What happens in Vegas, $127 Million stays in Vegas

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1259967 ... %3Darticle]

I'm astounded that someone can spend a year and $127,000,000 in just two places before family and friends come looking.

Focus: Does anyone in your family have gambling problems? Ever struck out or struck big?

Can't use the quote codes, tells me I can't.

 

I am a bit of a gambling man. I have had some stupid amounts of luck.

For example, I only play the slots when I am hanging out people watching to get free drinks.

My friend and I were in the Circus Circus on the Carousel slot bank, and as the waitress was approaching I stuck a dollar in to make it look like I was playing, and hit spin, and boom, 100 bucks.

Later that night, same place difference machine, hit 345 bucks on the penny slots. It took 20 minutes for the counter to add credits to my machine as it was a penny at a time.

However my real play is blackjack.

I can count pretty well, but I also like to drink, so I usually stick to lower wagers, but a lot of time I do 25 a hand long as I am sober.

The first time I ever say down at a table though, I bought in with ten bucks. I walked away with nearly 200 bucks in 40 minutes betting minimum.

My last blackjack experience was something else though. Injun casino up near Yosemite, bought in with 100 bucks on a CSM, which I never usually play. But I played perfect strategy, and the table was doing ok. But I didn't get a single blackjack for 2.5 hours. everyone around me was getting them, but I hadn't gotten a single one. I was up about 600 bucks, and decided, fuck it, I am going big.

Slap down 300 bucks on my spot, and the asian lady next to me says "you clazy".

Dealer deals, and bam, first blackjack of the day.

I kept playing and walked out with a month's worth of wages.

 

I'm an extremely disciplined gambler, mostly on the basis that it doesn't really ring my bell. I can't see any of the glamour whatsoever to poker so I never play it, and roulette is the only thing I'll touch in a casino. If I get up more than $200, I call in and walk away. I have never lost more than $50 gambling in my life and I never will.

 

I'm not sure which is worse, the fact that he lost 127 million dollars or the astounding fact that 127 million dollars was only 5 percent of the casino's take.


Focus - I've never been to Vegas, the only time I've ever gambled in a casino was while I was on a business trip with my father. He won the trip as a reward for being a top performer in the Pharmaceutical Sales field and told me I could tag along if I bought my ticket. I wasn't about to pass up a week at a posh resort outside Puerto Rico. The only crappy thing about the casino there is that nothing was comped. You had to pay for alcohol and cigars while gambling. It was there that I discovered that I have a natural ability at blackjack.

Staked with fifty dollars from pops while he was at a meeting I sat down at a five dollar table. Two hours later when pops found me in the casino I was up fifty bucks. This might not sound like alot, but bear in mind in those two hours I'd thrown back eight beers and was on my second cigar, all paid for by my winnings.

The next night, our last there, I again sat down with a hundred bucks and coincidentally had the same dealer as the night before. Three hours later I was up $450. I was so in the zone, I began calling my cards and hitting them every single time. I had a crowd of ten people and three other players watching by the time it was done. I swear at one point I put on my best Dustin Hoffman voice and started telling the other players "One for bad, two for good" and they started winning. At the end of the night I was up $700 dollars at the same five dollar table.

To be completely honest, the thought of gambling at Vegas scares the fuck out of me though. Stories like the one in the original post are why.

 

Gambling and drinking went hand-in-hand for me. At the end of my drinking days, it wasn't unusual for me to have $2-3,000 on the line every Saturday during college football season. Most seasons I just about broke even, but one season I did especially well, mostly due to a very profitable Thanksgiving weekend where I had $500 on a 4 team parlay that hit (a 4 team parlay pays 10-1). I took the book for almost $10,000 that weekend (the kids had a very good Christmas that year). Unfortunately, after a long day of drinking and gambling, I'd place drunken bets on late games when I was too fucked up to really know what I was doing (or that I had even done it). Then, NCAA hoops would start and I'd end up losing most of any football winnings I had accrued and didn't spend.

Last time I gambled in Vegas, I took Caesar's for almost $6,000 at the 3-card poker table (a whole group of us went with the wives, the guys to gamble and golf, the women to shop--I gave the Mrs. $2,000 to go shopping, and I blew $1,000 on limos to and from Rio Secco, two "Ball Girls" for the full 18-hole round, and all the booze for the 4 of us on the course; the round was comped via one of the other guys). I just had a run of really tremendous luck that weekend.

