Casinos in Las Vegas are a mixture between DisneyWorld and those cages that they herd cattle into right before the entrance to the slaughterhouse. Our first stop was Paris Las Vegas, one of those big fancy places that prides itself on maintaining a thoroughly Parisian theme while also having street signs encouraging you to visit “Le Restroom.” We didn’t actually bother gambling there until the next morning, instead passing through to get across the street to the Bellagio.
The Bellagio is nice. It’s still Las Vegas, but it feels more comfortable, like the kind of place you might like to hang out for a while even if you’re not gambling. We obtained our Player’s Cards (ten free dollars!) and got right down to gambling. The free money went quickly, but with it came some minor winnings. Enough to wet our palate and get Steve and I interested in something a little harder – table games!
Here, though, we struck a serious wall. Table games in Las Vegas are not your friendly pick-up poker game. Chips move at absurd speeds and then a man dealing cards or rolling dice yells something unintelligible until suddenly it’s over and everyone has lost. Little signs alert you to the table minimum – generally in the $10-$25 region, but I definitely spied a few empty tables that were $1000+. $10-$25 still seemed like a lot, though, especially when we were banking on the free money from the Player's Clubs. By the time we had made it through Caesar’s Palace and into Mandalay Bay, though, the Player’s Clubs were no longer open, meaning the free money had dried up and there was no choice but to grab the bull by the horns and hit a table game.
Sage and Natalie gamely waited around while Steve and I admired our choices. Roulette seemed fun in theory, and also had a better chance of winning than most games, but in reality it’s impossible to tell what is happening, since the dealer almost immediately scrapes the chips off the mat as soon as they are placed. Poker was a definite no, as all eight thousand varieties were available in their maddeningly precise forms. We finally settled on blackjack, hoping to find a table with a few cute girls who we could impress and maybe get some drinks for. No such luck in that department – I guess cute girls in Las Vegas, just like everywhere else, are a commodity that is quickly exploited. Steve and I lack that quickness.
So, we just picked a table. Minimum $15. We sat down in the two empty seats and pressed 20’s towards the dealer. She changed us out for four $5 chips. Betting time arrived and Steve slid a single chip forward. “Minimum is fifteen,” the dealer noted. Important fact: Minimum does not mean the buy-in price. It means the absolute minimum bet. Steve and I gulped and went all in on our first hand.
The dealer recognized our that we were novices and took pity. As she dealt, she alerted Steve and I to our surprisingly winning prospects, then proceeded to lose with her own hand. The dealer paid out to everyone and Steve and I ended up doubling our money. Sensing victory would not be so easy to come by in the second round of betting, we did what so many gamblers are incapable of - we picked up our meager piles of chips and went home successful.
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