Would any of you folks care to share with the group how you started
gambling? What age were you at the time and what game you played or
ran?
Me,I started out in Middle school pitching quarters, then playing
craps and 4-5-6. Moved on to playing table poker, and then on to Las
Vegas.
I started playing video poker around 1980. Usually while waiting for
a seat at a poker table.
Brad Humelsine
"Brad " wrote:
Would any of you folks care to share with the group how you started
gambling? What age were you at the time and what game you played or
ran?
I visited Las Vegas--and gambled--for the first time at the age of 47.
I played a bit of slots and video poker. It was more fun than I
expected.
--
Pat O'Connell
Take nothing but pictures, Leave nothing but footprints,
Kill nothing but vandals...
Would any of you folks care to share with the group how you started
gambling? What age were you at the time and what game you played or
ran?
My first taste of gambling (outside of playing pitch w/family for
penny a point) was in highschool football camp playing Acey/Ducey.
Foxwoods opened up when I was 22 (only an hour away) and I played
bingo and slots. When I met my wife, we went often to mohegan and
foxwoods. Started going to Atlantic City in 2001, got serious about
video poker in late 2001 when I went to vegas. It been a fun ride!
"Brad" <tarpon@s...> wrote:
Would any of you folks care to share with the group how you started
gambling?
I owe it all to the Catholic church. The nearby church/school used to
have a yearly fair for fund raising. In addition to the ferris wheel
etc rides & the usual ring-toss carnival stuff, they had a room
filled with dice & card games. Since it was all for a good cause,
they somehow didn't mind obviously underaged guys like myself coming
in to play blackjack.
Years later, my mother told me that the only strain in her parents'
marriage was that my late grandfather liked to play poker a bit too
much. So perhaps gambling is in my DNA & would have appeared sooner
or later in any case. But it was the Catholics that provided the
opportunity.
Going even further off-topic... it was the Republicans who started me
drinking. As a reporter for my high school radio station, I was
assigned to spend election night at the Republican "victory party"
location & call in stories as the poll results came in over the
course of the evening. The Republicans had trashcans filled with ice
& beer bottles, & no one to stop the kids from indulging.
God bless America.
Stuart
sresnick2@attbi.com
http://home.attbi.com/~sresnick2/mypage.htm
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Brad <tarpon@s...>" <tarpon@s...>
wrote:
Would any of you folks care to share with the group how you started
gambling? What age were you at the time and what game you played or
ran?
Let me apologize here right at the beginning for the length: This
post sort of got away from me.
In high school, I would play kitchen table poker, spades, and other
card games with my friends. This was strictly nickel and dime stuff,
just for fun. If you lost $5, you had a really bad night.
The first time I ever visited a casino was about 10 years ago,
shortly after the casinos began to open in Mississippi. I was, well,
30something at the time. My wife and I visited the Grand Casino in
Gulfport, MS during this first trip. I had recently read an obscure
book called "Probabilities in Everyday Life", which devoted a chapter
to blackjack and was esentially a review of Ed Thorp's book "Beat the
Dealer". The chapter in "Probabilities..." discussed card counting
and how it could actually provide the player with an advantage over
the house. I thought this was pretty cool, even though it went
against everything I had ever been told about casinos. I memorized
the basic strategy listed in the book while my wife drove us to the
casino. (This is not meant to sound boastful: I have always been
able to memorize information from charts fairly easily. On the other
hand, I can't remember someone's name from two minutes ago.) The
strategy in my book was for single deck, and I played at a 6 deck
shoe game, but I didn't know any better at the time. Also, I sat
down at a $10 table with $100 total to play with, which was a
horrible example of overbetting, but I didn't know that at the time
either. Anyway, I wound up winning $60 from flat betting at a $10
minimum table, and I was hooked. I purchased and read everything
about card counting that I could find, and later got involved in some
of the internet discussion groups, especially Stanford Wong's BJ21
page.
