Joe: Later I got what was usually a pretty "cushy" assignment as an officer of the court system. I started out in the New York City Criminal Court, then took an examination and was promoted, and worked for the State Supreme Court, and then I became the personal officer to a State Supreme Court Justice. I was actually on hand for the court proceedings. I was there for the David Berkowitz/Son of Sam proceedings.

Joe: I was the officer assigned to the murder case for David Berkowitz when he arrived in the Brooklyn Criminal Court. His attorney wanted to speak with him upon his arrival in the court, so we sat in the cell, just the three of us, on my left was David Berkowitz, and on my right was his attorney. The attorney was afraid of Berkowitz, so he wanted me in between them as they spoke about his defense. The Son of Sam situation had the whole city of New York in a state of terror. People were afraid to go out, girls were cutting their hair, because the first couple of girls that he shot had long hair. When he was arrested, he came to the booking department in Brooklyn for his arraignment. At that time, I was assigned to the book and criminal court department. Even though he was charged with a felony, he had to be processed through the criminal court system before he could be indicted by the Grand Jury. So there I was, this hotshot Officer as they brought "Son of Sam" into the building. When they chose me to go into the holding pen with Berkowitz and his attorney, I had to "lodge" my weapon, so I'm unarmed in this little cell with David Berkowitz and his attorney. Officers are not allowed to carry a weapon into the cell, due to the possibility of the prisoner overpowering the officer and taking his gun.

Joe: That would be bad, especially with David Berkowitz who had a tendency to fire his gun whenever he had one. At that point I was really young and like many of us at that age thought myself to be "bullet-proof" - not really thinking about the grand scope of the situation. But as I looked back upon it, what I should have been thinking about was the possibility of him attempting something while I was in the cell with him. This guy had already killed several people, and it obviously didn't matter to him, why wouldn't he just stand up and try something - like choking me. He was a relatively big guy too.

Joe: No! I believe he had leg shackles on his ankles, but I think his hands were free, because I remember him signing several documents. That was why his attorney didn't want to sit next to him. So I had the job of sitting in between them while the attorney interviewed Berkowitz. As soon as the interview was finished, everyone from the Press wanted to speak with me about the conversation that transpired.

Joe: They wanted to know what Berkowitz had to say, and I told them he was simply conversing with his attorney.

Joe: Well, I was always in trouble with my boss, and he said to me, "What are you doing? Are you crazy? Whatever you say, you will be called to the trial to repeat."

Joe:

• The main character that the movie "Good Fellows" was based on who was played by Robert DeNiro - Jimmy Burke, was assigned to me. Based on the excessive amount of coverage that preceded his arrival in the court, I had a predetermined vision of how he looked, but I was shocked when I went down stairs and first saw him in person. First, he wasn't Italian, but Irish, and he looked like the girl-next-door's father. But he was believed to be the one behind the Lufthansa money heist, where they stole about six million dollars from the cargo terminal at JFK Airport.
• There was a case involving a young lady who responded to an advertisement in the paper, this was before Internet dating, about a man who identified himself as a doctor. She invited him to stay with her, under the pretense that he would change her life. She was a single mom and didn't have a job. The lady had a young son, who was abused by the man with cigarette burns, and at one point was pushed across the room, fell and hit his head on the bed frame and stopped breathing. Instead of calling for help, the mother and boyfriend left him on the floor, where he passed away. After a while they had a problem, when the body started to smell, so they cut the boy into pieces and put him into the refrigerator. The boyfriend would take a few pieces at a time and bury them in the yard, but a neighbor reported the smell to the police. When the police broke into the apartment, the boy's head was still on a dish in the refrigerator. It was difficult to look at the photographs from the apartment. The head was on a dish on the top shelf, next to a carton of milk.
• I was assigned to a trial where the mother and baby were drowned in the bathtub together. It was difficult to listen to the details in that trial.

