Know When to Fold ’em

Walking into the casino was like having my retinas physically assaulted by neon. The gaudy overuse of the brightly colored lights was offensive in the way that garbage trucks early in the morning are offensive: You may realize that they serve an underlying purpose, but it is of absolutely no condolence.

I originally assumed that, being a Gamer, casinos would sort of appeal to me. Ostensibly these gambling establishments are filled to the brim with games. What separates the games in a casino from games in an arcade should, by all accounts, merely be reward and perhaps price point. This is patently false. Instead of an emporium filled with low-cost games of skill, the games instead were completely chance based and high in price.

I suppose your standard video game could be accurately described as a sort of no-win casino game. You put money in, you fiddle with it for a bit and eventually you are left with only a vague sense of “entertainment” and less money than you had upon entry. The key difference is that with video games in arcades there is at least a passing nod given to user input and control. While the reality of arcade games may be creating the illusion that your skill at playing the game influences how long you get to enjoy it, at least that illusion is given some effort. The contrasting games of chance that are slot machines and video poker involve nothing more than zombie-like pressing of buttons and hope.

Hope in a casino is a strange beast. I observed enthusiastic clusters of people, dressed in their “night-on-the-town” finest and often displaying either too much skin or a repulsively flashy display of personal wealth (sorely misused). These people, upon entering the casino floor, were full of hope. They smiled and laughed and danced and nearly vibrated with excitement. The same exact groups would return to their rooms or cars later that same evening slouched, dizzy, confused and perhaps angry, searching vainly for something or someone to blame for their misfortune.

I like games because they entertain me in a way that makes the aspects of my person which I most value come to the forefront: Reflex, quickness of thought, creativity, strategy, planning, cunning, intelligence. On occasion (recently more than in the past) I even enjoy a physical contest. But while there are different games that challenge these different aspects (or different combinations thereof) games in casinos challenge only the mental fortitude to press on through a daunting onslaught of desperation. The more money one spends on a game that is dictated solely by chance and probability for maximized profit margins the higher that desperation climbs until it eventually becomes unbearable. For some I guess that point extends far past the point where genuine entertainment ceases.

But not for me.

The first night Nik and I lost a grand total of $5 in an hour. The second night we won a total of $6 and change in about an hour and a half. The term “High Rollers” is so inappropriate to describe our disposition in that environment that I occasionally feared being asked to remove ourselves and frequent another establishment. Where a couple who embodied our living antonym might be given a free room and any number of cost-free amenities for their free spending ways, we were—I felt—in constant danger of being tackled by security and dragged off the premises on the grounds of being entirely too cheap to warrant continued existence on their property.

In truth I was more than a little relieved that of my two baser instincts (that of being drawn to games of all sorts and that of being close to criminally tightfisted) my frugality won out every time. At no point did I ever put more than a quarter into any single spin/round/play and the few occasions that I did so caused the tendons in the back of my neck to tighten uncomfortably to the point where my neck involuntarily craned up toward the burning neon and blinded me. I may have won on several of those occasions, but I’ll never know as I would have spent the whole time shielding my eyes from the burning blindness.

I was ultimately able to apply some logic to my unanticipated (but wholly welcome!) apathy toward casino gaming by categorizing gambling games into two types: Those in which my internal cheapskate was able to justify participation that ultimately could only be categorized as “mindless diversion” and not any kind of game at all (slot machines, etc.) and those which may be more legitimate games but I would never entertain the notion of active involvement due to the extraordinarily high cost of entry ($5 minimum bet Blackjack, for example).

Frequently I catch myself engaging in a kind of internal mathematics where the things I am contemplating or presented with that require monetary commitment are plugged into algebraic formulas designed to equate the current scenario with alternate scenarios where the sum totals are equivalent or at least very nearly so.

For example, a $5 minimum bet Blackjack hand would last approximately 0.937 seconds and cost (obviously) five dollars. For five United States dollars and access to a functioning Ms. Pac-Man machine, I could be entertained for up to two hours. Comparing two hours of enjoyment with the statistical improbability of winning, what—$20? is something that my brain does not compute. Even trying to reason that with Ms. Pac-Man there is literally no chance of making a return on the $5 investment, I still feel that had I known of a decent video game arcade in the vicinity of the casino we visited I would have gladly exchanged the extra dollar I walked away with for two and a half hours of Galaga-based carpal tunnel damage.

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