Amazing Gambling Story
If you are a true degenerate, than you are definitely familiar with the concept of “burning out” when it comes to gambling. We’ve all been there before, but for some of us the experiences are much more eye opening than for others. This is a tale about a time where wagered amounts that were way beyond what anyone would consider an “acceptable” gambling budget based on the amount of money I had at the time. Nevertheless, I will begin by telling you that sometimes you are just forced to go to a casino because that’s where your friends just so happen to be meeting up.
It all started one Summer day when I was invited to see some old college friends I hadn’t seen for a long time that just so happened to be meeting at my local casino. Being someone who definitely loves gambling, that seemed like the place for me to spend my evening. I will never forget how crowded that place was that evening. I had never seen anything like it. After driving around for about 45 minutes trying to find a parking space (which is absolutely insane given the location I was at as parking was usually always available), I had finally caved and decided to wait in line for the valet. I sit and wait, 15 minutes….i’m still way behind a lot of other people to get their car parked. Shit. I’m getting texts asking me where the fuck I am and i’m responding by telling them that i’m still fucking waiting. For another 30 minutes I sat in the purgatory of waiting for the casino’s valet to take my car so that I could go inside and slam the five crisp $100 bills I had just gotten out of the ATM (went to my banks ATM ahead of time to avoid the ridiculous fee the casino charges in house) on the blackjack table and immediately do what I always do – set out 2 $25 spots and a $1 dealer bet on each hand, as well as my one and only attempt at the lucky ladies bonus which was a $5 chip and a $1 dealer bet on the bonus spot. Consider it my degenerate ritual when it comes to playing blackjack.
I finally get inside and meet up with my friends and by this time I am so fucking eager to get my gamble on that I don’t even fuck around – I head straight to the blackjack table like a fucking scout on a mission, taking charge of the entire group of people I was with and ensuring them that I was going to play a few fucking hands of blackjack. I walk around and cannot find a fucking open table anywhere to save my life. At that time I was reminded by one of my friends that since I usually always bet >= $25 anyway at the blackjack table (but usually sit at a table with a $1-5 minimum bet as that’s what a lot of my friends would play), that we should go and see if there’s any space in the high limit area, where the minimum wager for blackjack was $25 per hand.
I reluctantly agreed to go into the high limit room — the last time I had gone in there I was completely obliterated, but it was a different game (baccarat).
I walked inside, put my $500 on the table and was given a stack of 20 $25 green chips. It’s go time. I realize I can’t play two spots now because that would put me at a $50 bet requirement for each hand, and thus 25% of my bankroll would be required to play my initial strategy. Being a bastard for superstition, however, I needed to play two spots and I needed to place my lucky ladies bets and dealer bets. I awkwardly exchanged for white chips and put down 2 $50 wagers, $5 on each sucker bet, $1 on each hand for the dealer, and $1 on each bonus bet for the dealer (that way if i hit one of them, the dealer would get taken care of, because I always like to take care of my dealer). I’ll never forget the hands I was dealt for that first set of hands at the table that night.
I got a Queen of Hearts on the first hand as the first card dealt, and then an Ace on the second hand. Afterwards i’m dealt a Queen of DIAMONDS to make a 20 on the first hand (queen of diamonds looks a lot like the queen of hearts at first glance, which is a potential jackpot on the bonus I was placing a $5 wager on that could pay out up to 1000:1 if the dealer also had a blackjack) and remember laughing at the diamond because i knew it was just too good to be real. The second hand was a 10 to complete my blackjack on the 2nd $50 hand. The dealer showed the nasty Jack of Spades as the up card. I was happy about hitting a $20 payoff on the lucky ladies bonus, and was happy the dealer was able to tip himself $5 for the win. However, I had also lost $6 on the other hand that I was dealt a blackjack on which took a large chunk out of the overall first win. Nevertheless, I was confident as all fucking hell — I was dealt a fucking 20 and a goddamn blackjack. If this stupid dealer had anything it would be another face card or 10 underneath to give me at least a 1.5x win on 2 of my hands, which i would rack up as a win all day long. There was a very high chance I was about to win both my spots, as well as hit the bonus I wanted to. I thought the night was about to get lit. It wasn’t.