The reason that I bring these events out into the open is that after seeing and hearing the grisly details about all of the killings and crime that is out there everyday, and then coming to Las Vegas and simply trying to use my brain to play blackjack, and being treated like I was some kind of criminal, it made me mad, because I really know what a criminal looks like up close, and yet these casinos treat me and many others like I have killed somebody. I've seen on many occasions in New York where someone has killed somebody, yet he is given every benefit of the doubt until proven guilty. But out here in Las Vegas, the casinos treat their patrons as if they are guilty in the first place. I have friends who don't count cards, but they may move their bets up and down. They are just gambling, but the uneducated pit personnel many times may think that they are counting, and back them off from the game. In my case, without sounding too pompous, I can play a little, but I don't play for much money. I'm never going to hurt the bottom line of any casino. One of the reasons that I moved to Las Vegas was that I got tired of all the travel from New York to Las Vegas. My passion at the time was strictly tournament play. I really didn't know about regular blackjack and advantage play.

Joe: I played my first tournament at Resorts International in New Jersey in 1987, and I finished in second place. I had no idea what the "low" meant, but I simply knew that I had to get chips. If I had chips, and I wanted to bet on the dealer, I would just bet a nickel, not knowing that I could make a much more educated play by betting all of my lead minus a chip, thus possibly forcing the other player to double down or split to try to take the lead. But I didn't know anything about that; I just knew that if I had the most chips and the dealer won the hand then I would win. It wasn't until later that I figured out, for instance, let's say I had a $300 lead and the maximum bet was $500, then if I bet $205, the other player would have to double down to beat me. I came in second in that first tournament, and won $10,000, and I was thinking, "Wow, this is really cool". After playing in that tournament, I somehow got on the mailing list at IGP (International Gaming Promotions). They sent me information about a tournament at the Rio Casino in Las Vegas. That was in April of 1992, so there was a long time between my first two tournaments. I won $10,000 in my first event, and then didn't play in another tournament for almost five years. I was a "nickel" player back then, so if there were invitational events, I wasn't on the list anyway. I didn't have the time to pursue the tournament life, but that all changed on November 23, 1987. I started reading about casino games, and how blackjack could be beaten. In the back of my mind I always had this goal, after watching my father gamble so poorly on some really bad things all of those years, that I was going to play only the better games.

Joe: When the officers are on trial duty, there is a lot of down time, so we would all end up playing cards in the locker room. We received intelligence that there might be a possible prisoner escape attempt from the courtroom. There were four defendants on trial for holding up a bodega (a Spanish grocery store), which was a front for a crack house. They knew the guy who worked behind the counter, and they knew that if they went in and held him up, he would give the money to them, but they had really poor timing, because the owner of the store was in the back. He came out with guns blasting, so it turned into a big shootout. They killed the storeowner, and shot the kid behind the counter, but he didn't die right away, and he knew the four guys involved. When the police responded, he gave what they call a dying confession to the officers as to who it was that shot him, and the four guys were arrested. When they went on trial, they knew what the probable outcome was going to be, with the dying confession and the other evidence that was presented, so they planned a jailbreak from the courtroom. While they were being held at Riker's Island, they made shivs (homemade knives). When they came to court for the verdict to be read, we had a few extra officers sitting in the courtroom as visitors on the front row, to thwart any escape attempt. The four officers on duty assigned to handle the prisoners, one of them being myself, had to lodge our weapons. In addition to not wanting the prisoners to gain access to our weapons, we also didn't want the jury to be influenced by seeing an officer behind the prisoners with a gun. They can't be handcuffed, and we couldn't have a weapon. When they arrived from Riker's Island they were searched, and we did a pat down upon their arrival at the court, but someone messed up, because no one had them take their shoes off to search them. Inside their shoes they had knives, so as the first verdict of guilty was read to the court, they reached down, as if they were adjusting their socks, and pulled out the knives. They flipped the defense table up on its side, and attempted to put the knives to the throats of their attorneys. As one of the defendants goes to put the knife to the attorney's throat, I react and grab his arm. I am now in a struggle with him, along with many other officers and defendants, when two other officers jump on my defendant's back, and we go crashing down to the floor. But the table, which is on its side, is beneath us, and the defendant and both of the other officers are on top of me as my back smashes into the edge of the table, crushing it. Now, I'm on the bottom of a pile of 700 lbs. of men with a very angry guy holding a knife in his hand. I'm trying to keep the knife off of my face while the other two officers are trying to pull him up. After they removed the defendant from on top of me, it occurred to me that I might be hurt, due to the severe pain, "no pun intended", that I was feeling.

