"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense." -Emerson


"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about." -Benjamin Franklin

Alma 26:30 "And we have suffered all manner of afflictions, and all this, that perhaps we might be the means of saving some soul; and we supposed that our joy would be full if perhaps we could be the means of saving some."


Saturday, February 9, 2013

Black Jack - Me Against the Dealer

(This is Linn. She taught me everything I know.)

So, as the good little Mormon girl that I was raised to be, I was not really ever exposed to gambling. The church itself frowns on anything having to do with gambling, even to the extent of not taking tithes from your winnings. This definitely limited my exposure to gambling to mostly things like Oreo cookies and SweetTarts. I have accidentally won the $50 pot playing some Texas Hold'em with the cowboys working at the first Guest Ranch I worked at. It was pretty much a fluke, as I had no idea what I was doing really, and none of them talked to me for a couple days. Needless to say, I was no longer welcome to play in their tournaments  I was welcome to watch though... someone had to heckle and keep the mood light. Looking back I have to say that the only reason I won was because no one noticed I was winning until the last few hands. I also think I was a better liar back then.

My relatively sheltered existence has been opened up yet again, and it was opened up to the game of blackjack. My fun loving GM here at Rancho de los Caballeros had a left over beer keg.. most likely from a group... that was going bad. What does one do when you have a bunch of beer you need to get rid of? You set up a casino night for your employees of course!

What is casino night, you ask?

My GM found a company that would come and set up tables and teach everyone how to play these games. We had blackjack, craps, Texas  hold'em, and roulette. My friends and I were pretty much accidentally smart enough to go directly to the black jack table.

Where Linn was waiting.

Linn taught all us new comers how to play this awesome game! Basically, It is you against the dealer and despite my youthful games of "21" the point is not always to get to 21. I learned about bust cards and that you should usually only split your hand for A's and 8's. I learned about doubling down, but never really got any real money out of doing it. I stood at that table for 2 hours straight. I have seen all of the gambling shows that show people staying at a table for an entire day, and I finally understand how that can happen.

I did briefly try my hand at roulette.... oh how I failed with a flourish at that. I was there for a total of probably five minutes and lost almost a thousand dollars. I moved back to my new favorite game for the last twenty minutes of the night and won most of it back.

You lost a thousand dollars?!?!

The best part of this evening was that none of it was real money.

We started out with a thousand dollars in chips and were supposed to go from there. The point to this other than playing and having fun was that we could "buy" some of the swag that we sell at our gift shop. I now have yet another water bottle, and traveling coffee cup, and T-shirt, and bandanna. All of which have the company logo on them.

I have to admit though... I probably won't be trying to win my yearly rent money in Vegas anytime soon.


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