I'll tell you though -- I've played pool and poker semi-seriously, and there is no greater satisfaction than beating someone who is into dick-measuring, guys who get angry when they lose.
― Eazy, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:33 (sixteen years ago) link
ha also I suck at pool and poker and I hate being bad at things because I am a big baby. that might play into this as much as the Flanders stuff.
― horseshoe, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:34 (sixteen years ago) link
the simple joy of the pwn
― dan m, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:35 (sixteen years ago) link
the "loser gambler" that gets stereotyped is fundamentally lazy and romantic, you know? gambling, like the lottery (also depressing, in a way), encourages people to make ridiculously REAL and LARGE financial decisions based on wholly unrealistic assumptions, with the promise that it'll get them out of whatever mire they happen to be in.
i mean, high-rollers are always rich before they become high-rollers. it's a hobby, not a profession.
xposts i'm with eazy: the few times i've played poker, i've managed to walk away with "serious" players money simply by bluffing. i made $3!
― river wolf, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:35 (sixteen years ago) link
nb i am lazy and romantic
the "loser gambler" that gets stereotyped is fundamentally lazy and romantic, you know?
you'd think I'd be into it!
ha xpost
― horseshoe, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:36 (sixteen years ago) link
I think it was 2 weeks ago (?) that one of the stories on This American Life was about people who play poker for a living. High rollers, pros, lose and win hundreds of thousands of dollars in a night. It's their job. Fascinating stuff.
― kenan, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:37 (sixteen years ago) link
in a way, the lottery is worse, because while the casual player (say, my dad) might spend $5/week on a few tickets, betting on the fact that he'll get hit by a piece of airplane, some other person is dropping 50-100 on the extremely faulty assumption that that will significantly increase their odds.
...i'd like to crunch the numbers on how many tickets you'd have to buy to get a statsitically significant chance of return. why don't former lottery winners just buy like a million lottery tickets once a year?
― river wolf, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:37 (sixteen years ago) link
About Chump Change One night me (Ben D. Straw), Kool-Aid, and my cousin Mike drunkenly figured we should put together a useless punk/ska band. I mean...It's cool to watch people play, but better to be up there playing yourself.
― Jordan, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:38 (sixteen years ago) link
With pool and poker you get guys who really should be playing chess instead, ones who are into geometry and math and who really don't believe in intuitition, and I'm kind of a goofball who to a certain extent needs to be disrespected at the table to win, Mr. Misunderestimated.
I played on a bar pool league where each of us had a nickname from a Guns 'n' Roses song. Isidro Matamoros (hope you google this, man, it's been too long) was the best player and was "Patience". Someone else was "Night Train". I was "You're Crazy".
When I signed up for Facebook, I got back in touch with someone I had played poker with here around 2003 -- she and her boyfriend, in their early 20s, ran a game out of their Wrigleyville apartment and moved to Vegas a few years ago to play professionally. A few days ago her status update was "J____ is broke."
― Eazy, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:40 (sixteen years ago) link
looks like you'd have to drop 10 million to get something close to a 1:100 chance.
http://www.webmath.com/cgi-bin/lottery.cgi?count=6&low=1&high=99
― river wolf, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:40 (sixteen years ago) link
you guys have heard about those MIT students that formed a secret blackjack "team" and fleeced a bunch of casinos, right?
i bet dan has.
― river wolf, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:41 (sixteen years ago) link
xxpost There was another TAL a couple months ago about this dude who was in the business of offering lump sums to lottery winners (much smaller than the actual winnings) instead of the $30 grand or so a year the state would pay you. He reports that he has never met a lottery winner who didn't wish they hadn't won. It apparently brings out your very worst tendencies.
― kenan, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:41 (sixteen years ago) link
I heard that one, it was v. interesting.
― jaymc, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:42 (sixteen years ago) link
I haven't heard of them, actually, but it doesn't surprise me. I knew a ton of nerds at MTU who made big $ (well, big $for college students anyway) in online blackjack and poker before it started getting illegalized.