I became involved in machines when the bonus slots like Piggy Bankin'
were introduced, plus the Williams blackjack game with the positive
expectation rules. These machines started to pop up everywhere. I
(along with a lot of other advantage players) played these games
heavily until they were almost completely removed. This period of
the good machines lasted for about 2 years or so. I couldn't believe
the casino mail that my play was generating. It was nothing like I
had ever received from playing blackjack. Jean Scott says something
in her book to the effect that a quarter video poker player will get
better comps that a $25 per hand blackjack player. (Don't hold me to
the exact quote.) Anyway, this statement is true to a large degree.
After the bonus slots and the good blackjack machines dried up, I was
looking around for something else with positive expectation to play
in order to keep up the good casino mailers, and I started to get
into video poker. This was about 4 or 5 years ago. I was vaguely
aware of VP at the time, but I had never really been interested in
the game until that point.
I now spend about 80% - 90% of my casino time playing VP, with the
other 10% - 20% playing blackjack. Knowing these two games increases
the number of playable casinos. Some casinos may have great VP but
terrible blackjack. Other casinos have good blackjack games but no
playable VP. If you can play both games, you have more casinos to
pick from. If you can additionally play live casino poker (which I
don't), even better.
I started out playing blackjack counting at $2 and $3 minimum
tables. Over the years, my bankroll has inreased so that I can now
safely play $1 VP, or spread up to a max. bet of $300 in blackjack.
It's been lots of fun so far. If there's one thing I have learned
over the past 10 years, it's that good opportunities come, and then
they go. (This is related to the recent Suncoast discussion.) It's
sad when you lose a good game, especially one that's been around a
long time, but it happens. I can remember when the positive EV
blackjack video games vanished almost overnight. It felt just like
losing a friend. But other good games will come along eventually. I
firmly believe it is in the casinos' best interest to always have a
limited number of beatable games around. These games help create
interest in the casinos. Gambling writers tend to write more about
the beatable games that the other games. A significant number of
players only like to play the "smart" games, even if they personally
have no clue to what they are doing. The current popularity of VP is
due in large part, I believe, to the fact that some games are
beatable. The same has been said about blackjack. If you look at
the history of blackjack, it's popularity increased by huge amounts
AFTER Beat the Dealer was published. Casinos made more money than
ever off of the game, even though a small minority of players could
actually beat it. Most people just don't have the time, interest,
bankroll, or ability to actually beat these games (blackjack and VP),
but they like to play them anyway because they have heard that they
are beatable. In recent years, the casinos have really tightnened up
on their blackjack games, with the result that the game is less
popular now than it was not long ago. I wouldn't be surprised if the
typical casino has seen its blackjack table profits decrease over the
last few years, although I don't have any hard data to back up that
statement. The casinos, of course, will blame this on the "card
counting threat", and use it as an excuse to tighten up the games
even further. It should not be surprising that the same cycle should
occur with positive expectation video poker. However, if casinos
completely eliminated any means to legally beat them, i.e. all
continuous shuffle BJ games, bad pay tables on 100% of their VP
games, little or no cash back and tight comps, etc. etc., then I
think they would see their business drop WAY off. Many players would
lose interest and just stay away. The legitimate gambling writers
would have nothing much to say except "stay home - there's nothing
left to beat". Of course, there will always be some people who will
visit, because some people will play any game you put in front of
them (after all, look how many people play the pick 3 lottery games
with a 50% disadvantage), but I don't think the casinos would enjoy
anywhere near the success and popularity that they have today.
Eventually, they would have to loosen things up just to get a few
people in the door.
Anyway, I hope I'm right.
Good luck.
EE
Would any of you folks care to share with the group how you started
gambling? What age were you at the time and what game you played or
ran?
...or ran? Nice touch! ; )
Without a lot of details, my exposure began at age 4, standing in a nook of
the original El Rancho Vegas (burned down in 1960) and watching my dad play
craps. That was like line one of chapter one of a book long enough to make
Tolkien proud, with hopefully many chapters still unwritten.
lb
Nice post, EE. Enjoyed your story and your perspective on good games
in the casino. No need to apologize for "rambling."
Let me apologize here right at the beginning for the length: This
post sort of got away from me.