I visited the girlfriend at her parents this weekend. It's about a 3-4 hour drive, which isn't bad but it gets boring. So I was re-listening to the audiobook of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, the very first James Bond novel. It's a good book - a little rough and raw, but entertaining. If you've seen the movie with Daniel Craig, it's actually quite a close rendition of the book. Take out the opening scenes with the parkour and replace Texas Hold'em with Baccarat Chemin de Fer and Baccarat Banque, and you get the idea. Fleming's descriptions of Baccarat, which seems to be a socially complex but technically simple game, are excellent. It made me want to head down to a casino. That, however, would be bad because 1) if I gambled more than a tiny bit, I would do so compulsively, and 2) I'm terrible at it, so I'd lose my ass. In contrast, my brother, who has none of the James Bond/Navy Seal-style personal discipline I assume you must have to be good at gambling, regularly wins large sums at blackjack and other games. The last time we were in Vegas, I retired early (at like 2AM after spending something like three hours in the Mandalay Bay's ice bar), but he and his buddy stayed out all night. When they came back into the room just after dawn, he grabbed a decorative ornament off a hotel shelf, hucked it at my nuts as I slept (to let me know he was back), and promptly passed out. He woke up the next morning having only fleeting memories of playing blackjack while belligerently drinking at O'Shea's (one of the ghetto-iest of ghetto strip casinos), and reasoned he must have lost the entire $100 stake with which he started. He checked his pockets and found $800 in chips. Go figure. FOCUS: Gambling - your wins, your losses, your hilarious stories of triumph and torment.
O'shea's is indeed incredibly ghetto, but they have beer pong tables in the food court and hot women. A male Canadian military police offer tried to pick me up there, and when I sort of awkwardly apologized for not being into that kind of thing, he started a fight with the security guards. His squad got involved, and it all got quite out of hand. (Incidentally, I'm not sure that the word 'entire' belongs in the sentence 'entire $100 stake'.) Ahem. Quick rundown: most I've won on a single hand of poker is about $1800, finished $2100 up for the night, which isn't that impressive, although it was a $2/$3 cash game and I'd bought in for $200. God bless drunks. Most I've lost in a night is about $1200, just couldn't win a coin flip to save my life. The quickest I've ever lost was $800 in about 10 minutes in Barcelona. In New Orleans I saw quad aces get cracked at a $1/$2 table and the guy won something like $100k for the bad beat. I've seen my housemate win $10k playing Pai Gow (sp?), a game I don't even begin to understand. Another friend of mine has a legit gambling addiction, been to GA, etc. Unfortunately I didn't know this when I took him to the casino, but I figured it out when he spent everything he came with, borrowed money from all of us in the group, won back what he'd lost and $800 profit, and still wouldn't leave the table until he'd managed to lose all of that as well, with his girlfriend begging him to leave the entire time. My first time playing poker in a casino, I flopped a full house against some kid's trip aces. He couldn't lay them down, and I ended up stacking him. He got up and left the casino in a daze, leaving behind his jacket, bag, etc. I've seen fights over breaches of etiquette, and someone getting absolutely stomped by security after he attacked the dealer for mistakenly mucking his hand. I got scammed for a few hundred by a fighter taking a dive in a muay thai fight in thailand, and the guy who had made the bet turned out to own the fighting ring and dared me to do anything about it while his fighters stared me down (shockingly, I didn't). Non-casino oriented, my housemate lost a $1k drunken bet that my other housemate could best a friend in a wrestling match. He has also lost $400 in a single coin flip to me. My second favourite win of all time was betting with an ex girlfriend the number of forms of ID required to get membership at a video shop, with the prize being anal. My absolute favourite win of all time though netted me exactly $5. I was holidaying with some married friends in Ibiza, and husband's brother, Calvin, was housesitting for them for the first week, and one of the wife's friends, Susie was housesitting after that. Susie knew Calvin through her fiance, who was the lawyer attempting to get Calvin out of a DUI charge. I bet the wife $5 that Calvin would fuck Susie, in the wife's bed. Now, the wife is a genuinely good person, and never gets involved in my offensive bets (true story: the night we met, I bet a friend $50 that wife would fuck another one of our friends. She didn't, and surprisingly, both her and her husband went on to become very close friends.), but she had so much faith in her friend that she took the bet just to shut me up. We came home from the holiday, and our friends hosted welcome back drinks. That very night, Susie confesses that she fucked Calvin, and dissolved her engagement, although it took longer for Calvin to eventually admit that it took place in the master bed. I still have the $5. I want to get it framed.