― dan m, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:43 (sixteen years ago) link
I work with a guy at Catch who played backgammon for a living for 5 years. He has semi-quit the restaurant to go back to it. As an alcoholic (self-proclaimed) he finds the backgammon lifestyle more accomadating as the restaurant schedule is too taxing.
Bwahahaha.
― Jesse, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:45 (sixteen years ago) link
I've always thought that the way to go if you win the lottery would be to basically continue your lifestyle, except without worrying about money. You know, maybe pay off your car or buy a house, but just keep rolling with that cushion of lottery money, instead of thinking "omg I can indulge my craziest dreams, wtf do I do with my life?"
― Jordan, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:45 (sixteen years ago) link
maybe gambling freaks me out so bad because I can so easily see becoming someone who turns it into a lifestyle. gambling=graduate school.
― horseshoe, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:46 (sixteen years ago) link
understand how someone would find vegas appealing, i guess, it's just that it sounds like an awful, depressing nightmarish waste of time for me.
i feel the same way about skiing.
― chicago kevin, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:47 (sixteen years ago) link
I can see playing pool or poker for a living, but this guy was a backgammon champ! He made a lot of money.
I don't even know what backgammon is!
― Jesse, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:48 (sixteen years ago) link
I remember in the TAL episode, they talked about how a bunch of lottery winners decided to use their winnings as capital to start a bar or restaurant, which then invariably failed because they had no idea how to actually manage a bar or restaurant.
― jaymc, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:48 (sixteen years ago) link
As far as Vegas, I have always thought that I would like to go there in order to be better at hating it.
There's definitely a gambling tradition on my mom's side of the family. My grandmother played bingo a few times a week into her eighties, my aunt and uncle paid for their daughter's wedding by winning the Pick Six at the track. I don't think anyone has either gone broke and gotten rich from it.
Jordan, that lifestyle sounds like a good one. A few years ago, Leonard Cohen found out that he had been bilked by his manager and accountant -- he didn't realize how much money they had stolen because all he wanted basically was $150,000 in the bank at a time, and the rest he assumed was invested elsewhere. Having a set amount in a bank account, and replenishing it when it goes down, would be tha life.
Howard Lederer (poker champ, interesting guy) was a pro backgammon player before he switched games.
― Eazy, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:48 (sixteen years ago) link
TAL also taught us that it makes better financial sense to take the one-time (smaller net) payment, esp. if you are a typical gambler.
― Jesse, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:49 (sixteen years ago) link
-- chicago kevin, Monday, October 8, 2007 9:47 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link
oh yr just pushing my buttons
― river wolf, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:50 (sixteen years ago) link
horseshoe, i went to vegas with my roommate while in grad school (he, too, was a grad student). He lost $1,200 in under 90 minutes. I love him to death, but it confirmed that he's a jackass. I sipped free drinks and may have won $11 on blackjack.
― sisut, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:50 (sixteen years ago) link
Yeah, man! I'd be like hey, my retirement, right there. I could just continue with my 401k 6% matching or whatever, and not have to scrimp to pay the rent or like buy a computer, that's pretty much ideal for me.
― Laurel, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:51 (sixteen years ago) link
free/cheap shit is also pretty dope about Vegas.
$1200 jesus christ. they shouldn't let graduate students inside the Vegas city limits.
― horseshoe, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:51 (sixteen years ago) link
big xpost
they talked about how a bunch of lottery winners decided to use their winnings as capital to start a bar or restaurant, which then invariably failed because they had no idea how to actually manage a bar or restaurant.
Right, or they went right out and bought things like cars or houses that they could never afford before, only to discover that they STILL couldn't afford them. $30 thousand a year, trickled down from the state, is not quit-yr-day-job type money.
― kenan, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:52 (sixteen years ago) link
I think if I had a huge influx into my checking account, though, I would be tempted to buy a bunch of Louboutins. I feel for the lottery winners.
