Worst Avoidable Gambling Disaster

Dave Attell, so it's a little rude.

 

Did almost the exact same thing at Aria once. I didn't blow my whole bankroll, and didn't lose more than I could afford, but damn that did not feel good. I now stick to lower denominations!

 

Don't have any crazy stories, but I have definitely lost too much testing the waters with $5 VP... It's a thrill, but can end quickly, and badly.

 

I don't think I've EVER played a $5 VP machine, in fact I know I've never played at all in a high limit room. However, if I'm playing at $.25 VP and doing well, I will occasionally (rarely) switch to dollars and a few times I've been majorly burned doing that!

 

$500 can go really quickly at a $5 machine, haha. I had pretty good luck putting a $20 into a $0.25 machine and playing for a while, or winning a bit, so figured, why not put $500 in a $5 machine and do the same thing!? Well, it worked one time, the other 3 or 4 times, not so much! Once I did it at the Lobby bar at Mirage where I think they had 8/5 BP at $5 level. Busted out before I got halfway through my first drink.

 

I got a free lesson once in what not to do. First time playing BJ at a casino. We were in Tahoe. We attended a timeshare pitch out of curiosity and to get $50 in promo chips. Nice timeshare but of course way, way overpriced compared to the open market.

I tried to count and was so clumsy that I believe they noticed, even at a full $5 table. Played out all the promo chips and ended up with $85 in real chips. Should have gotten up from the table. Stayed until I lost it all. It wasn't the losing. It was the feeling of emptiness in the pit of the stomach as the chips melted away. It felt terrible even though I had not lost a dime of my own money. Since that time, if I ever feel that coming on, I leave immediately. I am there to have fun, not feel bad.

 

Mine is not a dramatic loss but stupid just the same. My brother and I were at NYNY. I finished a craps session and was ready for a gambling break for a while. Walked over to the Let it Ride table he was playing at and the waitress came by. Decided to order a Sam Adams and play until she came back. Had horribly bad luck and ended up losing $250 before she came back. Most expensive beer I’ve ever had.

 

Let me say one word on behalf of all us knuckleheads who hit a Royal Flush with only one quarter in the machine:

"ARRRGGHHH!!!!"

That was 16 years ago at El Cortez. Naturally, I've been playing MAX BET ever since in search of redemption, and it hasn't come yet!

 

My inability to pick up my bets when I plan to on the craps table has left me muttering to myself more times than I can count. My last bet of the night is usually $100 Outside. Well above my normal bets, but I keep a $100 bill set aside every trip to the casino just for this purpose, I call it my "walk away" bet. Win or lose, I walk away after that bet, at least I am supposed to.

More often than not it ends like this:

Me: Give me $100 outside
Dealer: 9 Nina 9 center of the field 9
Me: same bet please
Dealer: 10 Easy 10
Me: Same bet please
Dealer 5 fever 5
Me: same bet, thinking to myself now is the time to pick up as you can leave up $119 on this $100 bet, but no, I leave it out there
Dealer 7 out, out 7
Me: (up $19 because I'm stupid) give me $100 outside (because I am trying to out-stupid myself)
Dealer 7 out, out 7
Me: give me an $18 six
Dealer 7 out, out 7
Me: tosses last white chip for the crew and does the walk of shame to the elevator reevaluating my intelligence and purpose on this planet.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

 

I've done that more times than I can count. I'll pop a $20 or whatever in a machine and try to order a drink. 5 minutes later when they come back I've had a run of crap luck and it turns into a $50 drink. The worst I think is I had $300 in a machine that I was doing well on. I order my drink and it takes forever to get there. What was probably 20-30 minutes later that money was gone. But hey at least I got my drink.

 

My worst swings gambling were clearly when PokerStars still offered real money gambling in the US. I was a long term profitable player, but not by a large margin.

Early on one Friday, about 3 months before "Black Friday", I saw a "fish" I often played at $2/$4 limit Triple Draw Lowball. Well that day, he decided to play $10/$20 that day. Since I had about $9000 in my account, I felt like it was worth chasing him.

Well of course, that day he ran like God and I ran like shit. So I'm down a chunk after he left, but the problem was I was so pissed at losing I stayed at that level even after he left the table. I kept spinning down hill. I was down $3000 in 24 hours. I keep going. Drop another $2000 in the next 24 hours before I mostly came to my senses.

The rest of the month wasn't great either. Basically even. But there is a silver lining to the results of this story. In the last 2.5 months of real money online poker after the end of January 2011, I won $3000 of it back, and the "frequent player points" I earned since that distasterous weekend covered the rest of the loss.