The most I've ever won at a casino was this time in New Orleans when this dude paid me $16,000 to....never mind. Anywho, I mostly stick to craps and blackjack nowadays. My roommate taught me how to play craps a little while ago and I've never turned back. It's a thrilling nail biter every time the dice gets thrown and I love it. Although I've only played a grand total of about 8 times, I've spent a solid 40-50 hours of my life at tables. I never throw the dice though, I always pass, I've never been a good thrower. My big wins were only in the couple hundreds, same with the losses. As for blackjack, it's just a good way to win some lost money back, and it's fast. I'd say at this point in my life, I'm up on the house by about $500...not bad considering I play once every few months. My grandpa taught me how to play pai gow when I was in Vegas a couple years ago, but I have no idea how to play now. All I remember is that it was kinda complicated.
Never been much into casinos or card games as I'll get a few good wins then lose interest and bet big on something and lose. Been getting into sports betting a bit lately and from $100 i was up to $2500 in the account until I took some out and was unlucky on a few bets that should have gone the other way.
I enjoy gambling. It's taken me some time to learn what I like and don't like, and am still working on it, but at this point I enjoy high chip count Texas Hold 'em tournaments and Blackjack. I've had mixed results at tournament poker, but I did wind up in top 3 at a Mohegun Sun game before the three of us decided to chop. That was worth just a bit under a grand and I've been in the money before, years ago at Foxwoods. On the flip side, I've busted out of these things in half an hour before. As for blackjack, I just got into it. I never thought I much liked it but the more I learn and play it the more interesting I find it. I'm probably at about +$300 or so on it, but I've learned that even if I'm not doing great at the time having a good dealer and an energetic table makes for a lot of fun. The main problem is that Mohegun is too far from me, but my father in law just told me about a card room in New Hampshire that's much closer so I'm looking forward to checking it out. Lastly is craps. I've played a couple times for very brief periods. I think I'm going to try more, it seems like fun, but finding space at a table is daunting to me.
I love gambling more than pedophiles love kids. I don't care if I win or lose. I JUST LOVE IT. Because of this I only gamble 3-4 times a year. And I leave my bank cards/credit cards at home. Once my pocket money is gone, so is my gambling. I used to be pretty good at black jack when I was younger and couldn't afford to lose. I would win $50-$100 and put that money away. Then win $50 more, etc. At the end of the night I would usually have between $500-1000. That is a sharp contrast to now. If I win $50, that means the next bet is worth that much, and so on. The most I've ever won was about $3000 in a Casino Windsor (or whatever it is called now) when I was 19. I don't have any clue what the most I've ever lost is. I'm sure it is an embarrassing amount.
I'm not much of a gambler... never had much luck at it and I hate losing money. The highlight of my gambling, however, was back in 10th grade when me and my buddies were caught up in the Texas Hold'Em craze. A pistol was thrown into the pot when one of my friends didn't have the cash he thought he did, so he went to his garage and grabbed it. Given, it was a pellet pistol you have to pump (he used it for rabbits/squirrels in the backyard), but it still works and is awesome.
I was heavy into sports betting the last few years of my drinking, especially college football, and some pro games. Played 3 card poker when I'd go to Vegas, and I had a huge hot streak our last trip there that covered the cost for the whole trip, sent my wife on a shopping spree with $4,000 cash, paid for not one but two "Ball Girls" on the links at Rio Seeco, upgraded us to first class on the flight home, and I still came home with a few grand in my pocket. But, gambling and my drinking were tightly interwoven, so when I quit drinking, I had to quit gambling. I couldn't watch a football game the first year I was sober. I tried (I was only sober 3 months or so), but before the game started, I started thinking about calling someone to get the latest line (I had closed my account with my bookie). I knew if I started betting, drinking would soon follow. Gambling, booze, drugs...they all hit the same reward center in the brain.
I have a number of stories on good and bad gambling stories from Vegas, AC and anywhere else that will take my money but the one in particular that stands out was last year on a Carnival Cruise line. My buddy and I took a two-day booze cruise (or, "Cruise to Nowhere") and in the casino they had an electronic $1/$2 NLHE table (like the one here) . If you haven't been on a cruise before, damn near everything gets charged (or credited) to your credit card attached to your room. Unlike the other table games where you can buy in with cash, the poker table went on as a room charge. This was fine the first night where I got my original buy-in in back on the card and cashed out +$300. The second night I didn't sit down at the table until I had reached about a .15 BAC and it was all brown-outs from there. The next day I had $600 in charges to the table from that night--yikes. Two weeks later I get a letter in the mail from Carnival explaining that I hadn't actually settled or cashed out the end of the second night and had a check for ~$720 from them. Needless to say it was a happier moment in my gambling adventures.
I have yet to set foot in a casino. Some friends are after me to go pop my Vegas cherry, as I have never been. Maybe soon... I used to play quite a bit of Hold 'Em, especially when I was pregnant. I would just go to the local bars to hang with all of my friends and they'd help me hustle a game. I usually won, the biggest was $300 in one hand. I won with a pair of 8's, I guess I can bluff pretty well. It helped that I was dead sober. Betting on sports events used to be fun for me as well. I seem to have lost my touch as of late, however.