The most nasty piece of technology ever invented was that fucking thing that the dealer can use to peek at their undercard to see if they have a blackjack when they are dealt either a card equaling 10 or an Ace. When the dealer has an ace, a thing called insurance is usually offered as a sucker bet (which i NEVER take, but that’s a topic for another day), AND if you have a blackjack as your hand (or one of your hands), you are allowed to choose between being paid out with even money (before the dealer checks for a blackjack on the undercard using that fucking peekaboo contraption), or risking a push (no payout, but no loss if the dealer had a blackjack) for the chance at getting a 1.5x payout ($75). Well, the dealer was showing a 10 in this instance, not an ace. When the dealer has a 10 showing as their up card, and an Ace underneath – you do not have the option to taking the insurance sucker bet, nor having the option at selecting a payout in “even money” if you have a blackjack yourself during this hand. The best possible outcome if the dealer has a blackjack with a card having a value of 10 as their up card and an Ace underneath is a push (if you also have a blackjack yourself). Well, guess what? I’ll give you one chance to take a guess at what the dealer hand underneath that fucking Jack of Spades. One shot. Go.
The dealer had a mother fucking Ace. GOD DAMNIT.
I don’t even get to tell the dealer I want to stand. I lose my first $50 hand out of the two outright, and the blackjack I got is a fucking push. GAAAAAH. Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME? No problem, this is high limit. We gotta contain ourselves. We aren’t down that much yet. We can win it right back. Put out two more $50 hands because i’m triggered. Lose both of them with garbage. Rinse and repeat this cycle one more time and i’m fucking done with blackjack. I have about $240ish left from what I came in with and that fucking bitch is going on red.
I walk up to the roulette table, throw down the $240 in cash on red and say “Can I place a cash bet here or do i need to exchange for chips” – the dealer makes me exchange for chips and I place them on red and wait for all of the other people around me to complete their fucking bets that are on their numbers and other superstitious bullshit. I just wanted the croupier to spin the fucking ball so I was ready to see that fucking bitch land on a red number and me be back up close to where I started for the night. Needless to say during this whole time not even 45 minutes had elapsed from the time I had entered into the casino to the time where I was trigger betting — not a good sign in retrospect. The croupier finally spins the fucking ball — fucking 0. Great, not even the dickhead who bet on black gets paid out, nobody even had a bet on that fucking trash number. The fucking mean brutal trauma of the casino’s edge in the game of roulette finally overcame me. I wasn’t done yet though — I was on a mission. I was going to get at least one good fucking hand or game or SOMETHING for that night. It was time to go to the local Automated Teller Machine (ATM) and fucking withdraw another $500.
Now here’s the thing — I had decided to place a $1000 limit on my ATM withdrawals a long time ago as I didn’t want to end up blowing it all in a casino on a rage gambling spree. One thing I learned this evening was that a gambler who is pissed off enough and not able to get control of himself (i.e. is drunk out of his mind) will find any means necessary to access the funds that they have blocked themselves from accessing before or find another means to get them. This was one of those evenings. I hit up the ATM, withdrew $500 more. I wasn’t gonna have any more of this fucking bullshit — It was time for baccarat, and it was going ALL i repeat ALL on the player. That’s right — I felt as though me being the player in the casino meant it was destiny. If I was able to win this $500 bet I would be back where I started and could reevaluate my thoughts of going back into the lower limit area where most of my friends were and gambling with them for the rest of the evening. I was pissed. I was ready to just go and take that $500 and shove it on the player.
5 mental responses that get you rekt
So that’s exactly what I did. I’ll keep it short for you — the player was dealt a 10-10 (totaling 0), but the banker was also dealt a 10-10 (thus also totalling 0) meaning the final score of the game was down to the last card dealt for both the player and the banker. Player was dealt an 8. I was fucking ecstatic. “YES!” I cheered at the top of my lungs, knowing that 8 was a fucking god damn hard as fuck hand to beat for the banker. However, there was still one card that could come back to bite me in my asshole. That card, of course, was any card that was a “9” — and as i’m sure you’re probably already very aware by now the banker did in fact get a mother fucking 9 on the 3rd card.
FUCK. GOD. FUCKING DAMNIT. FUCK. Are you kidding me dude?