 

I have 2. Last January I downloaded a Racing Form on Saturday night so I could handicap the Sunday late pick 4 from Fair Grounds. I had my 4 races picked and was ready to bet my numbers first thing Sunday morning. The first race of the sequence I liked the one horse and two others. I steadfastly refuse to change my mind once I handicap a race but this time I threw out the one horse and replaced him with another horse. We went to a birthday party and when we returned I logged on to watch the replays of the races . Sure enough the one I threw out wins the first leg as a longshot. My second race one of my horses won. Now I have to root against the 35 - 1 shot I singled in the third leg. He wins. Now I'm feeling sick to my stomach because the last race had 8 horses and I had half of them. One of my horses, another long shot wins and that pick 4 paid 17 thousand bucks! That coulda paid for 8 Vegas trips. To make matters worse all I needed to do was put up 4 bucks more and I could have included the one horse. Back in 2010 my cousin and I went to Vegas a week before the World Cup. I loved Spain to win it and they were 3-1. It was the main reason I went to Vegas that trip, to make a futures bet on Spain. Our stay was Thursday til Sunday. A couple hours before our flight was to leave I went to the Bally's sportsbook with 400 bucks left from my gambling ready to bet Spain. I was surprised that the book was closed so early, it was around 4:30 pm. Turns out there were no live sports going on. No West Coast baseball games. I asked my cousin to drive to Terribles. They were closed also. And 2 others we tried too. We got on the plane and I knew I missed out on a fantastic bet. Monday morning I get this bright idea that I would check the flights to Vegas just to make that bet and to double my bet to cover the price of the flight. There was one middle seat left on the back of the plane and the price of the flight since it was the same day was double the fare we paid. I decided not to do it. Of course Spain won and my wait to the last minute stupid self missed out on a $1200 score.

 

hard to believe all the books were closed!
of course if you had taken that last minute flight, the outcome would have been different. murphy's law.

 

At the moment it looks like South Point, Orleans, and Venetian stay open 24/7. There might be some others.

I'm surprised that it closed that early that day. What about "Sunday Night Baseball"??? First pitch is always after 5p PT...

 

Beyond hard. Not only is there the sunday night baseball game Tring mentioned, but there are evening horse races from the west coast and WNBA games. Besides, the books remain open because patrons may be cashing tickets. Hell, I have seen books open on days when there was literally nothing to bet on (they issued sheets informing patrons that there were no games to wager on that day)

 

All I know is I went to 4 different books and all were devoid of people so I assumed they were closed. Since it was 8 years ago I don't remember the exact time the books were closed that Sunday. I researched the MLB games played that day and there were a couple West coast afternoon games so the books definitely woulda stayed open at least a half hour after the final baseball game was over. So it must have been closer to 6 or 7 pm when I tried to make my bet. I will have to remember the books that stay open 24/7 in future trips. So true about Murphy's Law. If I had included that one horse on my pick 4 he would have likely got nailed at the wire.

 

Years ago when Rio was our favorite spot and I played a lot of $1 VP I was having a bad run so I decided I wasn't going to feed it anymore. I was basically just playing out what I had in the machine, this was before tickets and I really didn't feel like hauling a bunch of coin to the cage. I got down to $1 left and even though I've lectured people to NEVER play less than max on VP I did it, you can guess what happened on that play. The first thing the slot person said to me when she came over to pay me was "you realize what you did right?". To this day I have never gotten another royal; I think it's karma.

 

Many years ago when I was just learning craps - bought into a table at Golden Gate. Won my initial bet or two but bailed because I was taken out of my comfort zone. Stood and watched as number after number was rolled. I eventually tired of watching and left while the same shooter still had the dice. I have no idea what I might have won had I stayed, but it would have been huge for me at that time.

 

I see a lot of posts about not knowing when to quit. But if you always knew when to stop, hardly any of us would be losers. Yes I have gone on tilt before as well. I have chased losses and I have tasted bitter defeat.

But this one time in Vegas, I pissed away most of my bankroll by day 2 of a 5 day trip. So I chased. And I played more than I should have. And I was almost out of money when I hit for over $10.000 on a slot. Had I played pussy I never would have won and gambled my way out of a hole.

Why am I sharing this story in the Disaster Thread? Due to that one lucky day it is always in the back of my mind that I could turn it all around in a blink. And mostly it doesn't turn out with a $10K Jackpot

 

Yeah I stick to lower limit tables at Vegas and my locals. I also stick to only an amount I am comfortable losing. Preferably a $5 Craps table with a $100-$200 buy-in per session.

I hate even losing $100.00 but I can live with it and realize it is just not my day/cold table/lousy shooters etc and either try again later (If Vegas) or another day (my locals).........