“At gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” — Ian Fleming
I won’t ever be a high roller, but I enjoy a day in a casino. Now and then, I will take a little cash and a lot of attitude and head to Mohegan or Foxwoods for a day trip. Sometimes, I go on the “old lady” bus, which I know isn’t a nice thing to call it, but the women on the last trip I went on all told me that’s what they call it, and I’ve learned not to argue with a troop of women headed for a Bingo hall.
I’ve always been terrible at math. There are several reasons why I am a writer, but a big one is that I can barely add. When I was little, my father would play blackjack with me at the kitchen table, with nickels as chips, so that I could practice math facts. He also showed me how to group stacks of coins in different amounts so they’d be easier to count, which led to learning my times tables. Those are just about the only math skills l possess other than figuring out a tip in my head, which I learned waitressing.
As I got older, the kitchen table casino got better rewards. At the end of the summer, there would be a blackjack tournament to see how much I could win to put toward my school supplies. Those Trapper Keepers didn’t come cheap; if I wanted the fun pencils, I had to make good bets. My dad taught me that the first rule of blackjack is, “Let the dealer take the bust.” It’s pretty good life advice, too—if you have to accomplish something, try not to be the one who loses track of good strategy. Pro tip from Frank: A player should stand on any hand over twelve if the dealer’s up card is a six or less. The assumption must always be that the down card has a value of ten, and dealers must hit on anything up to sixteen, so let them bust.
My crappy math skills extend beyond just blackjack to other forms of gambling as well. So far, I can’t convince anyone of my theory of Lottery Probability, but I still believe that winning the lottery is a 50/50 shot for anyone. Here’s how it works: A person purchases a lottery ticket, like a Powerball ticket. They’re filled with hope and thoughts of all the fun things they will do or buy when they win. The numbered balls bounce around and then slide down a tube, and we all carefully search our tickets to see if we won anything.
There are two outcomes for anyone who purchases a lottery ticket—they will win or lose. So, that means your chances of winning the lottery are 50/50, just like flipping a coin, which is a 50/50 chance of either heads or tails. It may not be entirely accurate, but isn’t it more fun than some math equation that estimates your chances at a billion to one? A friend of mine calls lottery tickets a tax on math-challenged people. He is so not getting a ride on my new boat when I win.
I get that not everyone approves of gambling. It definitely can hit brain receptors in a bad way, and some people do wind up with a gambling addiction. That’s incredibly sad, and it’s not something I joke about, but for many, a day spent playing Bingo, blackjack, or pulling the slots can be fun. I grew up with some form of gambling for my whole childhood. When I wasn’t playing blackjack for math facts, there were turtle races in our backyard, and the kids in the neighborhood would all pick a turtle out of the golf course pond, and we’d try to pick the winner.
My uncle had a bookie, and on some late nights, we’d take a ride to “pick up the paper,” which was just a cruise through Central Square in Lynn, to ask Bruce, the paper guy, “What’s tonight’s number?” When my mother had a tough day, she’d stick my brother and me out in the yard, and when my dad came home, she’d rush out the door to catch the bus to Wonderland, bet on a few dogs, and come home after an hour or so. We bought church raffle tickets for anything and everything, and if the ham and bean supper had a 50/50 raffle, we each got a ticket.
It’s been a while since I’ve played blackjack, so I may get a ticket to ride and hit the tables. Oh, and here’s another tip from my dad: At the roulette wheel, bet 27 red—it’s lucky. See you on the bus!
Brenda Kelley Kim has lived in Marblehead for 50 years and is an author, freelance writer, and mother of three. Her column appears weekly.
