NTKOG #81: The kind of grizzled pawn of lady luck who slumps over the blackjack table, chain smoking while growling “hit me” through the tube of her oxygen tank.
I am: the product of ten years in the Las Vegas suburbs. Therefore…
I am not: a gambler. At all. I’ve played penny slots for free drinks once in a while, but never sat at a table.
The Scene: Sunset Station, a super-ghetto locals casino in Henderson, along with Brain Doc.
With Brain Doc’s encouragement, took $40 out of the ATM — with an absurd $4 surcharge, god bless America — and sat at a Double Blackjack table.
After a brain-scrambling lecture about pushing and buyback busts, promptly left a Double Blackjack table.
To recharge the ol’ synapses, stopped at a roulette table to put $5 on red for sandyb (holla, girl!). Fun fact about roulette: it’s exactly — but exactly — like dropping cash in the toilet, pulling the handle and watching it spin around. Same result too. (Sorry, Sandy.)
Against all of our misgivings, Brain Doc and I filled the last two seats at a normal blackjack table, crowded with a chain-smoking Chinese woman whose mouth was swallowed by a faceful of wrinkles, a gnarled old trucker, and a twitchy-eyed twenty something who kept muttering he’d been at the table for four and a half hours. A five-dollar table. High rollers, guys.
I bought two $5 chips and put on in the little circle. Dealer smacked me 13. Bad feng shui: I was sitting to the dealer’s left, and she glared me down while I shook like a chihuahua.
“Uhhhh, hit me? Can I say hit me? Do I say that?” The dealer just shook her head.
“You do it like this,” High Roller said, scratching his finger across the felt in a
come hither gesture. So I come-hithered a seven, stopped at 20 and — dude, what?! Five bucks for nothing?! Gorgeous.
Next hand was much the same: hit-me gesture; eighteen; dealer busted with an embarrassing 26. Another five bucks! I was starting to feel sorry for the big mean casino!
Third hand threw me for a loop, though. Nine and a five. I started to come-hither a little more free money from the universe, when Gnarled Trucker stirred for the first time: “Stay. You don’t need to go bust. Let the dealer go bust.” Clearly the dude was a tobacco-reeking angel sent from heaven: dealer just barely busted at 22, giving me a hat trick.
Quick mental math: even including my roulette failure and the absurd $4 ATM fee (unless your name is Andrew Jackson, when you gamble with the banks, you always lose), I was still up $6! Beating the friggin’ odds!
Money for nothing just barely beats out cigarette vending machines for reasons my hometown makes me PROUD TO BE AMURRKUN.
Even though I don’t know when to hit ‘em, I do know when to fold ‘em. Asked the cashier to magically transform my chips into money (yes, I phrased it exactly that way; yes, she looked at me like I was drunk), and used my ill-gotten gains to buy Brain Doc and me vending machine socks for bowling. Where, for the first time all day, I was a total loser.
The Verdict: All those very special episodes of 90210 were for naught! I now know that gambling is when you sit at a table and someone gives you free money! Can you smell a 12-step program in my future?!
Seriously, though, this was fun for novelty, but I doubt I’d ever do it again. Playing penny slots for free drinks is the only way to win in Vegas.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Ahhhh gambling. I don’t think there is anything more depressing than a casino. Although I was in Vegas in December and my friend did TWO pulls on a 25 cent slot machine and wond $500…no lie. Almost makes me reconsider my devotion to actually getting things when I spend money. :)
Aw, glad you had fun!
penny slots for free drinks…the only smart thing to do in vegas! and its practically free (except for the pennies!) :)
Holla back! Oh my Gawd! I’m laughing out loud here! (Rob, too!) I can’t believe you remembered my request for a bet in my honor! Can you possibly rule anymore, really?
You are one smart gal to have folded when you did. The pull of the tables is deadly I tell you, deadly. Once walked in with 1000 beans to my name and walked out feeling jacked, no beanstalk.
So glad to see you back on my reader this morning!
I don’t know if your friends already ran you through this, but the thing to remember is that blackjack dealers are essentially robots – they MUST hit on anything under 17 (kinda like that creepy guy in the van), and MUST stand otherwise. Your actions have exactly zero influence on theirs. This leads to common situations such as the dealer hitting on a 16 even after you decided to stand on 12, but standing on 17 even though she’s got nothing to lose by trying to beat your 20.
The other keystone of BJ (mind, out of gutter) is that 5 out of the 13 cards in a suit have a value of 10, so most strategy is based on the assumption that any unknown cards are going to be 10′s. Therefore, if you’ve got anything 12 and above, you’re in THE DANGER ZONE(TM) because the next card has a significant chance of busting you. If the dealer’s showing a 6, it’s probable that she has a 16, so you want to stand and let her bust. But if the dealer is showing a 7, that might mean she has 17, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take the risk.
So, er, yeah…can you tell I’m working on a Blackjack webapp? :P
I’ve never gambled either. I’m pretty sure if I did it wouldn’t go over as well as your first experience did!! I have recently taken up buying lottery tickets and so far (except for the first time when I got 200 free dollars) I have been an utter failure!
I’ve never been to a casino, it’s never appealed. I get my gambling fix from doing the lottery, and a football coupon we have going on in work. Much easier and less tempting to overspend.
i am so not into gambling. i understand intellectually that to win big you have to bet big blah blah blah, but i have NO DESIRE to be parted with my money on the OFF CHANCE it will return with more little money friends. it seems.. silly. i mean, i HAVE the money now. isn’t it smarter to just.. you know.. keep it??
Visiting via Little Ms Blogger because your concept of a page-a-day penis-costumes calendar was so wonderfully whimsical.
And now I see that whimsical streak is not limited to time-measuring devices that double as costumeries for genitalia, but also applies to gambling.
I’ve actually been to Sunset Station, my former employer once put me up there following a conference in Laughlin because it was $36/night. Living high on the corporate credit card…
You are my hero and oh-so-very-funny! I look forward to reading your posts, thank you very much :)
I got into this issue while playing blackjack in an internet casino. just when I was succeeding really well, the internet connection to the casino became shaky. Is it the casino responsibility? should I ask for a refund?