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- Jon Rea, on our take for the evening. Ammo strictly defined as "M&M's." |
 The Wizards Of Odds • Most of you reading this are well aware I'm a gambler. I can't remember the date I first saw that ad for Sportingbet on the Boston Globe website, but suffice to say since then my perspective on wagering has changed. I've learned a few things: • Never bet on basketball. • The Giants really couldn't beat the Ravens. and of course, • The only way to completely ensure a team will lose is to bet on them to win. However I don't really think I was a complete gambler, I don't think my devolution to hell was complete, until I set foot into a casino. My 21st birthday fell in my extended non-betting lull of 2001, so it didn't happen then. I wasn't home when my parents got sucked to Mohegan Sun, but even if I had been, gambling with one's parents is right up there with drinking with one's parents - if you have to, do it in moderation. So my first time happened in Spain, with my eyes all starry from being abroad. Same as this BU student, come to think of it. Note To Self: Tell everyone who's slung shit for gambling to lick me. Casino Taoro is not as impressive as its exterior would have you believe. Though it's in a four-story building, the only part held by the casino is the top floor. The views are impressive - out the back you see up the mountain, and out the front you see down to the sea. There's quite the decent bar... it dominates the whole left side with tables for eating and red-coated servers for serving. Before I gambled, I had a delightful Coke and some delightful water, but that came later. I'd put 100 Euros in my pocket when I left Casablanca, and had every intention of cashing that much upon entry. I don't remember why exactly, but I dropped it to 50 when I was at the counter. Maybe it was the wiseness seeping back in my brain - it turned out it wouldn't have mattered, but it would have been nice to been holding two beautiful royal blue chips instead of one. If it had made fiscal sense, I would have brought one of these chips home. The outer ring was a specific color for each dollar value - the light blue 10's and red 5's were the ones we got most familiar with. A sparkling ring surrounded the inner circle, which had the logo of the Tenerife casinos and which one you were at on it. Since they're looking to make you think you're not betting real money, they did a damn good job. As casinos go, you options are limited at Taoro. Up front are four Roulette tables, with minimums of either 2.50 or 5. After them is a blackjack table and a Caribbean Poker table, neither of which I ever considered sitting at. The back is filled with slots, which unfortunately, were all in Spanish. Nevertheless, not wanting to spend my chip led me to put 5 Euros into the slots with little success. I think I only put one coin in an actual one-armed bandit - it got real boring real fast, and I think I won something once, but fed it in as credit and lost it again. The rest of the five I blew on a Keno machine. Keno, if memory serves me, is the first actual gambling I ever did outside of scratch tickets, and if I recall I won. I also played Keno on my 21st, but there was some sob story of "if I'd only played these numbers on the next game..." that made it worth forgetting. The only place I could have won anything was on the video poker machines, hindsight tells me. Todd and Michelle made a killing on there by hitting one four-of-a-kind, which put them up for the night. -- And I did. I changed the 50 Euros for five 10's. I've played roulette online before, and it just never did much for me. Logic tells me there are better games to be playing than 0-36 pick a number, but something keeps drawing me back to it. It's probably because it's easy - craps is mostly still over my head, blackjack seems too simple and hard to win, and poker... I don't like poker. Too much potential for disaster. No matter how unscientific this seems, roulette is little more than a game of streaks. If you've got a lot of chips, you can attack it differently by covering the board and just building it up slow. But if you're starting with 50 Euro in your pocket, you have to get a run going early and build on it. You get in a groove, and you don't even look at the board - you just go with your gut. I, using my own verbiage, got in a groove. First bet was 10 Euro on black, against Jon Rea betting red. I won, which set a precedent that ran the rest of the night. It didn't even matter if we were both betting... if I was even standing at the table, he lost. It was uncanny. Almost as uncanny as what followed the win against Rea. Winning the first bet was nice. The second was nicer. The third was amazing. The fifth brought a dealer change. The seventh defied logic. I remember being relieved when I lost the 8th because I was starting to fear I was God. The 8th bet was a 10 Euro bet on black bumped to 30. Had I won it, I probably would have done something foolish, because I might have actually started believing I was above the odds. And I don't need that. Letting me win seven in a row to start was among the smartest things the world's casinos could have done, because they've got me hooked. The feeling one has pulling chips off the table, the feeling when you walk away with oodles more chips than you started with... it's incredible. The look on Meg's face when I pulled sixteen chips out of my pocket... hell, I'd had nineteen in my pocket five minutes before. Baffled, shellshocked... and imploring me to stop with my 105 Euro profits. I didn't really stop, but I may as well have. Going back, I won one more 10 Euro bet, then lost it again when trying to help Bethany. She ended up being the night's only loser, dropping 30 Euro playing blackjack, slots and roulette. All in all, it was an incredible night. Jon battled while I was away, and ended up also winning 105 Euro. Todd and Michelle made 30. Meg won 10, having not intended to gamble when the night began. The things we saw were comic. Every casino has the old women and the slot machines, the young one in the ugly silver ball cap. We had them, plus the old guy and the young Asian, running between tables, dropping 50s at will. Damn bastards kept winning too. But for me, all the envy would have been forgotten if I'd won that last bet. As Rea was teaching Todd how to play roulette, I kept jingling my chips in my pocket. I didn't want to lose anything else, but I had a premonition. Bet the four block of 26, 27, 29 and 30. No clue why, I just did. I was up 110 on the roulette tables, but because of the 5 Euro sunk in the back, I was 105 for the night. 100 is one of those plateau numbers for me - once I get over it, I don't want to fall under it again. I didn't want to bet a 10 on this, and by the time I made my decision, the wheel had started turning and I couldn't get change. You see where this one's going... right to 26. Eh, can't win 'em all. Now, I know I'll inevitably give it all back on a later casino trip. But really, who cares. For one night, I was my own king of the Canaries, and drinking Bailey's and Diet Coke seemed as good an idea as any. | ||
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AOL IM: JonCoochBU |
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