If Vegas didn’t exist, somebody would have to invent it! The entire city is dedicated to the moral dissipation of anybody silly enough to step inside the city limits. That parents would send their children here to college is beyond astonishing. While Ricky and Marty knew all this intellectually, I was the only one who had ever actually been there before, and that was in my previous life. We went down to the bar with a couple of the brothers, and there was a slot machine next to the bar. Ricky and Marty just stared, and then Marty asked, “Is that legal?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” was the answer, which made me wonder just precisely how legal it was, but nobody seemed to care.
“We need one of these back home!” Marty exclaimed. A minute later he had fished some change out of his pocket. It was a quarter slot, and he dropped all his quarters that he could find in, earning back nothing. “Shit!”
“It helps pay the dues!” commented one of the guys. He looked at Ricky and me invitingly. Ricky laughed and tried some change of his own, as did I. Everybody seemed happy that we had contributed to the fiscal operation of the frat.
We stayed several days at UNLV, and had a very nice time. One day we went over to Lake Mead and toured Hoover Dam, which is pretty cool for nerds. Still, I wanted to try something, so one day we drove into the city and looked around. Thank you, sweet Jesus, that the air conditioning on the Buick was working! It must get to be about a million degrees there in the summer! We parked at the Golden Nugget and went inside. This was in the days before the big expansion on the west side of the Strip had really taken off, and the Golden Nugget was one of the old casinos downtown. We looked around for a bit, but then I told the guys, “Listen, I can’t explain this, but I’m breaking away for a bit. Don’t leave without me, but I can’t have you with me for a while.”
“What are you up to, Buckman?” asked Ricky.
“Just trust me. I want to try something.” I walked away and headed over towards the table game section, and found where the blackjack tables were.
It was time to try something silly. I watched the action at several different tables, and then went into a higher stakes area and watched some more, and then I sat down at a table where the bets started at $50. I handed an even $1,000 to the dealer, who simply announced, probably to a microphone and the pit boss, “Changing $1,000 for chips!” stuck the cash into a slot in the table, and pushed a small stack of $50 chips across to me.
That was what the stake I had decided to risk gambling. No way was I signing any markers. If I lost it, it was gone. Blackjack is one of the few games at a casino which isn’t pure random chance. There is actual skill involved, and you can beat the house. The casinos know this, and they don’t actually like it, but blackjack is a popular game and they can’t afford to stop it. The skills needed to beat the game involve discipline and card counting.
Card counting involves knowing what cards have already been played and what is still in the deck. It does not involve memorizing the cards, which is what is shown in the movie Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. In its simplest form you simply assign a value to each card as it is dealt. Cards 2–6 are worth +1 each, 10s and all face cards are worth -1 each, and 7–9 are worth 0. As each card is dealt, you keep a running tally, and the count will rise and fall. When the count is negative the deck is in the dealer’s favor, and you should bet low. When the count is positive the deck is in your favor and you should bet high. There are more advanced systems which value the cards at multiple levels, but the basic Hi-Lo strategy works.
On the downside, it is not a guarantee, simply a method to move the odds to your favor. You have to pay attention, really pay attention to pull it off. The casinos know this and have a number of countermeasures, from simply trying to distract you and make you lose count, to more frequent shuffling, which erases the count but slows the game considerably. Another tried and true method, not used so much in the U.S. but very popular in third world shitholes, is to take you out and bury you, often with a single hand showing above ground, holding a card. Card counting is not illegal. Using a mechanical or electronic counter is extremely illegal. Worst of all, the advantage is small enough that you need to be playing for large sums to make it worthwhile, hence why I was playing at the $50 and up table.
By the time it became common knowledge how to do this, most casinos started tracking known counters and using computer software to analyze betting habits and facial recognition to discover disguised counters, and then ban the counters from returning. Nobody knew me yet.
The system works. It isn’t easy, and you really need to pay attention, and that was why I couldn’t have my buddies hovering over me yakking it up and kibbitzing. I sat there and gambled for a couple of hours before Ricky and Marty came searching for me. Thankfully I was in a definite hot streak where the count was very positive and I was able to make some large bets and pocket some serious coin. They came up behind me and saw the amount of chips on the table and gasped. “Buckman! Where have you been? We’ve been all over the place looking for you. Holy shit! What are you doing?!”
I still had a nice positive count going, so I played one more bet for $300, hit a blackjack, and collected at 3:2. At that point I stood up and slid a chip across the table to the dealer. “That’s for you. I think I’m going to cash out.” The guys had totally blown my concentration, but it was time to quit anyway. The count was turning.
“Thank you, sir. Cashing out!” My chips were placed in a small rack and handed to me, and Ricky and Marty followed me in astonishment over to a cashier’s window. I had about four grand in cash, including my original one grand stake, so I was up about three. Not bad for an afternoon. Still, I wasn’t sorry they had stopped me. I just don’t have the fire in the belly that a lot of gamblers have. For me it was just a job, and one where having people at my side was a distraction I couldn’t afford. It was lonely and sterile. I had never done it before because I had never really had the money to be able to sit at a table for the hours it took, and at the stakes necessary, to make it worthwhile. Now I had the cash, but it was still something that left me cold.
Real gamblers, the guys who get in trouble, are different. They get a thrill that is almost sexual in nature when they are making bets, no matter what on. They’ve run MRIs and scans and stuff on these guys, and the same parts of the brain light up like when you’re on drugs or getting laid or whatever. It’s part of why they have to gamble even when they are losing. Me, I just don’t get that same sort of thrill. I smiled at the cashier and sorted through my money. I counted out five hundred dollar bills and handed them to Ricky, and then another five hundreds to Marty. “Here, take these.”
Marty stared at the money. Ricky asked, “What the fuck is this?”
“This, my friends, pays for our vacation! Say thank you!”
Marty looked at me. “Are you shitting me?”
“I am dead serious. I’m still ahead. Come on, let’s get a drink! I’ll tell you there.” We found a bar and grabbed a seat at a table against one of the walls.
“Okay, what’s going on? What’s with the money? When did you become a big time gambler?” asked Ricky.
I motioned him to be quiet when a pretty waitress came up and took drink orders. We all ordered beers. Once she went away, I considered what to say. This was in the days before microscopic cameras and microphones could allow each table to be monitored in a casino. I just nodded and said, “Okay, but this is just between the three of us. If anybody ever asks, just tell them I got lucky, real lucky at the casino, and leave it at that. Nobody’ll believe you anyway.”