I work in a casino. Sometime not too long ago, a young man sat at my table and over the course of the next hour we got to talking. He had just been dumped by his fiance, which in the same stroke left him homeless and with no car. Basically, he was at his lowest point. I didn't help matters by taking every dollar he had on him pretty quickly. He dejectedly left the table and I felt genuinely sorry for the kid. About 10 minutes later he returned and said that he forget he had a few dollars on his rewards card, which he cashed out. He had $34, which is just enough for a full hand on the game we were playing. (Carribean Stud; $10 ante, $20 bet and $2.50 jackpot contribution) He played his hand blind and I didn't think his luck could get any worse when I opened with a boat, Aces full on Kings. He started to walk away as I opened his hand. Ad Kd Qd Jd 10d. A royal flush! I yelled at him to turn around. He won A shade over $360,000. I guess his luck had just turned around. I know this board had every imaginable type of degenerate on it, so I imagine more than a few of you love to have a good punt.With that in mind... FOCUS: What memorable gambling stories do you have? Lost a mortgage payment on the ponies? Hit that 10,000:1 trifecta? Take the house for $50k and then blow it on hookers and blow? Tell us all about it.
I was a complete degenerate gambler in my late teens. Stupidly betting with bookies without any real concept of what happens when you can't/don't pay. Luckily I was saved from myself by working for one of them and seeing the poor saps that came into his diner every weekend to hand in $50, $100 to stay afloat. Now I do most of my gambling online. BetUS is just too easy to use from my computer and phone when I travel. The best bet I've made in quite some time was taking Brett Rogers over Andre Arlovski. Yesterday's Ohio over Georgetown was a good one too.
There's nothing I love more than watching a game while sitting in a sportsbook of a Vegas casino with 500 people who all have an insane amount of money bet on the outcome. Especially if it's a down-to-the-wire finish. I find I get more enjoyment out of watching a game I bet $100 on for 2 hours, than blowing 3-4 times that at the craps tables. The first time I played craps, I turned $100 into $1200. Not huge, but when that $100 was my entire food budget that week, it made my life substantially easier for a couple months. The last time I was in Vegas, I was killing time, playing a few slots in the casino 2 hours before I had to catch my 7AM flight home. I was down to my last $100 (after 4 days of brutal losses at craps and Blackjack), and put $20 into a Latte-themed slot machine (since I'm in the coffee biz, I figured I had to, right?). Hit a bonus spin, then another bonus spin, and the credits kept coming. I thought I was on a quarter machine, so I was expecting a $250 cashout voucher. I looked down to see over $1000. I about shit myself when I realized it was a "multi-denomination" machine that was set on $1/spin. I took that money home and bought myself my first bigscreen TV.
A few years back I, somehow, following no bankroll management and short stacking high stakes tables on Party Poker, turned $100 into $30,000, I then lost it all back in less than a week. This was when "high stakes" was the $5-$10 NL Game. I quit playing poker after that because it was obvious I have a problem. That $100 or even 30k would have been way better spent on beer.
"Woman and machines don't mix" Last summer I decided that me and my girlfriend would go to the Casino, seeing as she had never been before. Being nervous she only brought £10 and decided to stick to machine roulette as opposed to looking like an idiot with others surrounding a roulette table, being quite computer incompetent she accidentally places £2.50 instead of 25p onto one number, not realising until I take a look to see how's she getting on and become quite confused as to why she is betting £2.50 on one number (this is not a lot but considering she wanted to be cautious and that is a 1/4 of her money), when she realises she starts cursing the machine (on another note a CGI wheel comes up so you cannot see what number she has actually been selected), and you guys can guess what happened it mother fucking landed on her number she went up to about £90 (35 to 1), she ran to the cashier desk like a small child.
Now I know how slot machines work. The outcome is determined the instant you hit the spin button. When I was in Vegas last my friend and I were sitting at a slot machine waiting for a spot to open at a blackjack table. I put in a 20 and start hitting the button a couple of times. Came out even, cashed out when a spot opened up at a table. I sit down, and am being dealt my first hand when I hear alarm bells and someone screaming. Someone had just sat down at the machine I was on and won 60k. I still feel that should have been me
Early December 2005: I had just re-enlisted in Iraq so I had some extra cash in the bank. I hadnt seen my parents in a few years so my wife and I take a trip to Mississippi to see them. While we're there we go to a casino and I walk in to the sportsbook. The line on the Steelers to win the Super Bowl is 50-1. My wife is a HUGE Steelers fan so I tell her we should put $1,000 on the Steelers. We talk about it all weekend and I let her talk me out of it. Needless to say as soon as the Super Bowl ended that year she was apologizing for weeks.
I went to Foxwoods casino a few years back in the middle of the night with $100. Sat down to play Let It Ride, hit a four of a kind for $1500 on my third hand. Played for a few more hours, was up about the $1500. Went over to another table, and got the fifth seat. Everyone was laughing, joking, having a good time, and the cards were really, really hot. I start going $50 a spot ($50 x 3 bets, for anyone who never played it before), and before you know it, I'm up another $1000. I decide, "What the hell", and go to up my bet to $300 a spot. The dealer says, "Sorry, I already closed the bets, you gotta leave it at $50." I get three 3s in my hand, which pays 3 to 1. The fourth 3 comes up, my second four of a kind of the day, at 50 to 1. It was a $7500 hit. Which was awesome. But if I had gotten that $300 a spot in on time, it would have been $45000. I went home and bought a bunch of pricey parts for my car I had wanted, a new leather couch, and a new bed. I debated getting a "Powered by Foxwoods" sticker made for my windshield, but never bothered. That was a good time.
