Stepping into a Casino for the First Time

"We're goin' out where the sand's turnin' to gold"

-Bruce Springsteen "Atlantic City"

I suppose any gambler can recall the first time he or she stepped inside a casino. There is a certain spine-tingling magic that lurks in the air and fuels the lungs. Just like the yellow brick road begged Dorothy to follow, a casino’s overly imaginative carpet patterns coax visitors through a forest of neon, tables, and slots: oh my! The natural adrenaline rush of gambling can fight a body’s sleep requirement for days upon days. This phenomenon is doubtlessly the source of the urban legend that casinos pump oxygen into gaming floor.

One lazy college day some friends and I were watching the movie Rounders. This was long before I found an interest in poker and, because of a general Matt Damon repulsion (at that time), we actually found it rather boring. However, the moment Mike McDermott and Worm headed for Atlantic City, we immediately turned the movie off (or maybe we left it playing, who can say?) and headed straight for the door. We were in “America’s Favorite Playground” (as Atlantic City was called in those days) shortly over an hour later.

Wandering around Trump Plaza, I soaked up this strange, new experience which I had awakened to. I looked over all the action and tried to decide where to test my luck first. Because the $5 blackjack table was full, I put a “nickel” on the outside of a roulette spread. My bet hit and paid 2 to 1. I won my very first casino bet and was on my way to infinite riches!

When I finally got a seat on the cheap blackjack table, it was on the third base side. The action got around to me and, not knowing the game, I hit against a dealer stiff card. A small, smoky-faced wrinkled man was so upset by the play that he yelled at me, picked up his chips, and left. "Wow! This place is serious," I thought to myself as I sat like a wide-eyed deer staring down an eighteen wheeler.

All in all, my first sojourn into a gambling house was quite an experience. It goes without saying that I had a mind-blowingly good time and did my best to return as soon as possible.

Falling Up an Escalator

We have a patron down! Patron down!

 

A couple of years ago, I innocently visited Iowa for a cousin’s wedding and ended up in a bloody casino escapade.

Weddings are almost always among the most fun events to attend, especially big ones. My Iowa relatives truly went all out to make sure everyone had a great time. It was a monstrous event with a cathedral style assembly hall filled with hundreds of people. I let them know my appreciation by periodically bellowing “IOWA!” as loud as my lungs would permit. The groom’s friends, being the youngsters they are, put on a good show and even had me playing the drinking game with a dangerous punch: Flip Cup. Ahh…good times.

It had been years since I visited Iowa. Life out there has a slightly different pace to it; everything is about a half hour drivem through endless corn fields, and every breath delivers the faint hint of cow manure.

In Iowa, there seems to be a universal bonfire that you eventually discover at some point in the night. After the rehearsal dinner, I was heavily plied with alcohol when we ended up there, and somebody mentioned a casino located in nearby Des Moines. My card playing cousin was miraculously sober, so off we went.

It turns out that this beautiful country is literally infested with places to gamble; God, I love America!

Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino doesn’t have the opulence of Vegas or the beach of Atlantic City, but it has the only thing that matters: action. Drunk as I was, I deftly sniffed out the poker room on the top floor and was saddened to discover an hour long waiting list for the tiny room. Dejected, I returned to find my cousin parked at a roulette table with a stack of chips.

Now, I know I was severely intoxicated because I actually decided to pass the time by playing a few spins of the wheel (by the way, if you ever catch me playing roulette, I freely invite you to give me a good healthy smack in the face). However, I hit a lucky streak that night and my patented “IOWA!” cheers reverberated around the casino. I was making such a scene that people started yelling back “CAROLINA!" One woman, playing blackjack at a neighboring table, even had me placing bets for her. What can I say? Stupidity is infectious.

The hour passed rather quickly; in no time I was racking my chips and heading upstairs to claim my seat in the poker room. The difficulty arrived when I tried to utilize the escalator; in my state of intoxication, operating the device was surprisingly challenging.

