Microchips in blackjack cards?
This is an awesome thread. Don't know why I didn't discover it sooner; probably because I'm always off in the modding forum I guess.
A (TV?) movie from the 80's (or thereabouts) about a guy who's trying to take down a casino; he has it in for the owner for some reason. (A mission? Personal vendetta?) His plan is to bankrupt the casino by beating them playing blackjack at increasingly higher stakes. Seems like he was working with one or two other people, indirectly (they provided support but weren't in the casino, as I recall).
Midway through the film, he infiltrates the casino card manufacturer and has small microchips inserted into the playing cards. Then back at the casino, when the cards are in circulation, he's able to look at the card, and his glasses receive the chip signal, then signal his earpiece, reading aloud to him the rank and suit of the card. Soon after he starts winning a lot, two casino thugs grab him and beat him up in the bathroom, smashing his glasses. So he switches to a back-up pair of contact lenses and continues his efforts. Near the end of the movie, he's placing huge bets, and the owner (remotely) approves the bets. The final bet will either ruin the casino or break him. He knows the cards; he can win. He makes the wrong call on purpose and loses; in the end, he just wanted to prove that he could best his adversary, not actually destroy him.
There were intertitles between segments, just before each advertisement as I recall. One of them read "Crossed Swords" and had two swords swinging together and clashing, with an appropriate swords-smacking noise. That was just one of many intertitles, though, not the name of the show.
I saw this in a hotel room ages ago, and then stumbled across it again somewhere in the 2000's as a re-run, probably on late-night TV. But for the life of me, I can't recall the title.
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SnapSlav, the way you described that stand-up comedy diet bit made me think first of Sam Kinnison, but I'm just guessing based on the shouting style and punctuated words that your description conveyed; I'm sure that's no help, though. Can you recall any other distinctive details, like what the comedian looked like, clothes, hair, whatever; what the set looked like, was it even on stage, etc.?
-m