My best roll ever.

So my story is not about some amazing roll. It is not about joining this club of people who have rolled over 50. By comparison my story is very modest. But it has a twist. It is the Story of the Lucky $5 Chip.

 

I had been hanging out in Vegas for a couple of days attending a technology conference. Ever hear of the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES? That was the show. I actually get numb to seeing flat panel TV’s and multi-gigabyte USB devices so I was wandering around resisting the urge to play craps. I had promised my wife that I would not gamble on this trip because it is just not fun without her. But, it was getting close to 11:00 PM, I was wide awake, and the charms of Vegas were working on me. So I headed over to the Tropicana and scoped out the action at the tables there. It looked good. Five or six people at each table, people were not too loud and the dealers seemed bored.

 

I stopped at one of the ATM machines that are ever so conveniently positioned in the Casinos and took out $100. My plan was to quit if I lost $50.

 

I mosied up to the craps table, set my $100 in the Come area of the felt and gathered up the chips the dealer shoved over to me. 20 $5 chips.

 

The dice had just passed me by and the guy to my left was coming out. I proceeded to play the Pass Line and Come with 2x odds, my usual play. I had never heard of the five count but I had been learning that some rollers are just bad and to avoid them. In this case the first guy did OK. He rolled a few sevens, then made his point right away.  I was up a little when he finally sevened out.

 

The next guy was across from me and he got on a good roll. Hitting his numbers and rolling a lot of 6’s and 8’s the hard way. He must have rolled a 9 six or eight times while I had money on it. Luckily I kept playing the Come so I was on every number in the field. Everyone else at the table was playing very conservatively, just a Pass Line and odds and they began to make comments about how I was raking it in on every roll.

 

The second shooter sevened out and the dice were passed across the box man to a new guy at the other end of the table. This guy’s buddy said “OK, folks stand back Jack here is a craps virgin!” Even in my novice stage as a craps player I know enough not to bet when a complete newbie is throwing. But in this case I could see that I was ahead so I let my Pass Line bet stay on the table. His first three rolls were sevens! They did not even make it all the way to the end of the table. The dealer admonished him until he started to get it right but that did not stop him from making good numbers. He too got me up on all the numbers and once again I was raking in the chips on every roll.

 

When Jack the Virgin finally sevened out I decided to do something I had never done before. I quit while I was ahead. I began stuffing my chips into the pockets of my sports jacket when the dealer barked “hold on there pilgrim, you have to turn those in here”. I sheepishly pushed then over and I guess the did what is called “coloring out”. In other words they took all my $5’s and $1’s and gave me black’s and change. Total: $265.

 

Big deal you say? Until you have played craps you have no idea how good it feels to walk away with more than twice what you started with. It was grand walking to the cashier’s cage and getting a couple of $100 bills to take home.  My best roll ever I did not even take a turn as a shooter!

 

But, the story does not stop there. This is were it gets interesting. The next day I headed to the airport. Waiting for my flight I decided to try my hand at one of those machines that takes your money and lets you push buttons and watch whirling images never line up. I put $5 into a slot machine and right before my last possible chance it started to clang and jangle as it spit out $75 in quarters. I can tell you I felt pretty smug leaving Vegas that day!

 

But wait. There is more. I landed in Detroit’s brand new Northwest Mcnamara Terminal and went to pay for my parking which is $13/day. The machines in front of the elevator to the parking garage are notorious for being out of order. There are six of them and there is usually a full time person standing around just to help out irate travelers who have lost there parking tickets. I stuffed my ticket in a slot, followed it with my corporate AmEx card and it spit it back at me. I was thinking “Damn, here we go again” when it spit out my ticket. The ticket was marked $0.00 Hmmm. Sure enough the machine screwed up in my favor!  Now I am beginning to wonder what is going on. I am a lucky guy normally. I have the perfect wife, brilliant kids, enviable job, but this sort of thing hasn’t happened to me in twenty years.

 

Don’t go away, there is more. That evening my wife and I have just picked up our youngest daughter from a dance lesson and we decide to stop and feed everybody (three kids and us) somewhere on the way back home. We pull into a Red Robbin we know of wander into the restaurant. We were sort of oblivious to our surroundings because everyone wanted to get Dad’s attention because they had not seen him for several days and they were talking over each other. I know I had a vague feeling of a party atmosphere with boisterous people standing in the doorway and super cheerful wait staff.

 

We were seated before we figured it out. Our waiter announced that the meal *and* drinks were on the house tonight because it was a VIP grand opening that we had accidentally crashed!

 

I was shaking my head over this string of good luck that evening as we were getting ready for bed. Imagine what went through my head as I emptied the pockets of my sport coat and found a $5 chip from the Tropicana. Is *that* why I was so lucky? When I stuffed all those chips in my pocket I must not have take it out to turn back to the dealers.

 

Question. Should I hold on to that chip for my next trip to the casino? Should I buy a lottery ticket? Should I auction it off on eBay?  You help me decide!  I will take the best suggestion. Submit a comment.