The original diagnosis was a herniated disc in my back, so they put me on medical leave immediately, and ran me through all sorts of examinations. Then they found it to be a bulging, but not herniated disc, but I still suffered from severe back pain. I couldn't return to work, and I had the option of having surgery, where my friend, an orthopedic surgeon, told me the success rate for that type of operation was about 95%. He recommended that if I could live with the pain, to not have the surgery performed. Plus, if I didn't have the surgery, I couldn't return to work, and would be placed on medical leave, which lasted a year and a half, at which point I was given retirement, due to the medical condition, with a full pension. The problem was that the pension amount was based on the last three years of service, and I was making quite a bit of overtime until the injury took place, so the last year and a half was calculated at base pay while I was on medical leave. After the injury took place, I had plenty of time to learn about basic strategy and other means for taking advantage of the casino games. I wasn't very mobile for quite a while. When they released me in 1990, I thought to myself, "well, what am I going to do now?". I was only 36 years old and retired. I started going to Atlantic City. At that point I had bought a house in New Jersey, so I would take the bus down to the casinos. There was a discount liquor store two blocks from my house, that had a bus stop that would take the people to Atlantic City everyday, so I would just ride the bus down there. I would pay $12 to get on the bus, but when I got off the bus, they would give me $20. So, not only did I not have to drive, but also they paid me to go. I knew that I was going to often, when the old people on the bus knew me by name. That was when I decided to slow down a bit on the trips to the casinos.

Joe: As I stated earlier, I was on the IGP mailing list, and I received an invitation to play in a tournament at the Rio Casino. I decided to make the trip to Las Vegas to play in that event and that was in June of 1992. The reason I went on that trip was because IGP had another event at the Aladdin during the same week as the Rio tournament. I played at the Aladdin, and did nothing, but the Rio was another story. The IGP tournaments were all "live" money events, no "funny" money, I could lose my own money at the table, so I had to think about those doubling down on a stiff situations a little bit longer. On the last hand in the semi-finals at the Rio, I was down by over $350 with a maximum bet of $200. I was dealt a blackjack, and the crowd, as is common in most events, can't tell how many chips everyone had, but they knew I had a maximum bet blackjack, which was worth $300 in real money. I knew that I was behind by over $350, so the blackjack wouldn't give me the lead, if the other player also won his hand. I thought to myself, "you know, I came here to win", so I doubled down, which at that point was a risky move, because I was on a pension, and the difference between winning $300 and losing $400 was a big deal to me back then. I remember when I slid the money out for the double down, I heard the people behind me, who even though they thought that they were whispering, (when I'm in a tournament, I can hear everything), say, "What is he doing?". At first, I almost stopped, thinking, "Yeah! What am I doing?", but I knew that I had to make that move to win and advance to the final table. Well I doubled, and caught a ten for 21, and beat the guy by less than $50. I became good friends with that guy, which lasted many years, until he passed away. His name was Jerry, and after the tournament was finished, he brought his wife out to the pool were I was sitting, and introduced me to her as "the crazy man that doubled down his blackjack to beat me". I would probably say that 90% of my friends now, are people that I have played against in blackjack tournaments. My family that comes out to visit me here in Las Vegas, and goes to a tournament to watch me, tells me that I live in this little sub-culture. My family looks at me and the other tournament players as if we are in our own little world. Which is funny because many of us don't have jobs, we are, for the most part, independently wealthy, or retired. I'm not independently wealthy, I just happened to be retired.

