HBO has made a developmental deal for a possible series about Gina Fiore, with no release date announced. Fiore says she and her teams won $15 million from casinos over two decades. Her account is also the subject of a new memoir, Advantage Player: A Memoir of Blackjack, Backrooms, and Beginnings, released Tuesday, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The memoir describes Fiore’s work as an advantage player, including hole-card play and edge sorting—methods that rely on spotting information about cards that other players may not see. The Review-Journal reports that Fiore learned to use those techniques after working as a dealer.
From the Hacienda to the High-Stakes Pits
Before becoming a player, Fiore dealt at the Hacienda, now the Hoover Dam Casino, and later at Monte Carlo and Agua Caliente in Palm Springs, according to the Review-Journal. She has described that experience as a foundation for her later work as an advantage player.
The Review-Journal reports that Fiore’s memoir took years to develop before she secured a book deal in 2025. Its publication brings the story to print as the HBO project moves into development.
An HBO Drama Already Has Its Star
Fiore's story is not stopping at the page. She has secured a deal for a possible HBO series based on her life, and actress Riley Keough has signed on to play her, according to the Review-Journal. The project reunites Keough with writer and executive producer Will Graham, who previously worked with the actress on Prime Video's Daisy Jones & the Six, as reported by Deadline. Deadline describes Advantage Player as written and executive produced by Graham, with Keough also starring and executive producing, and notes HBO has made a developmental deal for the series.
Published accounts differ on the length of Fiore’s professional gambling career: Deadline describes a 24-year run, while CardPlayer says she made a living beating casinos for more than 25 years. CardPlayer also reports that HBO has not announced a release date for the series.
Legal Methods, but Not Always Welcome
The publisher, Penguin Random House, describes Fiore’s methods as legal, while noting that casinos did not tolerate players who gained an advantage. That characterization does not, by itself, settle how a particular technique would be treated under law. The memoir also recounts a run-in with federal authorities away from the tables: Fiore told the Review-Journal that a DEA agent wrongfully seized $97,000 in cash from her at an Atlanta airport.
What Nevada law says about advantage play
Nevada Revised Statutes section 465.083 makes cheating at a gambling game unlawful for owners, employees and players, according to Nevada law. That provision alone does not determine whether Fiore’s reported observation-based techniques were illegal. Separately, section 463.0129 preserves a gaming establishment’s common-law right to exclude someone from gaming activities or eject that person from its premises, according to Nevada law.
A casino ban is different from a state exclusion
A casino’s authority to bar someone from its own gaming activities is distinct from Nevada’s state exclusion list. The Nevada Gaming Control Board and Nevada Gaming Commission say the list may include people regulators determine pose a threat to the state’s interests or to licensed gaming. Placement on that state list has a separate process: Nevada Gaming Commission Regulation 28 says it does not take effect for an individual until that person has received notice and an opportunity for a hearing, according to the commission’s regulation.
The book folds in more than card-counting strategy. According to the seed reporting reflected in the Review-Journal's coverage, Advantage Player also covers Fiore's family struggles, a bipolar diagnosis and a custody battle alongside the gambling material. Fiore has said her book shares extensive advantage-play information for readers curious about the craft itself.
Fiore Keeping a Hand in the Writers' Room
Fiore has said she is involved in the series’ creative development and wants the character based on her not to cheat or do anything illegal in a casino, the Review-Journal reports. Nevada law distinguishes the prohibition on cheating from a gaming establishment’s authority to exclude people from play or its premises.
These days Fiore describes herself as pivoting toward entertainment work, serving as a television consultant, a MasterClass.com instructor and now an author, according to her own account on her Substack publication. She has also been named the latest nominee to the Blackjack Hall of Fame, as noted on a recent Blackjack Apprenticeship podcast episode. It is one more marker of a career that started at a Las Vegas dealer's table and is now headed, improbably, toward prestige television.
