I don’t watch baseball on television very often, but I happened to have a Dodgers-Rays game on in the background not so long ago. I spent the first 46 years of my life in greater Los Angeles and the Dodgers have always been “my team.” There were some great teams when the Dodgers were owned by the O’Malleys, but there have recently been some lean years.
Now the team is owned by a group which includes popular ex-Laker Magic Johnson. This year started out dreadfully, but in the past couple of months the Dodgers have been among the hottest teams in baseball. Dodger fans (even those of us who live in Las Vegas) are ecstatic that the team is back.
I happened to glance up during a between-innings interview of Dodger manager Don Mattingly. He gave reasonable, albeit somber, answers to the reporter’s questions. The reporter asked why Mattingly was so quiet and not jumping up and down for joy at the team’s recent successes. Mattingly answered that (paraphrasing), “Yes, it is good the team has been winning recently, but every day remains a grind.” That ended the interview and they went to a commercial.
What that phrase meant to me was that his attention was on the details: When should he change pitchers? Is now the time to bunt? Since this player hasn’t done well lately, should the club get rid of him or try to rehabilitate him? When should he bring these players back from the disabled list? Which players need some rest? Etc., etc. With Mattingly concentrating so much of his attention on the specific decisions needed to manage the team, there’s not much time left for celebrating when the club is doing well.
As always, everything reminds me of video poker!
I had a $1,000,000 six month run at video poker with my ex-wife Shirley back in late 2000 and early 2001. I still get questions about it regularly, partly because people (thankfully!) continue to buy and read my book, Million Dollar Video Poker, which tells about that run. People want to know about the fun and excitement of playing and winning at such high stakes.
To use Don Mattingly’s phrase, every day was a grind. There was never a time when we could sit back, relax, and have the casino throw money at us. That just didn’t happen. There were always long hours–studying every promotion at every casino; attempting to play every hand correctly; trying to monopolize the machines that were paying off at a slot machine rate rather than a video poker machine rate without the casino and other players realizing why we were monopolizing those machines; managing sleep; deciding what to say to casino management to keep the gravy train coming; taking the time to write articles and teach classes (at a MUCH lower dollar-per-hour rate than playing) so as to have a backup plan when the party was over; being pleasant to casino employees and other players in order to keep our welcome; etc.
At the time, we didn’t know when the casinos might cease welcoming our play. We strongly suspected that time was coming. The one night when I hit a $100,000 royal flush and Shirley hit one for $400,000 a half hour later was AFTER we thought we were living on borrowed time. We could easily have been kicked out before that night ever happened. There were many negotiations of various sorts that allowed us to keep playing, and we kept up those negotiations right until the end. I would have preferred to write a book about the two million dollar year rather than the one million dollar six months — but such was not to be.
Today when I play Quick Quads at the South Point, it’s a grind. When I play Ultimate X at the Palms, it’s a grind. At other casinos, I play NSU Deuces Wild and even some lesser games with an incentive program. Every one of them is a grind. In a very real way, winning at video poker is a difficult profession.
I know it might sound like I’m complaining — I don’t think I am but I can see that it could sound that way — but that’s not the reason I’m writing this column. I very much enjoy what I’m doing and am delighted that I’m successful at it. But it’s never party time while I’m in the casino. Regardless of what happens today, I’m looking ahead to what I have to do to be ready for tomorrow. I can’t just sit down at a machine and automatically know how to play the hands correctly. It takes work for me to learn the strategies initially, but I also must make time to practice and review the strategies so that I can maintain my skills with each game.
I’ve had people tell me that I’m living a fantasy life. I gamble all day, go to fancy restaurants, stay in luxury hotel suites, go on nice cruises, and, at the end of the day, I am usually ahead monetarily. It might look like that from the outside, but not when you’re living the life day-to-day. It’s a grind. A grind with benefits, to be sure, but a grind nonetheless.
For those of you considering such a life, keep in mind that not everybody has the resilience and/or personality for this sort of livelihood. If you think this is for you, go ahead and give it a try. But keep up your skills for the job you’re going to need if the grinding doesn’t work out for you. Back in 1980 when I realized that I needed to quit the gambling game I loved (it was backgammon at the time) and go out and get a real job, it was a real drag. I’m pretty sure it would be no more fun today.