en
Michael Kaplan

Michael Kaplan is a journalist based in New York City. He has written extensively on gambling for publications such as Wired, Playboy, Cigar Aficionado, New York Post and New York Times. He is the author of four books including Aces and Kings: Inside Stories and Million-Dollar Strategies from Poker’s Greatest Players.

He’s been known to do a bit of gambling when the timing seems right.

Michael Kaplan 's Articles

Larry Flynt was hilarious. The recently deceased publisher of Hustler magazine was an avid gambler, who, despite being paralyzed as the result of an assassination attempt in 1978, retained a perfectly dry sense of humor. The first time I interviewed Flynt, back in the late 1990s, I asked him why he had such an affinity for poker and blackjack.

Ask a sharp advantage player what he thinks of the lottery and said AP will most likely laugh in your face. You don’t need to be James Grosjean to know that the lottery is strictly for suckers, dreamers and grandmothers. After all, the odds of winning the grand prize looms at around 1 in 292-million.

Everyone is entitled to get lucky sometimes. But there are those who seem to get way luckier, way more often, than the rest of us. While it often takes varying degrees of skill and timing to land a major casino win, you can’t discount the role that good fortune plays in all of it.