-VTM, Hard Nose the Highway-
I hit the casino still in my work clothes, black muddied denim jeans, grey fleece pull-over, and a down-filled vest. Not the most auspicious way to enter a casino but it would have to do. I was hungry and I could fill the luck oozing out of my pores with the cheap wine I had drank last night.I have many theories on gambling. My main theory is one is I call The Maximum Boldness Theory. I'm not sure if I am the sole author to it because it was my brother who taught it to me many moons ago although not in so many words.
Maximum Boldness states that as a gambler you have to bet aggressively, hard, high, and fast. The trick is to get in and get out as quickly as possible. It is a well-known and a mathematically proven fact that the longer you stay in a casino and betting with low wages the greater your chance of losing in the long run. BUT your odds actually increase by betting larger amounts and betting only for a short duration. Now, I know this doesn't sound at all like good old Vulcan logic, more like six-pack logic, but it all works out. Actually, it can go either way. You either win really big or you lose really big. I don't like to fart around with those silly little two dollar chips. Like my pappy used to tell me, "If you are going to be a bear, be a GRIZZLY!
I had arrived relatively early at the casino but the first shift were still shuffling out their last ninety minutes on the job. This is a good thing. The longer they have been working the more tired they are. The more tired they are, the more likely they are to make mistakes. The trick then is to find out the shift changes, and to arrive and gamble before the fresh crew get on. Or gamble at midnight when everyone is tired.
Because it was so early in the evening, the casino was still half empty, (or half-full depending...), and some of the tables weren't even open for business and were draped over with immaculately white table cloths. Not a good sign. When some of the roulette tables are shut down, they are usually the higher limit tables. The late afternoon crowd at this particular casino consists of bored male tourists who only gamble to kill some time while their wives are shopping at the huge mall across the street. And they piddle away their savings with the two dollar minimum bets.
I found the highest limit table at fifty dollars. And here I have another strategem. Several of them actually. Usually, I will ask for twenty $10.oo chips and hunker down on one number until those run out. The odds of hitting that one number pay out at 36 to 1. Which means I win 360 dollars. Theoretically, that number should hit once every thirty six times. This gives me a fifty per cent chance of hitting that number if I bet only 18 times. But that doesn't always work. I decided today to try a different strategy.
I place the limit on black to win. This pays 50/50. I won. Rode it one more time and won. Then I hit high for 3 to 1 meaning if the ball clicked in any of the top third numbers 25 to 36 I would win. And I did. For afterall I had a purpose and I couldn't lose. Honey Tupelo considers Van Morrison to be GOD. I am trying to make money to see Van Morrison in concert with Honey Tupelo. Does that mean if I am winning that God is on my side?
Inside ten minutes, I won over eight hundred dollars....
The next afternoon I won an additional 400 dollars playing Keno in the bar. That same night I lost the whole works at the casino. And I knew before I went in there that maybe I had enought money for the Van Morrison concert, the limo, the new suit, the hotel room, everything... But I tasted blood and I wanted more.
But I had felt that familiar foreboding enought times to know a losing situation when I feel one. It is that moment when the patrons, all the gamblers have that same desperate and despairing look about them, like a dog waiting anxiously for it's master outside the bank, hard-luck gamblers moon-dogging the tables, and me, good old me not even bothering to rise above it all. I just bet like everyone else, with no sense of intuition, just betting, and half-drunk to boot.
So now I am back to square one, broke and hung-over. I wonder what is going to happen next. But I have a plan. I remember something Charles Bukowski once said: A gambler without an excuse is finished, or something like that. I always have something up my sleeve. And time is running out with less than four days before the concert starts.
