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.
I am revealing my geek nature when I post this picture of the world's smallest RC (Remote Control) helicopter. You can try to go to the website of the creator of this amazing engineering feat. But, you probably not get there because this guy was mentioned on BoingBoing today and his server (Microsoft IIS of course) is bogged down. But here for your viewing pleasure is the link to the movie! That is easier to download. 
The idea is simple. Fill in the blanks such that no number is repeated in a row, column or 3x3 square. There are over 8 billion games at this site!