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In games and in backrooms most readers will never see, one driven woman takes big risks to secure her place at the table in this dynamic, propulsive memoir.

Advantage Player: A Memoir of Blackjack, Backrooms, and Beginnings is an energetic account of false starts, big wins and big losses, challenges and redemptions. Gina Fiore tells her story with momentum and feeling, so readers share the tension of high stakes.

Fiore had a troubled childhood in a troubled Italian American family plagued by poverty and questionable decisions, distanced from extended family. They moved from New York to Reno, Nev., when she was eight. She began gambling at 14 years old, visiting the casinos where her mother dealt blackjack and gambled as well. Amid emotional and economic deprivation, Fiore felt from a young age that traditional careers would not serve her. She trained as a musician but found her world most expanded inside the casino. “Nothing else in my life or especially in school piqued my interest like card counting did…. Now at twenty-two years old, and for no obvious reasons, I believed wholeheartedly that I was somebody who could do whatever she chose. With that mentality of infinite freedom I chose card counting.”

Fiore’s childhood was rocky, and her young adulthood involved a series of personal choices that may be viewed as self-sabotage. But her memoir is at its most riveting when she describes her work and explains the art and the science of advantage play.

Card counting is just the beginning. Fiore educates her readers about blackjack and other casino games, and the differences between card counting, hole carding, edge sorting, and other forms of play that steal the advantage. These methods of removing the house edge are not illegal on their face, but they will get a gambler kicked out, blackballed, and even assaulted; thus, Fiore argues, the theater of advantage play is as important as the count, the card spotted, the edge calculated.

Fiore methodically trained herself from books, from firsthand study, and through mentorships with more experienced players to become one of the best advantage players in the world. She built elite teams of like-minded players and eventually took millions from casinos around the United States and beyond. Fiore’s memoir careens from high highs to low lows on the casino floor and in challenges with friendships, romantic and family relationships, and mental health. Advantage Player is a rocketing adventure and one woman’s story of how to survive and not only make the most of the hands she’s dealt but also how to influence the deal.

This review originally ran in the August 18, 2026 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: memoir, nonfiction, Shelf Awareness |