Yes, I'm Protesting Math

When I now go to a casino, I have no worries about dumping money betting the table min while playing craps. However it wasn’t always like this. While booking a weekend at a local casino this weekend, some memories popped into my head of when I frist started to go with my friends.

It all started at the end of our senior years in high school. Turning Stone Casino which is about 90 minutes away from Rochester is an 18+ casino. One day, a couple of my buddies missed out on school to go with a dad to Turning Stone. I didn’t think much of it but when they arrived at our summer ball game at the end of the day they loved it.

Naturally, we all planned a trip for a later day. A few weeks later we were off to TS looking to have some fun. Typically we would each bring anywhere from 100-140 to spend and the first time walking into a casino is a surreal experience. You can always tell when someone is a first timer in the casino. Whether it be trying to hand the money to the dealer, touching the cards too early, or touching the dice with two hands. There’s always a state of nervousness that takes a few hands to get over.

Strangely enough, early on our favorite game was let it ride. We all thought it was one of the few games where you could hit it big and technically while you can the odds are terrible. I remember researching the odds after and remembering how terrible they were, the house has a huge edge in that game. Nonetheless, that’s usually where we started out.
One time in my 2nd time at the casino, I did hit 4 of a kind in Let it Ride and that was a very cool experience.

From let it ride we migrated to 3 card poker. It was always fun trying to squeeze out that 3rd card to become 3 of a kind or a straight flush. Obviously, this is another hugely -EV game, but according to us. All you needed was one run of good cards and you could make a lot of money, so we kept at it. One time I was down to my last $30 at a $10 table and hit a straight flush blind. The mayhem that ensued after that was pretty outstanding and something I’ll remember for a while.

Typically, our routine went something like this. Hang out at a buddies house being bored. Around 9 PM, someone would suggest casino to which nobody every really said we can’t. Obviously staying over wasn’t an option so we knew we’d get there around 11 and get back back between 4-5 AM. From there we would try to round up as much money as we could afford to lose an head off to the casino.

Usually, one of my friends dad was with us and he was great at turning everyone into a degenerate gambler for the night. However, while we would all talk about our dreams of striking it rich on the ride up, this is how it would usually go. We get there, 3 or 4 of us lose all our money right off the bat, the losers go to the buffet trying to get their money’s worth somewhere, then sweating the rest of our friends/buddy’s dad until it was time to go.

The buffet experience was always fun. Usually broke, we would all talk about how much the place sucked and that we should eat as much as we could to get our moneys worth. Then it would generally end with eating way too much ice cream, as well as one friend taking a huge handful of free mints at the exit.

Six years later, this really isn’t a possibility anymore. Now, I’ll generally stay over at a casino and if I decide to play table games I’ll play craps in a way which reduces the houses EV to about .4%. I generally still have a very good time especially with golf and nice dinners, etc. However those first few trips were fun and something I’ll never really forget. Plus the fact that they’ll never happen again makes them sentimental and I’m sure many other poker players have similar stories of going to the casino for the first time being broke with the rest of their friends.

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
– Winston Churchill