I like gambling, mostly poker. I dabble in blackjack and roulette when bored or waiting for a table, or with friends, but I've had limited success. Especially with blackjack -- I don't think I've ever left up money at blackjack, which is weird because I know basic strategy and have played enough times that you'd think I might win by luck. If I'm at a casino, I'm almost certain I'm a favorite in any 1/2 game they have, so that's what I usually play. I do pretty good, mostly because I know how to manage my table image, and understand bet sizing a bit better than most live players. When I'm on my A game, I win 90+% of the time; unfortunately, as my A game slips into my B and C game I often stubbornly continue to try to play. Oh well. I played online for a while, with mixed results. Had one week where I ran $50 --->$10,000, cashed some out to pay for school stuff and spent most of the rest taking shots at higher level games. It turns out that money isn't the reason I don't play $5-10 PLO, it's that everybody there is much better than I am. I got absolutely hammered, in the most humbling experience I've had gambling. I'd probably do things differently if I had another heater like that.
Oh, and the poker scenes in Casino Royale are pretty much the stupidest scenes you can imagine, especially the last one. The way that last hand was played by all parties makes absolutely no sense, and to set up Bond as this gambling genius and then have him win that ludicrously is like having a movie that says how great of a fighter somebody is, then only showing pianos and anvils falling on his opponents.
Man, I used to love to go to the casino. I've always lived within 30 mins to an hour of a casino and usually make the trek to Vegas a few times a year. A few years ago, I switched careers, and my new company had a large number of facilities in Las Vegas, so I was going 6-7 times a year. I got extremely burned out on Vegas, so I try to avoid it whenever I can now. Also, most of my friends are married now, so the bachelor parties are fewer and further between. I play blackjack 90% of the time, usually because it's a good way to get a number of friends at one table, and you can manage your losses pretty well if you're smart about it. The most I've ever won is probably $2,500-$3,000 at a blackjack table, and I hit a $10k slot pull on a $5 machine a few years ago. I really like hold 'em poker, but hate playing at a casino. There are way too many jackasses that want to go all-in every other hand, so it's pretty difficult to have a good run unless you keep a deep bank. To me, poker is better played with acquaintances or in tournaments.
Hello TIB, long time no see! I am doing well, thank you. I love no limit texas hold'em. I've played with friends in home games infrequently for the last 4 or 5 years but I've just recently decided that I want to actually get GOOD at it. Over the last few months I'd say that I average 3 or 4 hours a day playing online but I'm still a losing player. It's frustrating because I can build my roll up decently (considering I usually only put $20 on my account, which is just plain stupid to begin with) but I love playing multi-table tournaments and I can't help but take shots hoping for a bigger pay day and end up pissing away all of my profits. I am now on a self imposed hiatus where I will read a few books then put a few hundred bucks on my account and manage my bankroll properly. I also want to start playing live at a few casinos here in town but the real challenge will be to see if I can avoid drinking while I play...
True story of the first time I went to a casino: My first husband wanted to bring me and was a regular at the casino but I had never been and knew nothing of it. He gave me a whole bucket of coins and sat me in front of the 25 cent slots and promptly disappeared. Well after a while of not winning I decided to change machines. I also have ADD and am attracted to shiny objects and lights so I changed machines quite often. He shows back up later and asks me if I won anything. I say no but this machine is fun so I have been here for longer than the others. He then points out how many credits I am up on the machine. I had no idea that you had to "cash out" your coins. I thought they just fell if you won. So there is no telling how much I may have been ahead that night and have no idea because I was up quite a bit on the machine I was playing. To this day when I think about this I laugh. My naivete is hilarious to me.
Your brother and I should head out to Vegas together. I went out to Vegas in 2006 for new years. I was staying at a hotel with 6 chicks I knew from high school. One night we went out to a club and the girls were asked if they wanted to go into the VIP. The girls asked if I could come with them, turns out the dudes there were just back from Iraq and had taken over the AO they were working in from my unit a year prior. Needless to say we got shit faced and I left the club about 2 am “browning out,” went to the room, grabbed $100 and headed down to blackjack. I’m a pretty decent blackjack player, in my lifetime I’m up about $2500 in Vegas. However I was in no shape to gamble that night, completely blacked out by the time I got downstairs. Anyways I woke up with $500 in my pocket, and franticly checked online accounts before I realized I actually did win it.
Over spring break me and a few friends made a "business trip" to Vegas. I somehow managed, while completely sober, to bluff off $525 in a single hand of 2-3 poker. The sickest part is I still think I played the hand right, my opponent just put a godly read on me. That really hurt my profits for the trip, but I still managed to limp home having won expenses +$200
Gambling and sex are like drugs for me. I can't have too much of either because I won't be able to stop thinking about the next bigger, better, harder hit. I wish I was kidding.