Blackjack

When I was first learning to play blackjack and hanging out at Casino Windsor paying 7$ for cans of Molson Canadian I picked up on something. The best people to sit next to at the Blackjack table are the old timers. The type of guys who know there way around the game and can shell out some advice that only 50 years of playing can earn. Although I haven't needed the advice on how to play my hands in quite some time, I still value the way generational gaps can disappear at the table.

A few months back I got talking with a man who looked to be in his mid eighties. He had that aura of a man who had lived quite the life. He had given his kids and grand-kids enough money to keep them at the slots long enough to leave him alone at the blackjack table. He started telling me about his life and I soon lost the count. But I found this guy to be more interesting than any 2% player edge. He told me of how he was stationed as a Marine at the base where I now work. About how during those times it was just an ammunition pier with 50 Marines and a few civilians. About how he met his wife at a dance at the gymnasium on a cold October night. About how he became the post master of a small town where everyone knew his name. Sure, it was like a poor man's Forrest Gump but I found it endlessly fascinating.

I was back at the casino this past Sunday night. As rounders so eloquently put it "Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy... the outstanding tough beats of his career."

I'm sitting at close to a 3.5 count index. I had been playing for 4 hours and that was the best count I had seen all night. I had spent all night waiting for moments to strike, only to get beat by dealer 21's and the guy next to me not splitting his 8's against a dealer 6. I would slowly grind back up on minimum bets only to drop an hours worth of work on the variance of the game. But it was getting late and I had work the next day. I had an opportunity to get back close to even including the $10 I had lost on the Chargers not covering the spread against the Bengals. The cards came out; Ace, Nine, King, Jack, and then to me a Three. Everyone easily got 20's and 19's, but my second card was an eight and the dealer had a five up. This deck is mostly face cards and I have a 11 against a dealer five. I reached into my wallet to pulled out the cash to double down and the dealer gives me a whopping 3. Leaving me with an astounding 14. But the dealer still has a bust card and with this count, anything but a bust would be rare. His under card is a 10 leaving him sitting at 15 just like he should. But his next card is another five. It was a kick in the balls. I drove home in the rain knowing that I played it perfectly but the cards didn't have the same intentions that I did.

But that's not what I wanted to blog about. I wanted to blog about the guy who I was sitting next to for about 40 minutes of the night. Guy looked to be about 65, white with a mop of dirty hair that sat under a well worn hat. He was quite the character. Everyone else at the table seemed put off by him, but I really enjoyed him. He was chain smoking cigarettes and kept ordering straight shots of tequila and whiskey. But the cocktail waitress couldn't understand him as he was nearly unintelligible so I tried to interpret. No matter what he would get he would declare "Whiskey smells funny" before pounding the shot. He didn't keep his chips in neat stacks like everyone else but rather in a big mixed-up pile. After a couple more shot he started rambling about how he was going to sleep in his van that was in the parking lot. Then he started prodding the dealer about it. "I'm gonna sleep in yours [sic] parking lot whadda think about that!" I asked him about it and he started angrily mumbling about the "best damn biscuts n' gravy". Everyone kept looking at me trying to get me to stop talking to him, but I found it too amusing. Eventually he got up and announced to no one in particular "IM GOING TO SLEEP IN MY VAN" and then stumbled out.