"You only hear about the winners" I'd just like to point out that these types of fucking threads make the casinos and sportsbooks smile. Focus: I'm not sure how much I made exactly, but it was a couple grand for betting on Mike Weir to win the 2003 Masters. Those huge putts he made on the back nine to stay in contention were clutch.
My most memorable win was actually my first time in a bar during the Australian equivalent of spring break. About half the group stayed back at the hotel room and I had picked up one of their (identical) wallets by mistake. I managed to buy a round of drinks for everyone and put the rest into poker machines without realising it wasn't my money. The guys that were with me watched me gamble it away to less than two dollars, when my phone rings. It's my friend, asking if I took his wallet. When I realise the mistake I also remember that I didn't have any money in mine so wouldn't be able to pay him back until later in the week. Annoyed at myself and disenchanted with the whole gambling thing (my first time playing pokies), I figure out how to bet all my money on one spin and press the button. I won back the exact amount, to the cent, that was in the wallet to begin with. It was a pocketful of coins instead of a wallet full of notes, but that really only made surrendering it to my friend more hilarious. Aside from that, the luckiest I've ever been is turning $25 into $100 on roulette and then taking the money. I don't think I'm much at risk of becoming a problem gambler.
I was introduced to a website that facilitates staking arrangements for poker. Some of the players on these sites were being staked for tens of thousands of dollars, but for a newbie like me with no reputation and no statistics to back it up, the only stake I could get was from a guy who was giving $1 to pretty much anyone who asked to play in a 10,000 man sit n' go on Pokerstars. Figuring it was a good way to earn some reputation I took the dollar and played. I ended up busting out to the eventual winner when my A7 lost to his Q5. How did I know he was the eventual winner? Because we were the only two left at the time. Finished 2 of 10,000, turning $1 into $1590
In college I had a part time job at a liquor store to help me pay bills and shit. It was literally all that I was living on. I got paid every two weeks and the paychecks weren't very big, but it's all I had. One day I cashed my check and decided to get a drink or 2 at the bar on the way home. I started drinking Jack and Cokes and never really quit. I eventually ended up at the blackjack table. I usually bet a buck or two at a time back then until I lost my $20 or won about that much. I wasn't so responsible that night. Ended up losing it all. Every cent I had to my name. I vaguely remember how I lost the last $100: pulling a $20 bill out of my wallet and betting it all 5 times in a row. It took me a long time to dig out of that hole since getting caught up with bills wasn't easy. But I kinda view the whole experience as a good thing. I learned my lesson at the right time. That was a miserable feeling walking away from the table with no money at all. Since then I'll sometimes do stupid gambling. I've lost more than that in a night too. But I always make sure I can pay bills and shit. I never want to feel like that ever again. My biggest gamble that ever paid off? The night I drunkenly fucked a whore on a bathroom floor with no rubber. I also learned a lesson that night and will never ever repeat that stupidity. But I cashed out by not getting any STDs. A child being the worst one of them all.
None. Unless you consider winning $16 on a video poker machine in a hotel lobby memorable. But as a cautionary tale, a good friend of mine won a few grand at the track one night, and figured he had "cracked the system". He spent the rest of the summer proving the law of averages.
While it wasn't necessarily real gambling, I placed decently high in the Tucker Max online poker tournament 5 years back. It wasn't that much money, but at the time I was flat broke. Like scrounging for change so I could eat tomorrow, broke. The 100 bucks carried me for a month and a half til the semester was over.
Last year I travelled from Australia to Spain, and went on a cruise out of Barcelona. The casino in Barcelona is right next to the docks, and I had a bit of time to kill before boarding. I'm an average poker player, and I can just about hold my own in low stakes casino games in Aus. Sat down at the table, and had 400 euro (maybe US$700) taken off me in less than 10 minutes. Bailed on that, still in a bit of a daze, and boarded the cruise. As soon as we got into international waters, the loosest, drunkest game of poker I've ever seen started. I've never seen so many rich Ukrainians / Americans drink straight spirits or massive cocktails at a poker table. I bought in for $400, everyone else had stacks of $2k+. Every hand went to the river, often showing down something like Ace high. 3 nights later, I'd managed to pay for my cruise (US$2100) and erase the memory of the Barcelona casino. Although arguably the best bet I've ever made was with an ex who was reluctant to give up the back door. We bet on the number of forms of ID you had to show to get membership at a Blockbusters video. Best bet ever. Right now I'm sitting across from Harrah's casino in New Orleans, waiting for this fucking flu to get better so I can play...
I had an addiction in college- Blackjack, Craps, and Texas Holdem After the dinner shift, a bunch of us would drive the 90 minutes to the casino, get drunk and lose all the money in tips we made that night. We'd head home in the morning, as the sun came up. We did this almost every day. Now I live in Georgia where there are no casinos. I'm older and wiser and get more pissed off at the casino's odds than enjoy gambling anyways.