I've always played sports my whole life. I started out playing little league baseball, and I played football. I ended up playing semi-pro football. I wasn't paid, only about three or four guys were paid to play, but I was pretty good, and had the University of Miami scout me for their school. I just wasn't big enough to play Division One College football. I always maintained that competitive spirit, but as I aged, the ability to compete in physical athletic endeavors became too difficult. Playing blackjack tournaments was a way for me to keep my competitive juices flowing, and I hate to lose. I decided that I needed to learn how to really compete in these tournaments. As I look back at the Rio tournament final table, I didn't know it at the time, but I was sitting with some guys that had been playing tournament blackjack for years and years. The guys at that final table were J.C. Thomas, David Wilkie, and Gene Cranston, and I am a friend with all of them now, but I had no idea who they were when we sat down at the final table. I remembered that IGP had this contest, that if someone won both the craps tournament, which took place the same week, and the blackjack tournament, then that person also won a car. J.C. Thomas won the craps tournament, and he and I were one and two going into the last hand of the blackjack tournament. I wound up winning the Rio tournament, and $60,000 thus preventing J.C. from getting the free car. I didn't know at the time that J.C. was a quiet, and reserved person, so for about the next five years, I thought that he simply hated me for winning the tournament, and preventing him from getting the new car. After several years, I finally asked him, "are you still angry with me?" and he said, "Why would I be angry with you?" and I said, "you know, I beat you at the Rio, and kept you from winning the new car". He was never mad about that final table loss, but I always thought that he was, since he hardly spoke to me. This whole story goes back to my upbringing and my personality, which is totally opposite from that of J.C. With the new line of profession that I have chosen, I cannot bring forth an outgoing personality. It just won't work for me as a card counter/advantage player. I learned that my New York, outgoing personality, simply wouldn't work for me in the casinos. I felt that I needed to blend in with the other patrons, and leave without anyone even knowing that I have been there. Those of you who know me, know that I am just not like that. It is very difficult for me to keep quiet. When I enter a room, most people will know that I have arrived!

A man came up to me at Texas Station Casino and introduced himself as Martin Sayer. He said that he was at the Rio when I won the tournament, and he asked me what I thought about Stanford Wong's book, Casino Tournament Strategy? I said, "who is Wong?" and he said, "you haven't read Wong's book?" and I said, "No, I've never heard of him". He turned to me and said, "you don't know who Stanford Wong is, and you won a blackjack tournament"? I said, "I've won two". He just looked at me in utter amazement, and said to me, "you are a diamond in the rough, and if you read this book, there is no telling how much you will win". He went out the next day and bought the book for me. As he handed it to me he said, "This is my gift to you". We became quick friends after that experience. At the Texas Station tournament, some other guys came up to me and asked me if I wanted to be on a team, and I said, "what, a team in a blackjack tournament?". They explained how we would share the losses and divide the winnings. These were the same guys that I would see at every tournament: Richard Rockwell, Peter Nathan, Jack Dunphy, and some others. I would kind of lurk, and listen to them as they described the proper play on each hand. I wanted to learn, but I was too embarrassed to tell anyone, because I had already won two tournaments. I remember one tournament at the Riviera, where I had a huge lead, and I bet a nickel. I thought the round was all but over, then this guy doubled his sixteen and, we both won, but he beat me by ten dollars. I was like, "wait a second, if I would have bet a little more, (I don't always need the dealer to win), I would have won". That was when the light went off in my head. I went back to New Jersey, and read Wong's Casino Tournament Strategy from cover to cover, until I knew the proper bet size for every situation in the book.

There was one gentleman who worked with me during the tournaments to critique my play. I tried to learn as much as possible, but the mistake I made was I tried to employ all of his ideas on the last hand, and there was never a call for that. I wound up making these horrible bets, because I was trying to cover too many different situations. I would get up from the table and ask him how I did, and he would say that I made a terrible bet. He really would break me down, and say to me, "You played like shit". The more he told me that, the more I wanted to learn, but that approach hurts me when I teach other people, because I may be too rough on them sometimes. It is very difficult to obtain all the knowledge in a short length of time, that are needed to make the proper plays in every situation that can come up in a blackjack tournament. Someone who is driven can absorb the abuse and excel, but that type of teaching puts many others off, and their game suffers for some time. When I am asked to teach someone new, I try to feel him out first, to see if he can take the "drill sergeant" technique, or if he is in need of a different approach. The drill sergeant technique, in my opinion, is a quicker way to grasp the ideas, but it sometimes scares people away from the game, or maybe just from me.