When I quit drinking and drugging, I had to quit gambling as well. In fact, I didn't watch a single play of football my first year of sobriety for fear of placing a bet which would eventually lead to a drink. I watched a few games this years, but had to turn off the TCU-Utah game at halftime. I kept calling my bookie for a second half line and would hang up before placing the bet. Finally, I just deleted the number from my phone. When I was only 3-4 months sober, I had to go to Vegas on business twice and always had to go through the casino to get to the elevators to take me to my room and it was torturous. Addiction is a powerful curse.

 

I'm 22, and have gambled semi-regularly for the past 7 years. That being said, I don't consider myself addicted to it. There's no emotional attachment, and I stop gambling on games as soon as I realize I don't have an advantage at it.

For example, I started out gambling on basketball, and after realizing that I was only winning about 52 or 53 percent of the time, less than the rake I was playing under, decided it was no longer worth my time. Then, I played some poker, but realized I was too impatient, and found the game too fucking boring to really grind out those 8-hour sessions. I think I ended up losing a whopping $150 online, (I played $5/$10, so 15 big blinds...nothing) and winning $400-$500 in live games.

I managed to easily crush most money fantasy basketball leagues, but the prizes were small, and not worth the time commitment.

The game I've gambled on the longest and most successfully is MMA, especially when they started posting lines in 2005, and the oddsmakers back then had no clue what they were doing. I'm made several thousand, but haven't really invested the capital for it to become a major source of income.

As an amusing habit, I'm always making bets for small monetary amounts/friendly conditions with friends and people I know. I've been keeping track, and through the last three years, I'm 18-1. (The only time I lost was a Lakers fan who told me the team would win the 2009 championship before the beginning of the season) Most people have very little idea about the lines of what they're placing wagers upon.

For the vast majority, I think gambling is a waste of time and money. Even if one is really good, and knows the game very well, they might only manage to break even. Consistently winning for significant sums of money is extraordinarily difficult and challenging.

 

I remember the last time my friend tried to goad me into going casino hopping with him.

"Hey, man, what do you have to lose?" He didn't appreciate the irony of that statement until later.

Most I was ever down was a few hundred. I tend to win it back though.

 

I used to be addicted to gambling. Thank god I didn't lose as much as that genius did, but I did lose about 20k in 2 hours. And I'm not rich or anything either, I just decided to blow my savings in 2 hours.

Gambling for me is a lot more intense than any theme park ride, and it even gives me more adrenaline than jumping out of a plane. I started to play when the poker craze from WPT became mainstream and on ESPN. I was always decent at poker and have fairly good luck.

Well, not the night that I decided to play blackjack. I'm one of those gamblers that has so much fun, that I'll just sit there for a whole day. And I usually end up winning a fairly good amount by playing smart. But because I'm so selfish, I can't leave the table and end up staying even though I'm tired and I WANT TO GO.

Now a days I don't gamble, I don't feel happy winning a hundred dollars when I know I'm 20k in the hole.

 

You obviously haven't met my father's widow.

Gambling problem? She spent $4000 a month gambling when dad and her lived in Vegas. Bitch.

 

A few years ago I was pretty big into playing Texas Hold'em with friends of friends a couple times a week. These guys would host poker parties 2-3 nights a week and get 30-40 people together for $50/$75/$100 buy-in games where the pot would get split 65/30 for 1st and 2nd place (5% went to the house but they provided awesome food). I won a few times, came in 2nd a bunch and in the end probably put a couple grand in my pocket.

The game would start at 8 and typically wrapped up around 10:30 or so. When people got bounced from the main game they would start side games/loser tables. Sometimes the buy-ins for these side games would be higher than the big game. One night I got bounced early and watched some of the side games for awhile. I watched a bunch of different guys, landscapers, plumbers, working man guys dump hundreds of dollars each. All of them complaining about being behind on bills, alimony, child support, etc as they spent entire paychecks. It really woke me up.

My buddy who got me into these games is a hardcore gambler. He loves the casino atmosphere so much that he got a job as a dealer down at Mohegan Sun. He works at Mohegan so he can gamble at Foxwoods. He is by no means a wealthy guy but I've seen him drop a few grand in literal minutes via a couple $200 black jack bets, $100/300 craps bets. He lost his house last year, not directly due to gambling losses but it certainly didn't help. Rather than work hard and earn everything he wants in life he sincerely believes that one day he'll hit it big at a casino or win his way into the World Series of Poker where he'll win it all.

