If your personal philosophy requires you to tell the truth 100% of the time, and anyone who doesn’t is going to hell, you’re not going to enjoy this article very much.
I married Bonnie, the widow of a career United States Air Force officer, in May of last year. Our planned European honeymoon needed to be scrapped because of a health issue for Bonnie which arose unexpectedly. This year we planned a make-up honeymoon consisting of four days in Paris, France followed by two weeks aboard the Norwegian Cruise Line Jade out of Venice, Italy.
Sometime before the trip, Bonnie remarked that if Fred were still alive, this trip would have been for their 50th anniversary. I suggested, rather spur of the moment, that we pretend it was OUR golden anniversary rather than a delayed honeymoon. Bonnie thought that sounded like fun.
Soon after takeoff from Las Vegas, on a Delta flight, I told our stewardess that after 50 years of marriage, this was our first trip to Paris and we were VERY excited about it. Shortly thereafter we were presented with two complimentary 375 ml bottles of champagne and the stewardesses took turns congratulating the couple who had been together for half a century and still held hands!
So far so good.
We changed planes in Minneapolis for the trip to Charles De Gaulle airport aboard Air France, and they served all the alcohol you wanted (which wasn’t much for us). So we didn’t say a word about our Golden anniversary.
Our stay in Paris was with friends of Fred and Bonnie. They knew Fred had passed away about three years ago. We certainly didn’t mention 50 years to them either.
On the ship, we were glad for the opportunity to dance to “Twice as Nice,” a married-couple duo comprised of Westley Stevens and Shelly Dartez, whom we had enjoyed on an earlier NCL cruise. Most of their music consists of oldies from the 70s to the 90s (including a lot of Motown) and we can dance to more than half of the songs they play. We told them it was our 50th and it was almost like publishing it in the Freestyle Daily! Every night Shelly mentioned that we were celebrating 50 years of wedded bliss before playing “Could I Have This Dance for the Rest of My Life,” a mushy love song waltz that we particularly enjoy.
One day over breakfast, a couple we were sitting next to said that they enjoyed our dancing the night before. The conversation continued and they brought up a cruise they had taken to Hawaii. Bonnie mentioned that her husband had been in the Air Force and that they had been stationed in Hawaii for three years back in the 1980s.
Since this other couple had just heard the night before that Bonnie and I had been married for 50 years, they made the logical inference and politely asked me what I had done in the Air Force.
Uh oh. I tried to join the Air Force about 45 years ago but was rejected due to poor health. Having health issues is not a good thing, but during the Vietnam War, I was not sorry to be excused from military service. I didn’t know what Fred did in Hawaii in the 1980s and thought I could easily trip myself up if I continued this conversation.
So I demurred. “I still can’t talk about it. Sorry. By the way, are you going ashore tomorrow in Santorini? Which excursion are you taking?” Our new friends allowed the conversation to meander elsewhere — and later I admonished Bonnie that if we were going to pretend, she had to be on the ball at all times and not mention things when I wasn’t there.
That wasn’t easy. Bonnie talks comfortably with strangers and part of what she does is to exchange information about our lives. She is generally truthful about what she shares and all of a sudden having to stop conversing in her normal way was not a simple thing to do. For the most part, she did well. She did slip up a few times (so did I at least once), but we weren’t called on it when this happened.
So far as I know, we got away with our little ruse on the ship — although we didn’t receive any extra benefits from it other than getting to dance to our favorite song every night. Things could have been a little more complicated. Caesars (Harrah’s) awards “free” NCL cruises to their Seven Stars players, among others, and I’m known (at least by my photo) to several thousand of these players. Fortunately none of them were on the Jade at this time, or if so they didn’t come up and say anything.
But if we had been caught, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. People would have quickly realized that it was a fairly harmless ruse — more or less equivalent to falsely claiming it is your birthday in a restaurant in order to get them to sing to you and give you a free piece of cake. NCL isn’t worried about “advantage cruisers,” and most things on a cruise are “all you can consume” anyway. You can eat until you’re sick, go to the pool as often as you like, see the shows or not, whatever. There are some things for which there is a surcharge (“premium” meals, alcohol, spa services, shore excursions, etc.) but if you pay that surcharge, you can go.
