Chicago: More Bars in More Places

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

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.

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?

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

I heard that one, it was v. interesting.

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.

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.

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?"

maybe gambling freaks me out so bad because I can so easily see becoming someone who turns it into a lifestyle. gambling=graduate school.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

i feel the same way about skiing.

-- chicago kevin, Monday, October 8, 2007 9:47 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

oh yr just pushing my buttons

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.

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.

free/cheap shit is also pretty dope about Vegas.

$1200 jesus christ. they shouldn't let graduate students inside the Vegas city limits.

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.

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.

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....

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.

He did one-shots with $20s, non-stop.

you can do that?

My mom won $800 out of slots in Reno. That was fun.

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.

oh yr just pushing my buttons

-- 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.

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.

you can spend $20 on one...shot at the slots? I did not realize that.

You can blow your cash playing War if you want to.

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.

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

i just ate the last of my cheese and tortillas, now i'm ;_;

cigarettes, i miss them so so much.

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.

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.

okay that lady is my hero I take it all back

xpost

That just sounds like work.
xpost to river wolf

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.

Jaymc, strip poker addict

Slot Whisperer = Good name for buxom lady/gambling themed motor yacht on lake havasu

wait, lake mead whooops

Hell I don't know. I am probably making the whole thing up.

I know that he was definitely "playing with the rent," and I mean all of the rent. Which is not so shocking, except that he was playing slots.

Lake Mead is so gorgeous.