Archive for June, 2009
I sadly surveyed the mob scene all around me and instantly, painfully decided to just write it off. Recovering the chip would have necessitated causing an uproar in the casino. They would have had to call in security guards to halt the moving mob of people and to clear the immense crowd in the aisle to make the space for me so I could look for my chip. Five hundred dollars is a lot of money for anyone to lose but, in this situation, it wasn't worth the grief. If I could go back and do it again, I'd make the same decision. My consolation was imagining the thrill someone in the casino experienced when he or she found my $500 chip. I hope it was some poor slob who never even found a $5 bill in his life.
My next move was to go back to the seat I had just vacated to try to win back the lost purple chip. And I did! But I lost it back gambling at the tables at the next casino.
Call it a fluke, a coincidence, or a freak occurrence, but here's what happened when 1 arrived in Las Vegas with a girl who had never been there before. She was eager to explore Circus Circus.
So there we were, strolling the sideshow exhibits, where we were amused by a cute little monkey attraction. I handed the little fellow in the cage a five-dollar token, whereupon he went into a cute little dance, and then handed me a card with a fortune. My fortune that day? "Go home. Today's not your lucky day."
We should have followed the monkey's sage advice and hightailed it out of town on the next plane. Not only did I lose my proverbial shirt on that ill-fated Vegas trip, but my pants and underwear went along too.
If you spend enough time in casinos you'll have your share of flukes and blunders. Some work in your favor, some don't. Chalk it up to casino adventure and take it all in stride.
In Atlantic City, Trump Plaza was another story. When the old bus terminal was still in operation, the closest casino was Trump Plaza. Every time my wife Stella and I went for a day at the seashore (we never stayed overnight) my standard-order-of-procedure was to meander over to the Boardwalk entrance of the Plaza. While Stella sunned herself on a bench outside, I'd make my initial foray inside, with a modest goal of winning a hundred dollars of "mad money" for her. Maybe it was my fresh enthusiasm in hitting the first casino of the day, or perhaps it was my mega-positive attitude, but damned if I didn't return to Stella on the Boardwalk most of the time with Donald Trump's money.
Sure, there were times The Donald nailed me, some of which I blame solely on myself.
Now pay attention while I teach you a lesson I learned the hard, expensive way. Never, but never gamble when you're in an ugly mood. If you are mad at somebody or something, in a temper tantrum or a blind rage, you're not in control of all your faculties. You risk doing damn foolish things at the tables, which I invariable did when I was in such an ugly mood.
If you're engulfed in some sour situation, do yourself a favor and go to the movies or take a long walk on the boardwalk, just steer clear of the table games! If there isn't a movie house close by, or it's too rainy to promenade on the boardwalk, then cut your losses by playing the nickel slot machine. Yes, Atlantic City casinos have nickel slots. I believe these were originally mandated by the Casino Control Commission to make sure that the Little People— the Low Rollers—can gamble and have a little fun there, too.
Let me tell you about one fiasco. In Atlantic City—coming off an ongoing argument that had started in our apartment and continued onto the bus and all the way up to Stella's Boardwalk bench in front of the Plaza—I charged into the casino in a murderous mood. Gambling with real money, I had a lethal combination that spells guaranteed financial disaster. This time it was really "mad" money, but the term took on an entirely different meaning. In my blind rage I literally pissed away more than $6,000 of my bankroll, a staggering loss that I couldn't overcome at the other casinos. Let me spell it out for you one more time: NEVER GAMBLE WHEN YOU'RE IN A BAD MOOD.
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The record for holding the dice goes to Stanley Fujitake from Hawaii, who in July, 1989 at Las Vegas' downtown California Club held the dice for an incredible three-hours-and-twelve minutes! By the time he sevened out the table had paid out almost a million dollars.
When "Mrs. Lucky" (she opted to remain anonymous) hit that long-overdue Megabucks World's Record jackpot of $27,582,539 on November 15, 1998 at Vegas' Palace Station Casino, she truly beat the slot machine odds in cards and spades. Only a paltry nickel out of every dollar fed into the machines is ever earmarked for the jackpot. That meant over half-a-billion dollars had to have been pumped into the Megabucks machines all across Nevada to have funded Mrs. Lucky's multi-million-dollar windfall. But that's not the end of the story. When you're lucky, you're just lucky. Only a month prior to her Megabucks win, Mrs. Lucky had hit a Wheel of Fortune slot machine jackpot for more than $680,000!
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Dr. Joseph Damato, a dentist from Newark, New Jersey, visited what was then the Grand in Atlantic City in 1992 to enter a blackjack tournament. Luck wasn't with him when he discovered that then, of all times, he had lost his glasses.
Afraid to enter the tournament because, as he put it, "I couldn't see the cards so well," he decided to wile away the afternoon by playing the Megabucks slot machine, the symbols of which were easier for him to see. And luck rebounded in a Megabucks blast as the dentist drilled into a $4,400,000 Megabucks jackpot.
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Flukes, blunders, and just plain dumb luck (as you know, I don't believe in "luck," but I'll take it if it happens) have enabled me to win and to lose through the years. The $400 in $100 bills that I found in an Atlantic City taxicab one Christmas week falls in the "easy-money-dumb-luck" category. Ditto for the $200 in $50 bills I found on the floor of a stall in a Caesars Palace men's room.
The Caesars windfall was just a bunch of bills folded in half, the cab jackpot was in a small Christmas money envelope along with a card: "For Tony. Good luck from Al." If it wasn't for bad luck, Tony wouldn't have any luck at all, poor Tony lost Al's bonus money in Atlantic City before he even put his toe in a casino.
Then there was the time at a $25 table when I inadvertently won an extra $475 on a hand. I carelessly buried a $500 chip under a lowly $25 chip,- I meant it only as a $50 bet. The dealer, asleep at the switch, should have noted "purple action" to alert the pit boss that money played. I won the hand and happily learned at the payoff that I had more riding on the wager than 1 had intended.
But, alas, 1 lost the $475 back, on another day, plus an extra $25. It was on a chaotic Fourth of July at the Trump Plaza. The joint was jumping, with the aisles as packed with people as the Times Square subway station is at rush hour. Having won a tidy sum, I arose from the blackjack table with my hands piled high with chips of all kinds. I neglected to call "color in" and change my smaller-denomination chips before backing into the surging crowds. You can guess what happened next. Overloaded, I was jostled by some goon, which caused me to drop a chip under the feet of the mass of moving mankind. A purple chip, no less—worth $500!
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