I've gotten to the point where I can't play very much anymore, so I derive my satisfaction out of sending my "students" in so to speak. I've been thrown out of Harrah's, I've been thrown out of the Stardust; I've been thrown out of Mandalay Bay. When I say thrown out, I mean not allowed to compete in their blackjack tournaments. I was never backed off a blackjack table at Harrah's, but I am not the "customer" they are looking for to enter their blackjack tournaments.

Joe: After I won the Stardust tournament, I was told that I couldn't play in their tournaments anymore. They said it was because I took too long on my decisions during the rounds. The main reason I was taking so long to make my decisions was that I was assaulted earlier in the year, and ended up with a skull fracture, and memory loss.

Joe: I was playing in a blackjack tournament at John Asquga's Nugget in Sparks (a satellite community to Reno), Nevada, and I was playing craps with my (at the time) wife before the next round. Some guy was stealing chips from my wife. She looked at me and said, "my thirty dollar bet is missing". An Asian gentleman standing next to my wife pointed at this guy and said, "He took it". I looked at him, and he threw the thirty dollars back on the table and said, " I picked it up by accident. I thought it was my field bet". I was on the end of the craps table, and he was two from the stickman, so there was no way it could have been his field bet. Being the former policeman, New Yorker of Italian heritage that I am, I blatantly asked him why he took my wife's money, and he started berating me for asking him that question. I explained that the money was nowhere near where he would make a field bet. I looked at the box person, who just sat there motionless and I said, "let me see if I got this right, he steals from me, no one sees it, he returns the money and then starts to berate me and my wife, and you are just sitting there doing absolutely nothing about this." This guy starts to get a little braver since the casino personnel aren't doing anything about the situation. He starts cussing at me and calling my wife names, and I finally told him to zip it, or he would have to deal with me. At this point, I figure the casino personnel are going to step in and see that this situation doesn't escalate any further. They continued to remain totally motionless. I actually leaned in and asked the floor if they were going to allow this man to speak to me like that, and they remained static. I stepped around the Asian gentleman, next to this guy, then looked back one more time at the boxman, thinking to myself, that I can't believe he is letting it get to this point, and that is the last thing I remember. As I was looking at the boxman, this guy "sucker punched" me, and I fell and hit my head on the ground. I was out cold. I woke up in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I had no idea where I was. I ended up with a fracture over my right ear, and had headaches for six months. I had memory loss, and fluid buildup behind my right ear. Someone suggested that I see an attorney about the situation. They said I should go to see Oscar Goodman. He was already the Mayor of Las Vegas by this time, so one of his partners handled my case. He listened to the merits of my case, and asked if I could prove any of it. I told him the surveillance tape would show what transpired that day. This was two or three days after the assault took place, so the Nugget would have the tape of the incident on file. My attorney sent a letter to the Nugget requesting the tape of the incident be preserved. My attorney said that we needed a nonbiased witness from that day to corroborate the story. About six months later, I'm in a hotel room at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, and we were talking about tournament play, and this guy walks in who I have never met, and introduces himself to me and says, "I know you, but you don't know me, I was there the day you were assaulted at the Nugget.". He told me that he was at the next craps table. He told me that the guy and his girl friend were stealing chips at his table prior to moving to my table. I told him that he was the guy that I needed to make my case. He said, "I'd like to help you Joe, you're a nice guy and all, but that place is my little sandbox, and I would hate to get on the bad side of the casino, so I won't testify for you in the case". I went back to my attorney and told him about this guy, and my attorney said, "Joe, you have to get him to help". We needed him because the Nugget had submitted discovery that I had played against some woman's husband during the tournament and I beat him, and I remember the conversation where she was all pissed-off that I beat him. She was at the table when the incident took place, and she signed a statement that said that I was the instigator of the fight, and that the guy picked up the chips by accident. I was the one being abusive to him not the other way around, and that I was the one that threw the first punch.

