It seems like overnight the documentary made us famous. Being on the front page of NY Times  and CNN in one weekend can get to you. But being “famous” is relative. Almost 5 years ago, now, we agreed to the idea of a documentary being made about our blackjack team and the crazy intersection that it had with our faith. At least it was crazy to others.

About 3 years ago I walked away from professional blackjack and team management forever. Not the “forever” like I’ll never touch a card or walk into a casino sense. But in the sense of, I’m moving on to bigger and better opportunities and it will be hard to look back. Since then I’ve started a garden, started raising chickens, moved across the country to become a part of a successful startup with some friends, had another child and taken up a nasty cigar habit. It was in the middle of this that the documentary starts making headlines on the internet, iTunes, and even the printed papers my parents read. So, it’s a little bit of an adjustment for me to start thinking in the blackjack mode but I would like to share some of my random thoughts on the documentary: “Holy Rollers; The True Story of Card Counting Christians.”

• The documentary was amazing in a very sentimental sense. It was truly a gift. Having some of your fondest memories captured in HD with footage of your children and interviews with your closest friends is super cool. I’ll never forget the first time watching it, walking away feeling like I got to know the team more in that hour and a half than the previous 5 years. People open up on camera and sometimes just taking the time to state the obvious can be a rare and valuable moment. Bryan did a great job. We had known about this project for almost 5 years so that’s a lot of time to watch crappy YouTube videos and wonder if the doc is going to feel cheap and fake. It didn’t feel that way to me.

• I was disappointed by the story. As it turns out, real life and the pace and order in which it occurs is not exciting enough for Hollywood. People want more. So, even documentary filmmakers are forced to capture or create some sort of plot. The plot in Holy Rollers became about a blackjack bankroll and the villan that threatened it. These events were not fake, although they did not all occur as the doc would present. They simply were not representative of what I thought was important. We won $3.2 million dollars as a team. I did not even find this out until being interviewed after the doc was made. Yeah, we had a huge losing streak, but no one even remembers it. Yes, Benjamin, the one presented by the producer as the “non-christian” was in the middle of probably the biggest complications and hardest decision that we made as team management. But it did not revolve around the accusations of one man or have to do with the label or faith that he chose. So while these things did happen, these things did not represent what the subjects of the documentary remember or thought was important. I think the documentary could have gone deeper. It could have explored how almost every person grew up in strict Christian homes; we were told not to gamble, use bad words, and many of us wanted to become pastors or missionaries. And somewhere along the lines things got complicated. A lot of us were following the rules but never felt closer to God. We saw family and church members, who didn’t go to casinos, take out mortgages and spend credit cards like it was their full time job. And blackjack complicated things further. I once read a book about gambling by James Dobson but remember wondering how he could write a book on gambling and never once define what gambling is. Many seemed to take the easy answer and conclude that it was anything that happened inside a casino. Well, this was not our experience. And in the midst of confronting these issues and questions with friends, family, church members, pastors and ourselves I watched boys become men. Not because playing blackjack is justified in the eyes of God. But because not playing blackjack certainly doesn’t justify you in the eyes of God either. After almost 8 years of playing some of our harsh critics became harsher. But I also watched many people wrestle with these deep issues along with us. What is a Christian really? How can we please God? How do we accept the love of Jesus and in turn love others? And “yes” what should we actually do with our money after we’ve followed all of the rules of things we shouldn’t do? This is what I wish the documentary was about.

• Benjamin  was NOT fired from the team because he was not a Christian and Brad heard from God. People asked me if Benjamin stole from the team. I say “I don’t know.” Because I don’t. I can say I know of 4 other people who did steal from the team. And there were numerous others on the team that I think would not have considered themselves a Christian. This is why I felt like putting the label “non-christian” on screen in the doc was deceptive, sensational, and unnecessary. The reason why Benjamin was let go from the team was because I told him that I could not confidently understand and, therefore, represent him to investors. In a team based upon trust, this is important. I told him this and to this day there are no hard feelings that I know of.

• Being followed around by a camera is weird. It’s very, very, challenging to act normal. Start recording yourself on your iPhone to capture a belief that you just communicated to a friend over coffee. You’ll start using different words and your tone of voice will change. It’s hard and lame. There are so many real life situations that were not conveyed but I guess that’s TV.

• I was proud to be a part of the team. My viewpoints on work and money have changed. I expect they will continue to do so. At this stage in my life I would not start or run a blackjack team. Do I have any regrets about it? I don’t think so. But maybe. I was a kid. I was immature. I believe we were called to garden and create things of beauty that reflect our creator. Did we do this in blackjack? In some ways. I tell people, blackjack is where I got my business education. Compared to the alternatives I had and the reasons why I was working, I would probably do it all over again. This does not make me perfect or blackjack ok for you or everyone. In an ironic sense I’m very disappointed by the standard review. The bar is so low. we get accused of “justifying,” being “hypocrites,” and even “cheating”. While these may all be true, I believe that I was guilty of far more than this and have been in a state of constant reform since. The things that I have been questioning seem to be far stricter or at least bigger than what evangelical christianity (or it’s critics) feel comfortable with. Things like what is the point of money? Is work an ends to a means or an end in itself? What type of work would we do or business would we create if we were going to pass it on to our children? Can a man have enough character to steward a million or billion dollars? Should we be investing in businesses when we either don’t know or don’t care how they spend their dollars? etc. Well, being a part of the team got me and many others closer to those answers.

I’ve had many more thoughts but these are a few. Thanks for your support throughout this process and if you chose to watch the documentary I ask, not that you see it as a “how to” or a theological exegesis. Instead, watch it  just as a story of some guys who were trying to find God. We took some wrong turns and made some mistakes but in the end, God seemed to find us.