Gambling
Yesterday was a long day of gambling. Even though I slept well the night before I still felt tired for most of the day, presumably from the time change. We hit the main strip during the day bouncing around several casinos. We wound up landing at Casino Royale, a place Keener and I played at for a bit. Ali and I sat down at a blackjack table and we each started with 50 bucks.
When Keener and I came out he clued me in to a hidden weapon that casinos use, female asian dealers. He said he avoids them like the plague because you always seem to lose to them and they normally show as much personality as wood. Well it seemed almost every table we saw had a female asian dealer, including the one we sat down at.
At first I tried to coach Ali along, having her do the “correct” play. Blackjack can be really simple. You just basically assume the dealer has a 10 as her down card and you make your hit or stand calls based on that. I scolded Ali as she would do things like take a hit with a 13 if the dealer was showing a 5 or 6. Well I played “by the book” and managed to get wiped out. Ali only had a few chips left when I told her I was going to shut up and let her do as she pleases.
Well Ali managed to battle back against a very tough table and the evil Asian dealer. At one point I swear the dealer did not bust for at least 15 minutes. She would get 4 and 5 card 21’s like nothing. It was ridiculous. Even so, Ali managed to grind it out until she actually had won back the her 50 AND the 50 I lost. We stopped there, feeling very fortunate to get back to even in those circumstances.
We walked around a bit going into Caesar’s and walking around the nearly endless maze of high end retail shopping. I sort of hit the wall. I was tired, my eyes and throat were sore from the cold, dry air and the cigarette smoke and my back was hurting from all the walking. We decided to go back to the room and eat supper and then play it by ear from there. We had gone to the grocery store (that will be part of another entry) and grabbed some food the night before. One of the nice things about a time share is you have a full kitchen so you can easily prepare some food and save money on eating out every meal.
So the small break back at the room gave me enough energy to go back out again. We decided to go back to the old strip on Fremont this time. It is much easier to find the cheaper, $5 tables there than the new strip. We parked at the California Casino and decided to stop at one of their blackjack tables, yep more female asian dealers. This woman was very stoic, very unpersonable. On our first hand the woman scolded me saying “don’t bend cards”. I didn’t bend the cards. Neither Ali or I enjoyed sitting there. Ali blew through her $50 allowance quickly. I was 15 bucks up on my 50 and we decided to bale on the grumpy woman at that point, $35 down overall. As we left we talked about how stupid it was for a casino to hire grumpy dealers. If dealer is nice and personable you are more likely to stay around even through some losing streaks.
We wound up going into Binions, the place where red 16 popped up the night before. Ali sat at a blackjack table and I decided to go throw some craps. I had some moderate success playing craps. When Keener and I went last time we lived at the craps tables and both of us went on some monster runs rolling the dice. This time shooting I didn’t have a monster run but I did better than the other shooters, making two or three points with a bunch of rolls in between. The one time I rolled at least five 5’s between points. Mr 5 woulda been proud of me. At one point I was probably $50-$75 up on my original $100 but then a run of cold shooters brought me back to earth. I walked away $4 down.
So I walk over to the blackjack table and see Ali is still playing, albeit with a pretty slim stack. She was laughing and having a good time talking to the guy next to her whose name was Mike. Mike was a young kid in his mid 20’s that was in the middle of a road trip. He works on an oil rig in Wyoming. His schedule is nutty. He works two weeks straight and then has off two weeks straight. Sounds kinda awesome. Anyway, he just got into Vegas around 4pm and he was leaving the next day already. He was just making a quick pit stop to gamble a bit before leaving for his next destination. He seemed like a nice guy.
Anyway about the time I came over to observe, Ali discovered the magic of free casino alcohol and successfully received her first drink that cost nothing more than a dollar chip tip to the waitress. Around that time her luck started to get better too. The guy that was dealing had little personality either but at least he would crack a smile from time to time. Then they brought in the “cooler” , another asian female dealer.
This woman was a bitch plain and simple. She dealt cards in an angry fashion. When you doubled down on an 10 or 11. She flipped over your one card she dealt instead of leaving it down for suspense like all the other dealers we had before. She just seemed pissed off to even be there. Even, so ALi was still having fun and still pounding drinks. I rotated between sitting at empty spots at the table to standing, to walking around and checking out other stuff around the casino. I just didn’t feel like exposing more of our money at that point.
At one point Ali was up 75 bucks or more but she came back to earth a bit. Even so she managed to erase the $35 loss we had earlier and brought us again back to even for the session. By the time she was done playing she was pretty much in the bag from the 5 or 6 drinks. As we got out into the cold Vegas night air we were treated to the overhead video show that displays on the canopy that covers Fremont street, it was wild. I was really tired by that point. We headed back and sacked out.
Today is the Hoover Dam and The Blue Man Group tonight. Hopefully a little gambling time in between. So far after a good 8-10 hours in casinos we are sitting at just about dead even, no complaints there. In fact we have spent very little money at all so far.