STYLE:If you win big or small, spend it on treats before you lose it all back to the casino. Whatever happens, it's all an excellent tax-dodge anyway.

One of the best blackjack players I ever came up against was an English bloke I knew as 'The Beard'. He never touched any game except blackjack, played a good basic strategy game, employed a basic ten-count, and was always aware of when he was on a winning (or losing) streak. His minimum bet was always £100, and he'd go to the table maximum (£500) almost every time he played, so he didn't really have much of a spread, making it very difficult to tell he was a counter. The Beard didn't give a monkeys that we might have suspected he was counting, and, over time, it made more sense for us just to give him longer shoes and continually cut them in half to nullify any counter's theoretical advantage.

He was a good player and I regularly saw him win or lose £5,000-£10,000 in a night. A good win for him was £15,000-£20,000 and I believe he won slightly more than he lost, although a player winning these amounts with any frequency would usually find himself barred.

However, what I liked best about The Beard was what he did with his winnings: he spent them - £1,000, £5,000 or £20,000, he did the lot. Every member of his family got cars, TVs, stereos, holidays and, in some cases, even houses. That way, he could never have a big win and then be tempted to 'do back' the money the following day.

It turns out he was a car dealer and did a lot of his business in cash, so he was using the casino to turn huge amounts of his black money white. He once confided that not only were all his winning tax-free, but he'd lost a lot less in the casino than the tax man would have stolen from him anyway. The Beard certainly knew how to work the system.