RIP Sydney

One of the best movies about gambling you will ever see.

Hard Eight staring Phillip Baker Hall and John C. Reilly.  

Check it out. It is great.

Musings of a pro blackjack player

Excerpt:

"If you are immune to gambling’s allure – its sensory seductions, its hokey promises of a win – you start to see through the hidden numbers and spinning dials and flashing lights to the machinery beneath. When I see people with holes in their shoes buying lottery tickets they can ill afford, I can think only of Karl Marx’s ‘opium of the people’. Observing the grey-rinse brigade playing one-armed bandits in Vegas’s teeming slot-machine alleys, I marvel at how these women (and it is overwhelmingly women) have managed in retirement to find a pastime that so precisely mimics the piecework of the production line.

Surely it is a mark of late capitalism’s descent into decadence when, for sheer entertainment, we simply throw money away? When our play trumpets itself as a parody of the means of mass production?"

https://aeon.co/essays/is-gambling-a-kind-of-play-or-a-narcotic-trap-for-the-soul

Me and Mr. Trump......Freedom is having nothing left to lose

Back in the day I enjoyed a flutter here and there. You know a wager. A little bet more or less. In my single bouncing around days in the eighties I enjoyed going down to Atlantic City. Vegas. Reno. Tahoe. Aqueduct. Belmont. Monmouth. The Meadowlands. Yonkers. Monticello. All of the very few places where gambling was legal.

When I was bouncing I had a group of like-minded souls who also enjoyed the ponies or a little black jack. They were from various walks of life. A couple of guys I knew from the neighborhood. A few I had met at the casinos. We would travel down to AC or Vegas and hang out between bouts of gambling. We had an agreement. We would get to the joint and then split up. Every man for himself. Then we would meet up for a meal or for some drinks or to see a fight or watch a game we might have wagered on. This way you weren’t stuck at a table losing while you friend is chasing the tiger.

When you are a serious gambler you come to realize that the only way you can survive is not to get addicted to the action. Because the more you play the more you lose. That is why they open another big casino every week. Well until recently as it is oversaturated since there are more casinos than churches. But you get the idea. You find an angle on a good bet and you go strong. Win or lose you walk away. That’s why I gradually drifted into sports betting as my main vice. Especially boxing.

In those days there were a bunch of big money fights. Tyson was in full flavor and you had people like Holyfield, Forman, Hagler, Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran. Lots of big fights to lay down some cash. I did pretty good if I do say so myself. My biggest score was the Tyson/Holyfield fight. In fact I won a lot of money on Holyfield. I went to several of his bouts. In fact it was at one of them that I met Mr. Trump.

It was the Holyfield vs George Forman bout at the old Boardwalk Hall. This was situated on the boardwalk but it had connecting corridors with the casinos next door. I went with my buddy from the neighborhood who belongs to a fraternal organization with branches in Atlantic City. In fact at the time he was especially close to the Philly branch that had a lot to do with the linen services and the hotel unions that were heavily involved in the Atlantic City casino business. So we got some pretty good seats and were comped up the wazoo.

Anyhoo the fight is over and we are walking back through the bridge way to the casino and suddenly a bunch of security guards stopped us. It was the Donald and his famous mistress of the time Marla Mapes who later became his wife. She was in a sparkly dress and was quite attractive but nothing crazy great. There were a bunch of much better looking woman in the casino. Her most distinctive attribute was her hair. It was a dyed blond mane that was all over the place. She looked like some sort of pampered pet. A blond, curried, shy, retarded Palomino or something like that there. 

The Donald and Marla where walking from Boardwalk Hall through the corridor towards the Trump Plaza. One of the Donald’s minions noticed us. Well actually my friend. He whispered to the Donald and he came over to shake our hands. I am sure that the Donald had no idea who Nunzie was or about the fraternal organization he belonged to was doing. He was just told by his minion to say hello and that it was important to be polite. “What a fight boys” he said. “Glad to see you are coming over to the Plaza. You have to make sure you bring all your friends over to the Taj Mahal now that it is finally finished. It’s going to be yuge!!!!” Then they were whisked away by security. We followed in their wake and got to the casino right quick. 

We hung at the baccarat tables for a while but migrated over to Caesars which is where we really had a hook. I never ran into Trump again in my various forays into AC. He was definitely a presence there but I never really enjoyed his joints. They were too glitzy and phony even for a casino. I much preferred the Claridge or Caesars. The Plaza was run of the mill bullshit and the Taj Mahal was a gross monstrosity. All of that is old news. Trump is on to a new wife that he has been with for a while. Nunzie has passed after an unfortunate encounter with a Gas Pipe later that year. I am on the short and narrow and a good boy. No drinking and I watch what I eat and I haven’t gambled in a long time.

But you know what? The more I think about it the more I think I might take a flutter. On Mr. Trump. Why not? What have we got to lose?

He's gonna be yuge!!!!!