Joe: The tapes could not be found. How about that! They had two dealers, and the floor person that stated that I caused this whole thing. My attorney told me that we had a problem, and were not very likely to win the case without a witness to tell my side of the story. We needed to get someone to testify to the fact that this person was stealing from the other table before moving to my table, and even after I corrected the problem, the casino personnel, with ample time, refused to defuse the situation. I called my "witness" back and asked if he had changed his mind about testifying for my defense, and he said that he couldn't. My attorney advised me that in the State of Nevada, it was legal to tape record a telephone conversation, as long as one person agrees to it. Well' I'm taping it, so I'm, of course, agreeing to it. I went to the store and purchased a recording device, and called him back and asked him one more time to testified, but he declined, so I asked him if he would at least tell my attorney what to look for on the surveillance tape. He laid the whole thing out to me on the phone. "This guy and his girl friend stole from two people, and then strolled up next to me, and I told him not to even think about it, so they went to your table." My attorney said, "We got it". When the Nugget first went to the judge, they said it was an unfortunate incident that took place between two customers, but that they were unable to stop what had transpired. They said that they had no time to see it coming, nor prevent it, and that they felt very sorry for Mr. Pane's ailments, but they were not responsible. After listening to the taped telephone conversation, the Nugget decided to settle the case with me. To this day, I still have some memory loss that is not explained away by getting older. I don't hear very well out of my right ear. My sense of smell has been greatly diminished. For the longest time everything I ate tasted like honey mustard. I know that sounds crazy, but everything tasted like honey mustard. I just ate to eat, because I was hungry. I derived no satisfaction from eating. I could eat a big juicy steak, but it tasted like honey mustard. When I moved to Las Vegas, I packed my car, and stopped at my friend's house in Mississippi for a few days. We ate turkey burgers with honey mustard for like four days straight. That is the only explanation I can come up with for the honey mustard taste.

Joe: I moved to Las Vegas in January of 2000. I was traveling back and forth to Las Vegas from New York so much, that I just decided to move here. I rented a condominium until I found a house to buy. I found the house that I wanted, and moved in after my lease was up on the condominium. When I decided to move to Las Vegas, I thought, "This is great, I can play in blackjack tournaments everyday." I met a couple of guys who explained to me the only way to make it in Las Vegas was to count cards. One guy would back count the deck, and send me in to play one or two hands, and then I would leave. I was making mistakes, because I didn't understand counting and changes in basic strategy, so he was getting frustrated with me. Again, here I was getting yelled at, and I was tired of getting yelled at. I told him to teach me how to count, and then I would call him into the table. He was sure that I couldn't learn his multi-level count in the three weeks that I would be in New York, but I proved him wrong, and I started calling him into the game. We went out at nights after that, and we won every night for a long time. I now have nine straight years of winning money at the blackjack tables. Some years I won a lot and some years I didn't win much at all. Tournaments too, I'm ahead each of the past nine years. My biggest problem is I don't know when to quit. Too many times I would stay too long at one table or in one casino. I remember when the Bellagio opened, they had a great double deck game, and I would go there everyday, in my case, night, to play. It wasn't long before I was forced to flat bet, (being told that I could only bet the same amount on each hand to eliminate the advantage that comes with adjusting the bet with the count), and then asked not to play at all in their casino. I was still OK, since I wasn't "Griffinized", (listed in the Griffin Book of known card counters, advantage players, and cheats). They unfairly lump those distinctively different groups of people together in the same class. I remember on opening day at the Wynn Casino, I went in to check it out, and it was a mad house in there. I bought in for three hundred dollars, which is absolutely nothing for the Wynn, and sat down at a blackjack table. I played seven hands, without giving them a players card, and was approached by a "suit" (a casino supervisor), who said, "Joe, (I looked up), Joe Pane, we don't want you playing blackjack here". I have a friend who is a retired shift manager, and she warned me. She told me not to go to a casino on opening night, because they know the "counters" will come out of the woodwork to check out the game. I bought in for three hundred bucks on a quarter game; who is going to pay attention to me? There is more to that story, but I can't get into it just yet.

I have thought about writing a book. The original title was going to be "Beyond Wong", because Wong's Casino Tournament Strategy Book takes the player to a certain level, then it kind of drops them off. Wong is like basic strategy in blackjack; it's good enough to get by, but if you really want to excel you must go beyond Wong. I think if I write a book, I will call it "Blackjack - Brooklyn Style!", which is what not to do in Las Vegas. When you grow up in New York, you have to be assertive, outgoing, and a little cocky, or you will get run over. That type of personality won't work in Las Vegas as a card counter.

