly untrue from what is contained in it. I don't need to know the entire history to decide that. The article contains information that is at best highly embellished.