Gambler had ace, got jacked, suit says

CASINOS HAVE good reason to fear Previn Mankodi.

The Louisiana man has a bachelor's from the University of Chicago, an MBA from Stanford and a master's in economics from Cambridge, and he uses that big brain to beat blackjack tables all over the country. The last thing any dealer wants to give him, right off the bat, is an ace.

But that's what happened, Mankodi's attorney said, when Mankodi placed a $3,700 bet at the former Trump Marina casino in Atlantic City on Aug. 3, 2009. Instead of playing out the hand with the ace, though, the floor manager told the dealer to reshuffle and not play out the hand, Mankodi claims. He could have expected a profit of about $1,865 on the hand, and now he's looking for much more in a lawsuit he filed recently in U.S. District Court in Camden, accusing the casino of false imprisonment.

"It's not too tough to figure out this was cheating," said attorney Thomas B. Duffy of Absecon. "They robbed him of an ace."

When the hand was halted, Mankodi protested to the dealer and the floor manager. Security showed up and Mankodi asked to see a representative from the state's division of gaming enforcement or the Casino Control Commission. A representative from one of those agencies told him to put it in writing, the complaint alleges, and then security asked him to leave but didn't say he couldn't come back.

Later that evening, Mankodi came back to the Trump Marina to speak with a manager and was allegedly tackled by security. He was handcuffed, taken to a detention room for more than an hour and eventually let go, the complaint alleges, having never being charged or even accused of committing a crime.

"Somebody just tackled him trying to be a hero," Duffy said.

The whole incident, from the alleged bad deal to the improper takedown, should be on film, Duffy said.

Mankodi, a former investment banker, has authored articles on blackjack, played in the World Series of Blackjack, and was mentioned in a 2010 Wired magazine article about a team of math whizzes who regularly beat the casinos. Duffy said he's not sure if the casino, now a Golden Nugget, had recognized Mankodi upon arrival, had suspected he was using some tactical advantage, or simply had gotten scared that he was winning and made a bad decision.

An Atlantic City attorney who has handled matters for Trump in the past said he's not been made aware of the suit.