Posts Tagged ‘casino’
Blackjack Hit And Run Part2
Author: admin
Foxwoods Casino. Never again, thank you. If Foxwoods was the only casino around, I'd hang up my hiking boots and quit gambling. But don't get me wrong: I have nothing against Foxwoods or Native Americans. It's just that if I'm limited to gambling in only one casino, I am fated to join the swelling ranks of losers. When Foxwoods was the only casino in all of the northeastern section of the country, it was the most profitable casino in America—and I don't find that coincidental. When the word got around about the roaring success of Foxwoods, a rival tribe down the road in Connecticut decided they also wanted to get in on a good thing. So now there are two Indian casinos in that neck of the woods. Not to be left out, a New York State Indian tribe has also set up shop near Syracuse. So competition may bring better odds to Foxwoods.
My only chance of winning is to keep putting mileage on my hiking shoes. I have to be able to pick up my chips and hightail it over to the next casino at a moment's notice.
All my hit-and-run trips to Vegas and Atlantic City were carefully time-controlled. I always had one eye on the dice or the blackjack hand and the other eye on my wristwatch. I always made absolutely sure I allowed myself enough time to make that plane or bus.
I never ever, on my Lone Wolf prowls, missed my return mode of transportation, but I must admit there were squeakers. One time in particular was just too close for comfort. It was the end of a one-day raid on the Las Vegas casinos for a specific goal— I needed some quick cash for the next day. I had taken my ever-faithful TWA Flight #57 at 5:30 from Kennedy to McCarran, with a return flight on the last plane out to New York that midnight. I had done well so far on my hit-and-run journey up the Strip from the Sahara, and now I was at the Aladdin, my final casino before cabbing to the airport. (This was in the 1970s, when both blackjack and craps limits were in the hundreds, and purple ($500) chips were only seen on the baccarat table.) Nicely ahead for the evening, I cashed a couple of thousand in seed money at the blackjack table as the dice came around to me. Playing the front line with, of course, full odds—along with placing the 6 and 8, I took control of the dice. This was going to be my Grand Finale for the evening, a quick win at the table and a quicker exit out the door and off to the airport.
My point was 10. I wound up like Sandy Koufax, and sent the cubes hurtling down the table, bouncing smartly against the back wall.
The number was 3. Again I rolled them cubes, and again it was a no-decision (for me) 12.
And I rolled again. And again. And still again.
Still no decision. I was nowhere near my needed 10.
Time was ticking away, and I was getting nervous. 1 started to roll faster. In fact, for the first time in my casino career I asked the stickman to please speed up the action. Now it was getting hairy. I took down my two place bets, and even picked up my odds bet just to show the stickman my urgency and sincerity in trying to finish the roll as soon as possible. Three more rolls and still no decision.
In desperation I pleaded, "Look, I gotta make a plane. Any way that I can just cede the hand and split?"
The table went into an uproar. My notion that I could escape was an impossible dream. To make matters worse, the other players at the table became menacing.
"Roll them cubes, shithead."
"Finish off the hand and buzz off. We don't want you around here either."
Tags: casino, las vegas casinos
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Im Not A Gambler Part2
Author: admin
I'll also tell you about the honesty of one casino—how my Keno ticket was worth a thousand dollars more than I thought, and how they went out of their way to upgrade my ticket and pay me every dollar due me.
In addition to all this, I want to assure you that I'm not a compulsive gambler.
I've never been to a race track. I agree with legendary gambler Nick the Greek: Never bet on anything that eats.
I don't buy lottery tickets—though I've collected lottery money prizes five times in my life, including a $1300 Lotto ticket! But more about that later.
I don't play poker with the boys.
I shy away from office baseball and football pools.
I've only bet once at OTB (Off-Track Betting) in New York, and I quit winners.
I didn't even pitch pennies with the kids in grade school.
But yes, I do gamble at the casinos, and I've been doing it for four decades. When I first went to the Las Vegas Sands in 1960, I was wide-eyed and hell-bent to break the bank. The one who ended up broke was me, and I was lucky to have enough left for cab fare back from the airport to my apartment. Parenthetically, in New York, before the days of the lotteries, the East Coast casinos and OTB, the race tracks were the serious gambler's only refuge. There are stories about horseplayers that lost their shirts at the track who had the foresight to put a nickel—subways were a nickel then— in a rented ten-cent locker to insure having the fare for the return trip home.
Today I go to the casinos with an entirely different mind-set. No, I don't want to clean out their cashier cages, or take home their chandeliers, I only want to nibble away at them. Hit and run—Lyle Stuart taught it to me—and that's the only way I know to beat the casinos. Years ago, during a weekend at Caesars Palace, I was strolling over to the elevator when I saw a heavy-set man sitting—yes, sitting—at the end of a craps table. In front of him, piled on the racks and on the table itself, was the highest mountain of chips I have ever seen in front of one player. He appeared to be playing almost everything on the table—all the numbers, proposition bets, the field—the works. I watched for a few minutes and then went to my room for some shut-eye. Six hours later I returned to the casino. The fellow was still there, sitting in front of his chips . . . only now there was no mountain—it was barely a molehill—a lot fewer chips there than there were the night before. Here was a man who should have hit and run hours ago.
In his book on gambling, John Scarne tells the lesson-to-be-learned classic story of the busboy from a Strip casino who took his paycheck downtown to the Fremont Street casinos. Lady Luck smiled on him as he gambled through the night and miraculously worked his meager bankroll up to $50,000. Toward dawn his luck turned sour and—you guessed it—he lost it all, sadly drag-assing himself at 9:00 A.M. back to his menial busboy job on the Strip. Scarne then astutely noted that, even if the busboy had run up his bankroll to $75,000 or even $100,000 or more, he would have doggedly stayed at the tables until he was completely tapped out. I read it years ago, and never forgot the lesson I learned there. I hope you'll always remember it too.
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