― horseshoe, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:53 (sixteen years ago) link
Jenny has a friend whose motto is "you're not really gambling till you're playing with the rent." The thing is, that does not even begin to accurately express how much he gambles.
And we were playing the slots at Delaware Downs.
Turns out that our taking him gambling was strictly against the rules in his domestic partnership....
― Jesse, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:53 (sixteen years ago) link
playing the slots=stonefacedly, endlessly refreshing the ILX new answers page=the most depressing shit ever
I think it would be safe to estimate that he lost a good $500 in slots in less than 2 hours.
― Jesse, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:54 (sixteen years ago) link
He did one-shots with $20s, non-stop.
you can do that?
― horseshoe, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:54 (sixteen years ago) link
My mom won $800 out of slots in Reno. That was fun.
― kenan, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:55 (sixteen years ago) link
Meanwhile I walked out $50 lighter, and had I not had a gallon of beer in me, I would have had a record breaking guilt-anxiety attack.
― Jesse, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:56 (sixteen years ago) link
-- river wolf, Monday, October 8, 2007 4:50 PM (Monday, October 8, 2007 4:50 PM) Bookmark Link
no, i just hate the cold so paying to be outside in it would make me miserable beyond belief. i didn't always hate it so i can kind of see the attraction but i can't think of many things that would i would like less.
― chicago kevin, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:56 (sixteen years ago) link
You can do what? 1-shots? Yes. Lose $500 in 2 hours? Yes.
I know he lost several hundred, and I want to say that at last check it was $400 and he was going to the ATM for more, but I don't know.
― Jesse, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:57 (sixteen years ago) link
you can spend $20 on one...shot at the slots? I did not realize that.
― horseshoe, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:59 (sixteen years ago) link
You can blow your cash playing War if you want to.
― dan m, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:59 (sixteen years ago) link
I'm no good at poker online because it overlaps with whatever Internet compulsions I've got; it's different than live poker.
It's a hit-or-miss movie, but Lucky You, the Curtis Hanson movie from earlier this year, is a pretty good look into the Vegas gambling world. Not glamorous.
If Jesse's guy was playing $5 slots that pay a bonus if you bet 3x ($15) per pull, it wouldn't take long as all to lose $500, alas.
― Eazy, Monday, 8 October 2007 21:59 (sixteen years ago) link
i love the cold.
hence, me hating my 89 degree room right now. also: myself, for NOT applying to med school for the last four hours
― river wolf, Monday, 8 October 2007 22:00 (sixteen years ago) link
i just ate the last of my cheese and tortillas, now i'm ;_;
cigarettes, i miss them so so much.
― chicago kevin, Monday, 8 October 2007 22:02 (sixteen years ago) link
my mom will occasionally go to vegas with some of the ladies in the "hood" (the Homemaker's Club....srsly). so it's a bunch of middle-aged, Midwestern women who, like, only drink three glasses of wine on New Year's, going to Vegas to drink margies and play the nickel slots.
she once sat next to a lady that came down every year with $10k in CASH, and who only played $1 slots (at $5 a pull). she said she always, ALWAYS came back at least $2k up. This year she was up $5k, and opened her purse to show my mom stacks of bills.
FACT.
― river wolf, Monday, 8 October 2007 22:02 (sixteen years ago) link
The fact that I have spent hours at a time, with no regard for day or night, in chat rooms makes me think that I would be a problem gambler, but at the same time, I desire money far less than sexual thrills.
― jaymc, Monday, 8 October 2007 22:02 (sixteen years ago) link
okay that lady is my hero I take it all back
xpost
― horseshoe, Monday, 8 October 2007 22:03 (sixteen years ago) link
That just sounds like work. xpost to river wolf
― n/a, Monday, 8 October 2007 22:03 (sixteen years ago) link
xp o_O
she had a theory about machines getting "warm" and would move along until she found one that was ready to pay out. slot whisperer.
― river wolf, Monday, 8 October 2007 22:04 (sixteen years ago) link
Jaymc, strip poker addict
― Eazy, Monday, 8 October 2007 22:05 (sixteen years ago) link