where's everybody...
funny childhood gambling story I just remembered last night
I enjoyed Catholic church festivals in the summer as a teenager. My first taste of gambling. They had dice games, spin the wheel, blackjack. They would often not check ID's, so we played as 15/16 year-olds sometimes. I remember when someone told me the Martingale strategy and I thought it was brilliant (of course, they had limits on bet amounts so it would never work lol..).
Mostly lost money, thought I was clever tho.
But my favorite FAVORITE memory was when I was a little older, like 19ish... me and a friend are sitting at Blackjack. They would always flip up both of our cards, but the dealer, of course, one up/one down.
These dealers were just dopey regular folk volunteering for their church, not gamblers, not trained really.
One guy takes over, and can't recall if he asked us or just started dealing this way:
HE FLIPPED UP *EVERY CARD*, INCLUDING BOTH OF HIS CARDS.
As you might imagine, this was.... positive EV. But unfortunately it didn't last long as my friend and I were literally crying/laughing uncontrollably as we said "hit me!" when we are showing 19 or even 20!!!
OMG that was a fun 15 or so minutes, until he either figured it out or got replaced. Don't think I earned a profit sigh...