Posts Tagged ‘slot machines’
Casino – You Aint Dead Til Your Ass Is Cold
When I first got a seat on the casino roller coaster in 1950, I was still wet behind my ears. Sure, I read John Scarne's big book on casino gambling and listened attentively at Lyle Stuart's knee. However, my on-the-job training came in the casinos themselves. As much as Scarne and Stuart taught me, wagering at real tables and playing real slot machines gave me an entirely new dimension of understanding.
I never took much money along—I didn't have that much disposable cash to begin with—so my early forays, though mostly losers, weren't financially crushing. On my very first trip in 1960 I mainly stuck to the slot machines,- blackjack was an exotic, slightly intimidating experience that I approached cautiously—and only at the $2 tables. I didn't dare venture over to the $5 tables.
When I started to get a handle on the casino swing of things, I became emboldened to do foolhardy things that I wouldn't dare do today. I won money fast and I lost money fast. With these wild fluctuations in my bankroll, the only thing that kept me out of bankruptcy court was my iron-clad resolution to never—but never— play with scared money and never—but never—take credit. My last resolution was sometimes sorely tested when I was in Vegas with Lyle. Tagging along with the legendary High Roller, I was offered financial courtesies that I never would have been offered if 1 was by myself. Being with Stuart I was offered instant, on-the-spot credit, just on Lyle's say-so. Prudently, I always passed on these golden opportunities, though having a sudden influx of easy, heavy seed money right at the tables was always tantalizingly tempting.
While my point here is to discourage betting with borrowed money, 1 can't resist relating one exception. A friend of mine once told me about his uncle who worked as a teller in a bank in the days before computers and the proliferation of casinos. A horse-racing addict who fancied himself an ace handicapper, the teller would dip into the till on Fridays when the nags were running, and first thing Monday mornings would quietly return the "borrowed" money. My friend said his uncle retired a wealthy man, never having once been detected in his bank-financed racetrack escapades.
My stubborn refusal of credit was always my saving grace. When I lost, I lost what 1 could afford, period. Once my seed money was swept away on wagers I didn't win, that was it. I was tapped out, tapioca, as Manhattan saloonkeeper Toots Shor put it. If I had time to kill till the next bus left, I only played the slot machines—usually the nickel ones—till departure time.
Once, just once, at Atlantic City's Park Place, I was just about tapped out and so I invested my last $10 in seed money in a roll of quarters. I idly played a 25-cent slot machine, nursing the pile of quarters for quite a while, with a spate of small wins. Suddenly, like the phoenix, I arose from the ashes and hit a $750 jackpot!
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Tags: casino, slot machines
