May 21
It really is ridiculous how much gambling has been going on lately. I went down to Harrahs on wednesday night with Brett where I lost $200 in a spectacular fashion. Then I went back again on Thursday night with my roommate and won $350. Now it is friday and I am going to Arlington racetrack in about 2 hours to go bet on the horses. That should last until about 7pm at wich point I will drive home and play in a poker game that starts at 8. When you think about it, that is a whole lot of gambling to cram into three days. And this is pretty much just a standard week for me. Someone should call a hotline, I think I have a problem.
Last night's poker game was pretty awesome. My roommate Lukas and I went down to Harrahs in East Chicago (which it turns out is actually the best and damn near only poker room anywhere near Chicago). I'm not going to lie to you, I was really tired before we even left. Also important to note is that I hadn't eaten any kind of dinner whatsoever. The plan was to go to an atm and then stop someplace to get food before heading towards the city. Well, someplace between the atm and the city I forgot that I was actually dying of hunger and skipped the eating part of the plan. Blinding hunger coupled with severe fatigue makes for a dangerous driver. And an even more dangerous poker player. I sat down at the card table and won the very first hand that I was dealt. I never dropped below my starting stake after that. It was actually somewhat ridiculous. I fairly quickly went up about 200. But then due to me being a dumbass I lost 100 dollars over the course of about 2 hands. I don't think I have ever been so upset to only be up $100 in my life. I was winning, but dammit! I should have been winning more. Things ended up better though. After 4 hours I was up about $450. I had 11 stacks of chips setup somewhat elegantly in front of me. It became even more elegant when I thought about how each stack was worth 50 dollars. (There are a lot of numbers in this journal entry, try to stay with me). At that point I tried to stand up. The problem, however, was that I couldn't possibly carry all my chips without getting a rack to keep them in. During the ten minutes that I looked for a rack I lost 100 dollars. I don't get it. I wanted to leave. I even stood up. But they kept dealing me cards and so I just kept giving away my money. Why couldn't I just stand up and leave while I was ahead? Such things aren't meant to be understood.
In another brilliant move inspired by too much thinking, I discovered another reason why my new car is so awesome. Barreling down I-94 towards Indiana Lukas and I dropped into a conversation about a game called 3 card poker. You see, at some tables in Harrahs they play a combination of blackjack and 3 card poker. It is pretty much standard BJ except that you can also bet on getting a poker hand. Between your two cards and the dealers up card if you get a flush, straight, or three of a kind your side bet gets paid off at 9-1 odds. Instinctively I avoid this side bet at all costs. I figure that if the casino is offering me that game, then it must be to my disadvantage. That is, if they pay me 9-1 for my money, the odds of winning are suspiciously worse than 9-1. It turns out that I'm right, but Lukas and I wanted to know what the true odds were. Him being an actuary-in-training and me being inherently terrific at probability, we immediately broke it down. After a solid 5 minutes of heated debate and mental math we decided that no matter how smartly I played that bet I would get man-raped by the casino every single time. High fives to us. The sad part of this mental adventure is that, being only able to concentrate on one thing at a time, I missed the exit to the skyway. Not so good. But not to worry. It turns out that the gps system that came in my new car is actually pretty useful. Within a few moments lukas had found a new route and we took the previously unused 87th street off ramp. Not in a hundred years would I have chosen that exit, but it turned out that 87th street is the absolute last exit you can take and still make it onto the skyway without turning around. Big ups to whoever invented GPS. And big ups to everybody.