My sandal refused to obey my commands and tripped on the first step; I fell hard on the sharp metal, and my chips scattered about in the chaos. Stunned at the sudden turn of events, I desperately tried to scoop them up, fearing they would be lost in the teeth of the machine as it approached the top. In the final panicked moments of the ride, I scooped up the last one and rolled forward off the final step.

Dazed, and trying to figure out what just happened, I looked up to a security guard speaking hastily into his radio:

“We have a patron down! Patron down!”

In the moments it took to force myself back to my feet, two more guards had come running. Despite the long scrapes, and blood trickling from my leg, I insisted I was fine and tried to slip around them as I counted my money. I was half sure they would try to kick me out, right then and there, through door, or even window.

When I miraculously escaped to the poker room and located my seat, I noticed all the players eyeing me with more suspicion than is typical when at a new game. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a security guard motioning me out of the room. “Damn,” I thought to myself, but it turned out, that unknown to me, I was bleeding rather profusely from the chin, no doubt aided by the alcohol in my bloodstream.

After being bandaged, I returned to play some cards.

I’m sure the players were licking their lips to get their piece of this new arrival reeking of booze, but I had to disappoint them and showed I could actually play, even in my condition. I hit a couple of sets and ended up making a few bucks.

I’m not sure why, but the casino has a no profanity rule that my drunken attention span couldn’t seem to grasp; my foul mouth violated it worse than a hotel heiress in The City of Lights. It all goes to show how far a casino will go to keep an inebriated patron inside…as long as he is gambling.

Monkey Gambling

A few years ago, I met someone that swore she was “good at roulette.” When I asked what she meant, she (surprise!) couldn’t explain her special skill. Roulette can be a nice adrenaline rush as that little white ball dink…dink…dinks its way to a home, but it requires about as much skill to play as falling down the stairs (as well as some of the worst odds in the casino). The only way to beat the game involves cheating with a loaded ball, rigged wheel, or past posting. A large statistical analysis to determine biases in certain wheels is the only way to do it without cheating. Can knowing which bet on a roulette table offers the least house edge be considered a skill? If so, then the best roulette player in the world is the one that never plays. It short, there is no strategy in the game, hence, no skill. If you can work gravity, then you can play roulette about as well as anyone else.

“Monkey gambling” is a term which refers to games that have no strategy or skill component to them; a monkey has as good a chance of victory as the best player in the world. Even the basic physical mechanics of a game like roulette could be easily mastered by our hirsute cousins; pick up chip, move arm forward, and drop chip: done. A monkey could literally play the game as well as Stephen Hawking. The purest form of “monkey gambling” in a casino is the slot machine. Even pulling a handle is too much brain activity for slots players, so most machines now offer buttons for the convenience of their zombified patrons.

“Computer gambling” is at the opposite end of the spectrum from monkey gambling. This term refers to games that offer choices during play, and therefore contain elements of genuine strategy, but only one correct move. Blackjack is a computer gambling game because at any given time, there is only one best move. Given the composition of cards in the discard rack, slight variations from basic strategy are made to determine whether standing, hitting, splitting, doubling, or even insurance (a bad idea nearly 100% of the time) is the best play. The best blackjack player in the world could only be as good as a computer.

Poker is neither monkey nor computer gambling, although I’ve seen players who try each style. A couple years ago, animal trainers tried to enter a monkey in the World Series of Poker (see above). They took their chimp on television to demonstrate how it could really play poker; even though it could lift the cards and move the chips, it could not protect its hand, avoid string betting, or determine the strength of its cards. While any player at the monkey’s table would certainly beat the beast, organizers rightly refused to let the handlers enter the animal in the event. On the flipside, top computer designers have built machines good enough at poker to beat most amateur players. However, when pitted against professional poker players, the most sophisticated poker machine in the world still loses to the power of human imagination.

Top poker pro, Eric Seidel, captures this majestical element of the poker:

Imagination is at the heart of the game. Just as there is no right way to write a song or paint a picture, there is no right way to play poker. The best players are experimenting and adjusting all the time. The beauty of the game lies in this ever-shifting landscape, and it keeps us interested each time we sit down.

Now I’d like to see a computer, or even a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, come up with that.