The Fan's Perspective

“When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.”

-Quintilian

Martin had been to a casino before only once, but that one time was enough to make him fall for the simple, but unpredictable game of roulette. In my opinion it’s like throwing your money out of the window or investing in Madoff, because you simply cannot win. You just can’t! You have no control over what is happening and there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to it (now that I think about it maybe THAT is the attraction). Sure you can try to play the probabilities, but just because the ball was on red five times in a row it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to land on black the sixth time around.

Of course Martin wasn’t taking all that into account or maybe he was and was just ignoring it and at first he wasn’t even doing that bad. He quickly was plus 15 ( I know that doesn’t sound much, but don’t forget we started out with chips worth 35 bucks, again, middle-class teenagers, remember!?) for the night and gained steam quicker than Usain Bolt to the point that I was wondering if Martin had somehow rigged the table. He switched tables like a savy vet and stared at the videoscreen (which showed you where the ball had landed the last couple of times and gave you more statistics than the guys from football outsiders) like it was showing nude pictures of Megan Fox. He didn’t know it right then, but that was the moment he should’ve yielded.

Anyway, of course Martin couldn’t stop there. He was here for the big money and it was evident by the look in his eyes that he was determinded to not only beat the House, but burn it to the ground with a flamethrower. Fortuna had other plans though and so the downturn began. At first it didn’t seem to concern him much. He probably thought that it was just a little bump on the road to success, but one bump followed another until his road to success was about as dented as Britney Spears’ car(s) [http://www.automopedia.org/2008/10/28/legally-spoiled-the-dumbest-celebrity-car-accidents-of-2008/]. He lost money, then he lost some more money and finally (you guessed it) he lost some more money. But what really amazed me and at one point even frightened me was his crazed look. He had the look of a madman on his face. He followed the ball with stoic countenance like somebody who had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Steven and I looked at each other,and I remember thinking: “Somebody has to stop him!” But of course we didn’t. It was funnier that way and he wouldn’t have listened to us anyway. He was possesed.

Finally he had one 5 euro chip left and as if the gambling gods wanted to torture him some more, he won, which of course raised his hopes, only to crush them when he lost it all again on the next turn.

And then it happened his level 1 gambling addiction culminated in one final act.

He pulled out a 10 euro bill from his wallet and put it on the table. Now again, I know ten bucks might no seem much especially if you consider what the other people around us were betting (ranging from 100 to as much 10000 euros!!! We were like amateurs in a porn movie: totally out of place, stunned and excited as hell. Plus, we were genuinely outraged that none of the moneybags accidently dropped a grand and told us to keep it. Oh well.), but again 10 euros are a lot for a teenager (I mean for God’s sake it’s three to four beers). I’d like to tell you that he went on some sort of miracle run and won it all back again, but I’d be lying.

It just wasn’t Martin’s night. He wasn’t meant to win. I have only been to a casino once, but essentially gambling just comes down to one thing: karma ( sports works similar which once again proves that everything in life can be traced back to sports. Gotta love it!). There will be nights where you can’t lose and there’ll be those where you can’t win.  The hard thing is to accept which kind of night it is and to know when it’s time to simply yield.

**TO BE CONTINUED**

So after I couldn’t keep my promise of doing a full-fledged NFL countdown I had to come up with a special treat for you, my loyal reader(s) – I sure hope I can ditch those parentheses soon – and after a few hours of hardcore brainstorming I finally found the blogger’s equivavlent of make-up sex: my own, personal feature story.

Now, kick back, light the chimney fire and get yourself a cup of hot chocolate, because I’ll tell you kidos about the day I lost my gambling virginity.

It was just two weeks ago on a day that began like any other day in Ampass, Austria. I bet any teenager who reads this knows the drill. It’s nice weather so you go swimming with a couple of friends and contemplate about what you’re going to do that night. I can’t really remember how, but we (that’s me and my buddies Martin and Steve) ended up settling on doing something out of the ordinary for three 18-year-olds and decided to go to the casino. At first I wasn’t really fond of the idea, because I hate the thought of losing money just as much as everyone else does, maybe even more, because frankly you tend to even have less at my age (unless of course you’re one of the spoilt brats on MTV’s Sweet Sixteen show, who throw around money like it’s going out of style), but after about five minutes of going over the pros and cons in my head I was in “what the heck let’s do this, it’ll be fun” mode.

After suiting up –had to throw in a little Barney reference from “How I met your mother”, funniest sitcom of the 2000′s, not even debatable– at home ( quick note on suits: Isn’t it weird that a suit is the only piece of clothing that makes anybody and I mean really anybody look at least 3 times better. You can look like Popeye Jones and I guarantee you, you’ll look at least a little better in a suit. It makes even the dumbest person look  somewhat competent and can make the rudest bloke on the planet seem like a charming gentleman from afar. Just dazzling! I could go on about the suit phenomenon for hours, but I’m afraid that’ll drive the few readers I have away for good.) my friend Steve picked me up in his blue Suzuki Ignis and it became quickly clear that I was a little bit overdressed since he was just wearing a blazer. Nevertheless I stayed suited and we headed to town.

As we were driving approximately 100 mph on a  street where there was a speed limit of 50 mph (sometimes I feel like Steve thinks he’s a race car driver, if that car could talk it’d be screaming “SLOWER, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SLOWER!!!!” at the top of its lungs.) something profoundly weird and at the same time promising happened. They started to play ” I gotta feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas on the radio. That was when I knew that in fact “tonight’s gonna be a good night”. I mean is there any better omen for the outcome of a night than this song coming on!? I say no.

My spirits and hopes as high as Josh Howard we arrived at the casino after picking up our buddy Martin. We strolled inside, got ourselves some chips and went upstairs. Now I have never been to a casino before and I can only imagine how crazy Vegas is, but when we entered the main hall I felt as giddy as a little boy getting his first bicycle. We started out… whoops not so fast!!!

This is where an additional wrinkle comes in to play: In order to make this an even more captivating reading experience I am going to split the story up into three parts (didn’t see that coming did you!?). One following Martin, one looking at Steven’s night and the final one capturing my own quest for the money. Get your popcorn ready, fellas!

**TO BE CONTINUED (this time it will be continued I promise)**