Joe: I have won just over $500,000 total, with my biggest win being the Stardust, at $103,000, and then I got thrown out.

Joe: No, the next tournament I called to sign up, and was told they were sold out. I said, "Sold out! I was calling for the early bird discount". I had no clue what was going on, because I called as soon as I received the invitation in the mail. It turned out the marketing department and casino operations don't know what the other is doing most of the time. So I called up and they put me on hold, when a casino puts you on hold, it is never a good thing. They said that I needed to speak to Linda, "The Czar" about it. I called her up and she said they didn't want me to play anymore. I went all the way up to the General Manager of the Stardust, and a friend of mine, Marvin, who was also asked not to play, and I had a meeting with him in his office. The general manager gave us excuse after excuse, and we shot them all down, until he told us that there were complaints about us taking too long with our betting and playing decisions. Now, he gave us the ammunition that we needed. I told him that if he must know, I have a medical condition, (the skull fracture and memory loss), that prevents me from having clear thoughts all of the time, and Marvin is legally blind in one eye. I then asked him if he wanted us to go to the American Civil Liberties Union and tell them why we can't play. I guess it worked, because he let us back into the tournament, and that really pissed off The Czar, and the Director of the tournament.

Joe: I was backed off at Lady Luck, Binion's, Tropicana, Paris, Wynn, Bellagio, Treasure Island, Las Vegas Hilton, Mandalay Bay, Aladdin, New York New York, Flamingo, Mirage, Casino Royale.

Joe: Binion's tried, but I refused to go with them. The craziest barring was at the Palms. I went to dinner one night at the Palms Casino, we were at the buffet, and I chose my meal and sat down to eat, when, I was surrounded by four security guards. They asked me for an ID. And I told them that I didn't have one on me at the time, I was simply here with a friend for the buffet. They said, "well, we think you are Joe Pane", and I said, "well, you can think whatever you want, but I would like to get back to my dinner". They said that I needed to leave, and I said that was fine, right after I finish my dinner. Then they said, "no, you need to leave right now", and I said, "that's fine, just pay me back for my dinner, and I'll leave". I had a "comped" meal, but they didn't know that. The person that I was having dinner with is a friend of George Maloof, the owner of the Palms Hotel and Casino. I asked the security guards if they could please call Mr. Maloof, and get this whole thing straightened out. They called him, and get George's personal assistant on the phone, who then asks to speak to the security guard. I could tell by the body language of the security guard on the phone, that he didn't like what was being said to him. He hands the phone back to my friend, and Mr. Maloof's assistant says to my friend, "the security guard says that Joe is a card counter". At which point my friend responds with, "he is a card counter, but what is he doing? Counting the stuffed shells in the buffet? Just let him finish eating, and he will leave." The assistant then states that they really want him to leave now. So, I tell the security guards that I am going to finish eating now, but then the security guard tells me that if I don't leave now, they will throw me on the floor, and hand cuff me, and drag me down stairs. At that point, I had a tough decision to make. I knew that I was well within my legal rights to stay and finish my dinner, but I was with somebody that was friends with George Maloof, and I really didn't want to cause a problem. So I left the food on the table and went home. I did write a letter to George Maloof that night. Yes, I was told not to play blackjack at the Palms, and I don't, but I play video poker there, I go to the movies there, but I do not play blackjack there. I was never formally banned from the property.

Joe: I co-host a radio show with my good friend Kenny Einiger called "Be in Action", here in Las Vegas. A really funny story, Kenny won the 2005 World Series of Blackjack at The Golden Nugget, another one of my friends that I have met through blackjack tournaments, and he asked me to be his first guest on this new radio show. So I did it, and it went very well. I had never been on television or on radio before, so I didn't really know what to expect. When we finished the show, Kenny said, "that was really good, would you be interested in co-hosting the show with me?" I absolutely love doing the show. We started in June of 2005, so we have broadcast live for over 16 months now. The show is on KLAV 1230am. from 6:00pm. until 7:00pm. on Thursday night. The show is also available around the world on the Internet, for those outside of the Las Vegas listening area.