NTKOG #81: The kind of grizzled pawn of lady luck who slumps over the blackjack table, chain smoking while growling “hit me” through the tube of her oxygen tank.
I am: the product of ten years in the Las Vegas suburbs. Therefore…
I am not: a gambler. At all. I’ve played penny slots for free drinks once in a while, but never sat at a table.
The Scene: Sunset Station, a super-ghetto locals casino in Henderson, along with Brain Doc.
With Brain Doc’s encouragement, took $40 out of the ATM — with an absurd $4 surcharge, god bless America — and sat at a Double Blackjack table.
After a brain-scrambling lecture about pushing and buyback busts, promptly left a Double Blackjack table.
To recharge the ol’ synapses, stopped at a roulette table to put $5 on red for sandyb (holla, girl!). Fun fact about roulette: it’s exactly — but exactly — like dropping cash in the toilet, pulling the handle and watching it spin around. Same result too. (Sorry, Sandy.)
Against all of our misgivings, Brain Doc and I filled the last two seats at a normal blackjack table, crowded with a chain-smoking Chinese woman whose mouth was swallowed by a faceful of wrinkles, a gnarled old trucker, and a twitchy-eyed twenty something who kept muttering he’d been at the table for four and a half hours. A five-dollar table. High rollers, guys.
I bought two $5 chips and put on in the little circle. Dealer smacked me 13. Bad feng shui: I was sitting to the dealer’s left, and she glared me down while I shook like a chihuahua.
“Uhhhh, hit me? Can I say hit me? Do I say that?” The dealer just shook her head.
“You do it like this,” High Roller said, scratching his finger across the felt in a
come hither gesture. So I come-hithered a seven, stopped at 20 and — dude, what?! Five bucks for nothing?! Gorgeous.
Next hand was much the same: hit-me gesture; eighteen; dealer busted with an embarrassing 26. Another five bucks! I was starting to feel sorry for the big mean casino!
Third hand threw me for a loop, though. Nine and a five. I started to come-hither a little more free money from the universe, when Gnarled Trucker stirred for the first time: “Stay. You don’t need to go bust. Let the dealer go bust.” Clearly the dude was a tobacco-reeking angel sent from heaven: dealer just barely busted at 22, giving me a hat trick.
Quick mental math: even including my roulette failure and the absurd $4 ATM fee (unless your name is Andrew Jackson, when you gamble with the banks, you always lose), I was still up $6! Beating the friggin’ odds!
Money for nothing just barely beats out cigarette vending machines for reasons my hometown makes me PROUD TO BE AMURRKUN.
Even though I don’t know when to hit ’em, I do know when to fold ’em. Asked the cashier to magically transform my chips into money (yes, I phrased it exactly that way; yes, she looked at me like I was drunk), and used my ill-gotten gains to buy Brain Doc and me vending machine socks for bowling. Where, for the first time all day, I was a total loser.
The Verdict: All those very special episodes of 90210 were for naught! I now know that gambling is when you sit at a table and someone gives you free money! Can you smell a 12-step program in my future?!
Seriously, though, this was fun for novelty, but I doubt I’d ever do it again. Playing penny slots for free drinks is the only way to win in Vegas.
Not That Kind of Girl 