Vegas Should Have a Warning Label
Here’s what drives me nuts about Las Vegas: even when you have an awful trip and get killed, you still can’t wait to go back. That’s how fun it is. I mean, even when you lose you and your friends still wind up talking about how fun it was and how you can’t wait to do it again. When you actually win and even win big? Forget it. You’ll be having serious discussions with your closest friends for the next several weeks hatching some grand scheme to move out there. You’ll be saying things like how, “it just makes sense to do it at this point in our lives while we’re still young and don’t have many responsibilities,” and, “if we don’t take this chance now, we might always wish we had when we’re older.”
It’s such a sick city like that because no matter what happens they’ve got you hooked and you’ll want to be coming back.
This trip was just disastrous in every way imaginable for me on the gambling front. I mean, we’re talking 99th percentile in terms of statistical “run bad”. I may never have a trip like this again from just a sheer “odds going against me” standpoint. I lost everything. I mean everything. Overpairs vs. underpairs in poker for a $5k NAPT seat. Got rivered. Doubling down on 11s, I musta been 0/14 on catching a Ten. Sports bets? Forget it. Anyone who had taken the other side of my sports calls and put triple their normal bet on it would be clinking together glasses of champagne on a yacht right now and having a hearty laugh with their friends off the coast of Monte Carlo. I mean it was that bad but of course I’ll still go back in a couple months.
On our last night there, we were at this place on the 58th floor of the Palms that is like a hybrid between a nightclub and a casino. They’ve got blackjack tables and a roulette wheel so if you want to gamble and skip all of the dancing and socializing, you can. After three nights straight of going out to fancy-shmancy places, all I really wanted to do was sit down at a blackjack table and leave the dancing to the new arrivals.
My friends were pretty much feeling the same way, so they joined in. One friend, I’ll call him Terry since I don’t know how he’d feel about his business being aired on the Internet for everyone to read, had won a ton of money playing slots of all things. I mean, everyone knows that there are plenty of sucker bets in Vegas, but slots are the sucker bets of the sucker bets. Even the three card poker players view the slot machine players as total suckers. But Terry likes to overlook this fact and sit down at the slots thereby making all of his friends uncomfortable since playing slots is a very chick thing to do. How does Terry do at the 15% house-edge slots? Kills them, of course. So while Greg (another fake name) and I are getting killed at things we’re good at (poker) and things that don’t have thaaat bad of a house edge (blackjack), Terry is absolutely mutilating the slot machines to the tune of a couple thousand.
And it’s not like he hit some big jackpot either. He was just spiking $100-$200 scores on the slots all day like that type of thing just happens normally.
So we’re up there and Greg and I are just getting killed. Absolutely killed. I finally catch a good card. I hit a 13 against a 10 and spike the perfect 8. Sweet! I am finally going to win a hand. Before the dealer showed their down-card, I said, “if I don’t win this one and somehow push, I’m done. I’m out of here.” Dealer’s down-card is a 2, draw card is, you guessed it… 9.
I grab my chips and leap up out my seat. “Nyet! I’m outta here. I’m going back downstairs. Screw this place.”
After I walk away, Greg tells Terry that he should play the next hand that I would have been dealt if I hadn’t left. He was like, “listen, I know you don’t like blackjack, but you’re basically the luckiest guy in the city right now. You need to put $100 on the next hand that Cory was going to be dealt. You’re a guaranteed winner.” Terry complies and of course gets a blackjack.
Near the very end of the night, we wind up at a blackjack table downstairs where there is this Asian male dealer. At this point, I was totally down to the felt. Whatever money I could lose on this trip was pretty much already gone. I had maybe a couple of bets left in me before it was time to take that long, painful walk to the elevator with nothing but your room key in your pocket.
At some point we learned that the Palms blackjack tables allow surrendering. If you don’t know what that means, don’t sweat it too much; it’s basically just a nice alternative to hitting or standing that can save you half your bet when you have a really bad hand.
So I get dealt a 16 against a 10 which is pretty much the worst statistical scenario you can find yourself in at a blackjack table. I motion to the guy that I want to surrender my bet. Now this is how cold I was running… I had already lost so much hand over fist that it had gone from being frustrating to just being funny. So I motion surrender and the dealer looks at me, swear to God, and says, “why?”
Pause… pause…
I look around in disbelief with my arms in the air and just say to him, “I dunno man!!…. CAUSE I SAID SO!! Since when is that not good enough?!” My friends and I just lose it. Even he started laughing. I mean… I was running so cold that I couldn’t even get the dealer to just do what I wanted him to without having him drag me over the coals about it! What makes it especially startling is that surrendering is what you should do in that situation from an optimal-strategy standpoint! I mean… really?!?! What do you mean, “why?” For one, because you’re supposed to, but more importantly, why on God’s green earth are you asking me? Just deal the card!!
The whole thing was a pretty good laugh. It truly did feel like something out of a movie where there was a moment where you couldn’t even believe what was happening. He turned out to be really cool and ironically reminded me that surrendering was an option when I was later put in the same 16 vs. 10 scenario on the biggest bet I made of the night (it’s easy to forget that surrendering is allowed since it usually almost never is). That was a moment I’ll never forget. I’ve played thousands and thousands of hands of blackjack before but never once has a dealer just looked at me and said, “why?” after I declared my decision.
Vegas is such a terrible place. Think about it… where else in the world can you visit, have the worst luck imaginable all trip, and on the flight home agree wholeheartedly when your friend says, “we should go back in April!”
Note: I didn’t really want to write much about poker in this entry since I already did so in an article on PokerTips.
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