In a casino, it’s not the same. Casinos are often on the lookout for advantage players, and if they find one (or think they have found one), they often restrict that player.
Successful gamblers use all sorts of ruses in a casino. If you use one, it’s important to keep your story straight. Casino employees are willing to believe what you say, to a certain extent, but many of these people are not fools. If you tell them you live in Texas and then present a Nevada ID when you hit a jackpot, you better have a plausible explanation. And if your on-the-spot plausible explanation doesn’t match the one your spouse gives, bingo! You’re caught!
Such questions as, “What is your name?” “What is your profession?” “What is the name of your spouse?” and “Where do you live?” are all commonplace and easy to answer. Most people give up this information easily and without much thought. Recreational gamblers usually have no reason to hide these things.
Successful professional gamblers have many reasons to disguise this information. Some feel, correctly, that if a casino knew how good they were the casino wouldn’t allow them to play. Others understand that if a casino knows your name, it’s easier for them to store information and communicate with other casinos about you. Discussing “John Smith” with Social Security Number 123-12-1234 and tracking everything about him is easier than keeping tabs about the tall guy who wore a brown jacket last time he came in.
Finding ways to overstate your losses can yield better rebates, mailers, and other benefits. Card pulling used to work well for that purpose in video poker, but on modern machines that isn’t the case. On table games, there are any number of ways to “rathole” chips to reduce how much you have in front of you. But don’t get caught!
Video poker players are less able to play anonymously than many other gamblers can because of slot club cards and W-2Gs. Still, there are secrets to be kept. Between my writings and my radio show, I have revealed more about myself and my techniques than have most successful gamblers. But I still have my secrets and need to be careful how much is revealed to whom.
Some casino promotions are too good to last — but it takes awhile for the casino to figure this out. If you’re playing, playing, playing and they already think you’re a good player, it’s useful to have an alternative explanation as to why you’re there rather than pointing out that the casino is giving away the farm.
When Harrah’s Laughlin had $5 and $10 10/7 Double Bonus (a very un-Harrah’s-like 100.17% pay schedules) and the game included various kinds of bonuses and comps, I would explain that I came down there every few weeks to play because my (then) mother-in-law lived nearby. While that was true, and Virginia would come by to “help” me play, them thinking of me as a good son-in-law rather than a strong player coming in to clean their clock allowed the play to last longer than it otherwise might have.
In my Million Dollar Video Poker autobiography I recount several ruses we used to keep playing when the MGM Grand was throwing money at players.
If a casino discovers your ruse, they may take actions you won’t like. If they were on the fence about allowing you to continue to play or not and they catch you in a lie, they will no longer be on that fence.
If you supposedly fly into Vegas every two weeks from Tennessee and collect airfare reimbursement each time, and then a casino employee spots you grocery shopping in Green Valley at 3 a.m., you’re going to have an unpleasant discussion with some casino executive. In this case, I suppose the casino could prosecute you for fraud. Although casinos don’t usually do this to their customers, if you’re a winning player they might.
While hosting the Gambling with an Edge radio show, and regularly having attorneys Bob Nersesian, Bob Loeb, and I. Nelson Rose on the air, I’ve become aware of a considerable number of excuses casinos have used to get out of paying players. Sometimes these casinos are successful. Sometimes not. And what makes sense to players is not always the way the judges rule.
If the casino takes the angle that “The player was lying to us — so that negates our responsibility to pay him,” it sometimes works. If you don’t believe it, check out Phil Ivey’s case against Crockford’s in London, a particularly unfriendly city for advantage players.
So if you do use a ruse in a casino, don’t get caught! And if there are two or more of you in the same ruse, you need to practice beforehand and think out all likely scenarios to keep the story straight. People who think quickly can often come up with a plausible explanation for anything very quickly. But your spur-of-the-moment plausible explanation might be quite a bit different from mine. And then we’re busted!