This had been the biggest night by far of bad beats I had ever experienced in the casino. This was insanity. I tried to think of other ways to access my funds as I didn’t want to have to wait for business hours the next day (and it was a Saturday if i recall so I would’ve had to go into my bank in person to access funds), and then a fucking golden fucking idea fairy popped into my head — I had remembered seeing a thing called an “ECOATM” at a local grocery store nearby that would buy and sell a phone (only if you were the owner and had paid for it in full). Well – I just so happened to get the mother fucking brilliant idea that I could take my iPhone 7 that I had just paid off in full, a sum of over $800 at the time to extract more money to feed my gambling rage of the evening. I got an uber down to the local grocery store (fucking pathetic, right?) and after fucking with the shitty interface that this garbage kiosk had I was finally able to get an offer for my phone — the kiosk was willing to pay me $320 for my effectively brand new iPhone 7 that had a larger amount of memory than a stock one (it was a special addon that i ordered and waited for over a month to get delivery on). I was pissed. I thought they’d at least give me 50% of the face value to feed my dopamine induced rage.
so I was finally fed up and decided “Fuck it, i’m going to sell my phone to this shit terminal and go back, shove all of this on fucking black and then shove it again” – I spent about another 20 minutes waiting for this kiosk to shit out $320 in 32 distinctly crisp 10 dollar bills (with the exception of the last one it spit out, which was a ragged piece of garbage, i’ll never forget how the money looked when it came out of that phone vending machine) and once that was in my hand I very quickly and hastily requested another uber ride back to the casino. There goes $25 in rides. Awesome, we paid $25 in uber rides to sell a phone we paid $850 for less than 2 weeks ago for $320 just because we are impatient and pissed off. I thought to myself depressingly “This is fucking beyond stupid, but fuck it.” during the entire 8 minute drive to the casino. Once I was dropped off i disgustingly walked into the place and went straight to the roulette table like a man on a fucking mission. I wouldn’t even have covered what I paid for my phone if this $320 bet on black hit, as that would only total $640 out of the $850 I paid, effectively meaning I would still be down $210 additional dollars in retrospect.
The ball spins – 13 black. 12 green chips and 4 red chips are slid onto my bet. Nice. I think to myself, “maybe my luck has changed, lets bet on some numbers this next round instead and make a joke that we aren’t gonna hit shit”. – I was wearing some brand new Air Jordan shoes at the time and they had the number “23” on them in a lot of different places. I remember this vividly because I looked for anything that would give me a “sign” as to which number I should bet on for the next spin of the wheel (i only wanted to go really big on one number, and place smaller bets on a few others to cover just in case, degen gambler logic, I know) and remember seeing the 23 on my shoes as the only signal I needed. I had $640 in chips so I decided to just fucking put $40 straight up on 23. I jokingly say “Now, I KNOW i’m not going to hit this, so you go ahead and spin the ball and i’m a just fucking walk the fuck away” and the pit boss and croupier both kinda chuckle and I wait for them to spin the ball. The ball starts to spin — and at this point I show them I wasn’t kidding, I had no reliance on the number 23 getting hit whatsoever. It was NOT going to happen, it just wasn’t. I was just about to walk out the casino’s doors to get some fresh air and contemplate the horrible decision i had just made to sell my brand new phone to a fucking pawn shop vending machine basically for a ridiculous price and re-evaluate what the next best move was. Right as I started to push the door open to go outside I hear a loud scream of “HEY, WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! COME BACKKKK!” — i look back and see the video display that accompanies most modern roulette wheels showing the number “23 – Red” pop up on the screen as the last spin result. I damn near done shit myself.
The payout for that was $1400. This was enough to put me at a $2000 balance for the night — making me effectively ~ $150 up overall if you include the value of my phone and other horrible decisions I made that night. I had a friend take me to their house so I could crash on their crib and sober up. The next morning I reflected back on the whole experience and how fucking stupid it was, and was then greatful I was as lucky as I had been. It could’ve EASILY gotten much worse, and the moral of the story is that if you are ever finding yourself in a tilted position — you need to go home for the night. You need to not do stupid shit because you’re caught in the moment. And most importantly, what I consider the wisest bit of advice I could give to my fellow degenerates — do not EVER get drunk in a casino. You will do stupid fucking things.