Sometimes Gambling Can Be Fun

This weekend I went to a casino resort with a friend for her birthday. She wanted to go and gamble away some of her money, so I thought I’d go with her. I actually had some extra money left over in my budget this week, so I decided that was all the money I was going to gamble. Off we went!

We played a bit of the slot machines at first, playing a $5 in the machine and making $15 back. Not a bad investment. Although it was one of those complicated machines so neither of us had any idea what exactly we were doing on it. We took our $20 and went to the tables. My friend wanted to play some craps, which she had recently learned to play in Vegas. At one point she told me she was actually up several hundred dollars, so I thought this might be an interesting game to make some money on. (And before you say anything, I know that the house wins on most of the games, and the point of going to a casino is to gamble with money I can afford to lose. That’s why I had only brought $80 with me.)

By the time it was time for my friend to shoot (that’s the person who throws the dice in craps), I thought it might be fun to play as well. So I tossed in $60 and got some chips back. I played a few conservative bets and won a couple of them, but then my friend “seven’d” out, so it was my turn to shoot. And wow, did I ever shoot! Apparently I have the touch, because I was shooting for almost 30 minutes straight. The dude next to my friend was betting on the field (that’s a bunch of the “odd” numbers that aren’t supposed to come up as often), and I kept throwing those. Then I went on a roll and was throwing all sorts of 6s and 8s, another great way to make some money. And then the 7 came up so I was done. But wow, did I have a blast! I think I might have even doubled my money at that point, and instead of at least taking out my original $60, I kept playing.

Everyone else at the table couldn’t shoot to save their lives, and so I ended up losing all that money. But I had fun, as did my friend. We left the casino at this point and headed out to do some dancing.

A few hours later we came back to the casino and played some more craps. Yes, I know, we probably shouldn’t have done that, but it was such a great nice up to then that we wanted to play some more. If you haven’t played craps before, I highly recommend it because it’s a very social, nice game. The players are cheering for you because if you shoot the right numbers, they win. So there’s a little more comraderie than at most table games. Anyways, the same crew was working the table, so we were welcomed back with open arms. I dropped $50, and ended up making $65. Again I had the chance to shoot, and was even MORE on fire than the first time. There were a few guys down at the other end of the table who must have made some mad money off me because one of them gave me a $5 tip when we were all done. It looked like they were betting all the 6s and 8s again, with odds, which means you earn more money each time it comes up.

All in all I lost about $40 total, which I think isn’t bad. Unfortunately that last session was cut short as the crew had to close the table at 3:30am, so I guess it’s not a bad thing, since I was up $15 on that go-around. I won’t tell you what my friend lost, as I know it was a lot, BUT, she knew she probably would end up losing it all, and so that made it okay. While it was a chunk of cash, it wasn’t her mortgage payment, or the last few hundred dollars in her bank account. It was her play money, the money that is annoying to lose, but isn’t a matter of life or death if she lost it. That’s the way you’re supposed to gamble. You must go with money that you can afford to lose, because chances are, you are going to lose it. The cliche is definitely true: the house always wins. But if you go with your fun money, then you don’t mind it so much, and you might even have a bit of fun in the process.