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If you ever want to see capitalism stripped bare of all the whistles and bells then go to a casino; sit down at a blackjack table; and buy some chips. If you are good at playing blackjack you will come out even in the long run. If you play like a novice you’ll lose your shirt every time. If you are very lucky and go in and plunk your life savings down on the table and hit blackjack on the first draw you might get rich. I’d say some thing like that happens one in a million times. I’ve talked to a guy who did something like that. He posts here on DU, or at least he used to. I’ve gambled on and off for the last eight years and he’s the only person I’ve ever run across that got rich in a casino.
I discovered blackjack in a Reno, Nevada truck stop. I had just delivered a load at a construction site on a Friday and I was going to be down for the weekend because there wasn’t a freight broker near me who had a decent paying load. This was back when I owned my own truck. I had also just settled up for the week and I had $1500 on my Comdata debit card. That’s a lot of dough to a trucker. It represented about 3000 miles of trucking.
I parked my truck in the truck stop lot and went in to get a shower and a bite to eat. On my way in I had to walk past the blackjack tables to get to the shower. I stopped at one of the tables and watched the truckers play for a minute. I didn’t know much about blackjack. I’d never played it before in a casino. I noticed the tables had a $2 minimum bet. I thought I might try it out later on.
After the shower and the meal I took a seat at one of the blackjack tables and bought $20 worth of chips. I told the other guys at the table that I had never played before and asked for their help. So I learned blackjack. I played just like the experienced players told me to, but my $20 bill was gone pretty quick. I plunked another 20 on the table and I was off to the races. My heartbeat went up a little. The palms of my hands got damp. That was Friday night.
By Sunday I had gone through my $1500 and was starting to take cash advances off of my credit card. That, my friends, is known as a bad streak to gamblers. Others call it addiction. I’d lost it all $2 at a time, too. I might have bet a $5 chip here and there, but mostly it was just $2 hands.
When Monday rolled around I was $2000 down from when I parked the truck on Friday. My whole week’s pay was gone, plus a good chunk of next week’s. I got on the phone and started checking for loads. I ended up taking partial load over to Salt Lake City, Utah that barely covered my operating expense. I needed to get the hell out of Nevada.
Outside of Reno I was pushing the truck as fast as it would go: 79 mph. The speed limit was 70 and I went right by a cop with the hammer down. He pulled me over and checked my log book. I had one violation in my log book as well as the speeding violation. The cop let me go with a warning. That was the only luck I had my first time gambling.
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