This video takes me back to the days when I used to play a lot of Blackjack in Las Vegas. I was card-counting, not so much for the money but more as a personal challenge to see if I could do it. It turned out I could but it often took me an awful long time to get more than a few bucks ahead and it eventually stopped being fun, especially after it would take me four hours to get $250 ahead. That was when I'd think, "I could have made more money going up to my room and writing a script on my laptop."
Also, this was back when casinos allowed smoking and even when you could find a no-smoking area, it reeked of Marlboros. I really, really don't do well around cigarette smoke…or any kind of smoke.
And another unpleasantness was that when I was winning, it upped my fear that some casino employee would suddenly give me a tap on the shoulder and ask to speak to me somewhere else. Ejecting a player is called "backing-off" and it was tough to focus on the card counts when I was afraid I was about to be backed-off. You need to act nonchalant as you glance at what the other players at the table are getting and act even more nonchalant when you drastically raise or lower what you're wagering.
I was finally "backed-off" — once — in a downtown dive called The Las Vegas Club and maddeningly, it was because of a "win" that didn't even involve counting. The dealer just happened to deal Blackjacks to everyone at the table and the Pit Boss (or Casino Host as they preferred to be called) decided something was amiss and it had something to do with the watch I was wearing. It was a big Casio thing that we then thought was the scientific marvel of the century because it could store 99 phone numbers. The "count" wasn't even particularly good when all those Blackjacks happened but the P.B. didn't care. He shut down the table to all and while the other players were free to move to other tables and continue playing, I was told I was barred "for life" from the Las Vegas Club.
Please note: I am still in this world and The Las Vegas Club is not. It took a while but they're tearing it down now and that's all my doing. Let this be Fair Warning to all who would mess with me.
As much out of boredom as anything else, I gave up gambling not long after my banishment from that place. When I took Amber to Vegas back in June, she wanted to learn how Video Poker worked and I lost ten bucks teaching her. That was the first time I'd gambled in close to forty years. Despite going there a lot, I am still "ahead"…and how many people can say that?
This video is allegedly of a Blackjack player in an unidentified casino somewhere getting backed-off for card-counting, as allegedly shot by a hidden camera. This is pretty much how it works for real but there's still something about the video that feels phony. Maybe it's just that the player seems to have almost been trying to get stopped so they could get this footage for some kind of documentary. But it also might have all been staged for the camera. The Pit Boss certainly looks the part. About half of all male Pit Bosses look as he does, like Chris Christie.
You might think it's fake that the player tries to talk the Pit Boss into either reversing his decision or refunding his lost money. After all, a guy who's smart enough to count cards oughta be smart enough to know that that has never, in the history of mankind, worked. It didn't work for Albert Brooks in Lost in America and it's never worked for anyone. Among the many reasons is that the Pit Boss does not have the power to completely rewrite the rules of his employer and profession. Still, most card-counters mostly think they can outsmart The House — and some do. This guy, as you'll see, does not…