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.