During the eighties, my dad's visits to South Africa required creative geography. He couldn't risk returning directly—his dramatic midnight escape was still too fresh in the authorities' memory. Instead, he'd fly to Lusaka or Harare, then slip across to Swaziland and check into the Royal Swazi Spa. We'd drive down from Johannesburg to meet him there.

Swaziland was a fascinating little kingdom, landlocked by South Africa but operating by its own rules. Originally a British protectorate, it had gained independence in the sixties and—crucially for this story—had always allowed gambling. For white South Africans starved of vice, it was a natural magnet.

I was far too young to enter the casino legally, but that didn't stop me. I'd sneak in and feed coins into the slot machines until security spotted me and tossed me out. Then I'd wait a bit and try again. The cycle repeated itself endlessly, but the thrill of those spinning reels—the promise of instant cash—lodged itself in my brain.

By the time I was earning my princely R600 a month at RJ Spargo, I was old enough to gamble legally. And Sol Kerzner had just opened Sun City—his Vegas-in-the-bushveld fantasy, built in the homeland of Bophuthatswana about two hours from Johannesburg.

The homelands were apartheid's great fiction—supposedly independent Black nations where gambling, mixed-race entertainment, and other "vices" could flourish without contaminating white South Africa. In reality, they were Bantustans designed to justify the unjustifiable. But they served my purposes perfectly.

I decided I was going to crack this whole gambling thing scientifically. I bought a book called Casino Gambling—can't remember the author—that analyzed every game available in a standard casino. Two of them fascinated me: blackjack and craps.

I even drew out an entire craps table on paper so I'd know every bet before setting foot in the casino. Craps turned out to be wildly entertaining with the right crowd, but the odds weren't fantastic. Blackjack, though—that was different.

In those days, if you learned to count cards properly, you could gain up to a 1.5% advantage over the house. I won't bore you with the technical details, but essentially you track which cards have been played to know when the deck favors you. Then you bet heavily during those moments and pull back when it doesn't. You also need to memorize basic strategy—the mathematically optimal play for every possible hand.

I got very good at it.

My routine became ritual: collect my Friday paycheck, drive to Sun City, play until two or three in the morning, then drive back to Johannesburg. I stuck to the two-rand tables—small potatoes, but enough. The casino tolerated card counting at those stakes. Move up to the bigger tables, and you'd get noticed fast. These days, most casinos shuffle after every hand anyway, so the advantage has largely disappeared.

But it worked. I put mag wheels on my Golf, added fancy lights—all paid for by what wasn't really gambling, since I could beat the house. Sydney Spargo, my mentor and de facto godfather, eventually expressed concern to my mother about my casino visits. But I was never in danger of becoming a problem gambler. I'm not actually a gambler at all—I just recognized when I had an edge and pursued it.

Those late-night drives back from Sun City, counting my winnings while the Golf hummed along the empty highway, were pure satisfaction. I'd found another system to beat, another way to impose order on chaos.