This past May, it was reported that Ben Affleck—Oscar-winning filmmaker, actor, and newly minted superhero—was banned for life from playing blackjack at the Hard Rock casino in Las Vegas. At the time, TMZ suggested that the star of David Fincher’s Gone Girl adaptation was caught counting cards at a high-rollers’ table, and was asked—er, required—by casino security to stop playing. (For those who prefer to spend the majority of their casino time on enticingly themed slot machines—Kitty Glitter, anyone?—counting cards is not illegal but a carefully learned strategy that gives the player an edge over the casino.) And now, in a new interview with Details, the actor cops to card-counting and speaks candidly about the situation.

“That is a true story,” Affleck confesses when asked by Details about the card-counting report. “I took some time to learn the game and became a decent blackjack player. And once I became decent, the casinos asked me not to play blackjack. I mean, the fact that being good at the game is against the rules at the casinos should tell you something about casinos.”

The experience seems to have taught Affleck something about Vegas’s gambling system. “[T]hey don't even want you to have a sporting chance, really,” he says. “There's a lot of hospitality, backslapping, when they think you're gonna come in and dump money, and if they think you might leave with some money, it's like, ‘You know what? Why don't you try craps or roulette?’”

Affleck says that he does not bet on anything else, really, and adopted blackjack as his primary casino hobby. “I knew with blackjack that there's a way you can improve your odds,” he explains. “And so I started trying to learn. And then I just got to a point in my life where I'm like, ‘If I'm going to do something, I'm going to try and do it really well.’”

The actor is careful to specify that the only crime he committed at the blackjack table that night, back in May, was killing the blackjack game. “I got good,” he admits.

And contrary to reports, the actor was not banned full-stop from the casino. “I wish I could say [the Hard Rock security members] were afraid of me in every capacity, but they only said, ‘No blackjack.’”

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