Status Anxiety | 23 May 2009

I flatter myself that I’m a Vegas insider, but in fact I’m just a regular sucker

I am spending the entire month of May in Las Vegas making an American television programme and I am not having a good time. Before embarking on this trip, I indulged in all sorts of fantasies about what might happen to me in Sin City. Would I be ‘discovered’ by Steve Wynn who would give me the opportunity to reprise my one-man show at the Bellagio? In fact, the most banal and utterly predictable thing has happened: I’ve become addicted to gambling.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, a ‘pathological gambler’ typically displays the following characteristics: he thinks about gambling all the time; he requires larger and more frequent wagers in order to experience the same ‘rush’; he becomes restless and irritable when attempting to stop; he tries to win back losses by engaging in more gambling; and he tries to conceal the extent of his losses by lying to friends and family. I am ashamed to say that I tick all of these boxes.

Like all addicts, I take no responsibility for my plight and instead blame a host of other people. To begin with, there was the friend who flew in from Mexico on my first weekend. I was worried he might give me swine flu, but he imparted something far worse: he taught me basic strategy at blackjack. This is a fairly simple set of rules that dictate whether you should hit, stand, split or double down depending on what cards you’ve been dealt and what face card the dealer has showing. For instance, if you have 12, you should hit if the dealer’s face card is a two, three, seven, eight, nine or ten, but stand if it’s a four, five or six.

By learning these rules, you can minimise the house’s edge, but not eliminate it altogether. That is to say, you will still lose money, you just won’t lose it as quickly as someone who isn’t sticking to basic strategy. After acquiring the basics, I flattered myself that I was now a true blackjack aficionado — I had become a Vegas ‘insider’ in contrast to the out-of-town rubes who make ‘sucker bets’. In fact, I am just another pigeon as far as the casinos are concerned. Indeed, the dealers are so unintimidated by the prospect of playing against someone who has mastered basic strategy that they will happily tell you what the optimal move is in every circumstance. In the long run, they’ll still take all your money. Of course, knowing this doesn’t stop me playing blackjack every night.

The second person I blame for my addiction is a fellow guest at the M Resort, the luxurious hotel-casino where I’m staying. On the night I met him he was celebrating having won $68,000 at blackjack the previous evening. Naturally, as soon as he won, the M Resort upgraded him to the best room in the house — standard practice in Las Vegas, since the casinos want the big winners to stick around so they can get their money back. I persuaded him to let me tag along when he played again that night, hoping to pick up a few tips. In fact, the only difference between his style of play and mine is that he bets much more — as much as $1,000 a hand. The downside of this, obviously, is that you can lose a lot of money very quickly. By the end of the evening, he was $10,000 poorer — though still up $58,000 over the two nights. That was enough to persuade me that it’s possible to beat the house.

It is, too — in the short term. There have been numerous occasions when I’ve had a run of good luck and been up $500 or so. The trouble is, I’ve never been able to summon the willpower to walk away at that point. The prospect of winning more is always too tantalising. Once you’ve embarked on the hamster wheel, there is no escape. No matter how far my winnings have climbed, I have always continued to play until I’ve lost everything — or rather my original stake, which at the moment I am limiting to $100 a night.

The golden rule in Vegas is to play ‘within your limits’ and I’ve just about been able to manage that. But I’m beginning to wobble and by the end of the month I could easily not have a house in London to return to. Wish me luck.