Since he was typically one of the first people bounced in the friendly house poker games we played I find his beliefs very unlikely.

 

I love gambling. The last time I was in Las Vegas I was too young. For me it's mostly football games and Hold Em

 

I hate gambling. I'm not even particularly cheap or frugal, I just prefer to spend my money on something that I get enjoyment or value from. My biggest problem with casinos is that even winning doesn't feel "earned" only "lucky". Certainly there is skill involved in playing games like Poker, even Blackjack, though I would argue much less, but I simply chalk up the vast majority of casino gambling results to be the byproduct of random odds. I don't get enjoyment from receiving money from that.

 

I also lost 20k but it was in the stock market (the world's biggest casino).

Do you have a back story? You don't just bring your savings into a casino....

 

Growing up in Vegas I was surrounded by gambling all the time. My mother has been dealing blackjack since I was a zygote. Yet I never got the bug.

One summer I worked for a bookie taking out of state bets. We took action on everything from the world series to horse races to the oscars. Sometimes I'd bet a few hundred on a college football game, but only after my boss, Fat Matt, told us when a game was a "lock". I did this 4 times and won every single time.

Every week I'd read the printouts showing our clients' account balances. Some were up by thousands, others deep in the hole. Fat Matt took me aside and explained that whether or not a client was up or down made no difference. The truth was that, over time, ALL of the clients had given us more than we'd given them. Period. End of story.

Ever since then, I've come to view steady gambling this way: Over time, any money won is really just an extremely high-interest loan lent from the casino.

 

I'd consider myself a 'moderate' gambler. I'll bet 10 dollars a week on sports (Pro-Line) and if I've got some extra cash I'll usually throw 60$ on the Roulette Table once every so often. But I approach gambling with the mindset of, "I wouldn't be gambling with this money if I couldn't afford to lose it." I view a trip to the casino as entertainment for me. I'll have a few drinks, spent an hour or so at the roulette table, and hopefully at the end of it all I walk out on top. If not, well fuck me, I'll get them next time.

My biggest win at the roulette table was 200 bucks.

As for betting on sports - I'm sure I'd be better at it if I did more research. I have a bad habit of walking through the super-market, seeing a lotto center and thinking, "I've got five bucks in my pocket. May as well see what happens!" So I'll pick the winners of four games on a whim and go from there. Recently I've had success picking three of the four winners correctly, but can never seem to get the final 'W' needed.

My best win playing Pro-Line is 112$.

I've been to Vegas twice, and both times I've broke even. My biggest problem when playing the tables (roulette and craps for me) is that when I'm up, I get greedy. The worst for me was when I was up 200$ at the roulette table at Harrah's, and I walked out with only 20$. Sure enough I spent 200$ that night on booze, food and cigars, and would have felt a whole lot better about it had I used my casino winnings.

Focus:

The most compulsive gambler I know is a man who I went to broadcasting school with. He would spent 200$ a day betting on sports. He got into a car accident a few years back, and received a hefty cash settlement, and from what I gather has blown a majority of it on his gambling. It doesn't help that he's a die-hard Leafs fan, and never bets against them.

 

I like to gamble, mostly roulette or the occasional black jack hand, but I'm too chicken shit to bet big. My wife is a fucking money nazi and finds gambling to be a distasteful waste of money. That being said, I rarely will take more than $50 to a casino. Often it's enough for me to play for a couple hours and not worry about getting too far in the hole.

On a side note, my mom used to work for a hospital that was in CLOSE proximity to a small northern Michigan casino/reservation. She worked close with an employee from the casino floor who told her they used to take in a bunch of boat/car/motorcycle titles and house deeds to settle debts. That's fucking sad.

 

A similar thing happened in Melbourne, Australia where a big time loser gambler tried to sue the Crown Casino (the only casino in the entire State).
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/vi...by-supreme-court/story-e6frf7kx-1225808111616

I say if you're a degenerate gambler than connot maintain control and you don't seek help , well fuck you.
Flush your money down the toilet a dollar bill at a time ; it will last longer.

We all know the game is rigged in the casinos favour and if you even attempt to beat the odds, they will kick your ass out of there.

So , fuck the casinos too; don't gamble.

Go spend your money on whores , booze and drugs instead. At least at the end of it you might be smiling.