THE NUMBERS GAME

Someone reminded me that, when I wrote about our February visit back to Vegas, I promised I would talk about our casino play on that trip. In the Feb 26^th blog I wrote: “I will probably surprise you with details about how much we played and what games we chose.”

How the world has changed.  That Vegas trip, probably being our last, was a high-point in our life at the time. That occurred less than two months ago!  But today it is far back in my mind; so much pandemic chaos fills my brain and floods my thinking – as it does for most everyone.

Is talking about the details of that visit a suitable blog topic?

Right after we came home from that trip, I got to work on our 2019 taxes.  At that time the tax return deadline was still April 15, and I needed to gather up all the paperwork and send it by mid-March to Russell Fox (who not only was a valuable contributor to the last edition of Tax Help for Gamblers but our personal tax preparer as well).

When I finished that job for the 2019 return, as was my custom every year I transferred some of that information to our cumulative gambling record covering 35 (!) years.  (This record is mostly hard-copy since I never really embraced spreadsheets.  I’m lucky to add and subtract on Excel!)

It was at this point I was hit with the realization that this was now a final gambling accounting – for us.  It was our long-term.

I have talked about long-term and short-term ever since I began writing about gambling 22+ years ago.  For us, when we started advantage play 35 years ago, I believed in my head the math concept of the long-term – but in real casino life it was hard emotionally to take big one-time losses and even harder when we were in long stretches and it seemed we would never see another royal flush.  But hard as it was, we kept the faith.  We also buckled down during those times; we became more disciplined, studied harder, scouted more for better EV game choices, and were extra careful not to over bet our bankroll.

So, I have decided, starting in my next blog, to share with you some of the financial history of our 35 years of advantage gambling.  It is a picture of a wild roller-coaster!  But maybe it will help some of you who plan to get on that wild ride again when casinos finally open. And then I will eventually get to the question I posed here earlier – maybe talking about the short-term will shed more light on the long-term.

A personal note here:  I have been battling allergy, sinus, flu, and cold symptoms for a month now – everything except a high fever.  Of course, the thought crossed my mind that I might have the corona virus, but I really didn’t think so.  I often have had this allergy-based battle in the spring, and it wasn’t surprising that I probably wasn’t sensitized yet to the pollen in GA.  Finally, going to the doctor for some antibiotics when it seemed like viruses were leading to more serious bacterial issues, I was given a Covid-19 test. Not surprising, knowing GA was way down on the scale of testing, I didn’t get the results back for 10 days but I was happy it turned out to be negative.  Now I just have to be patient while my bronchitis – very slowly – goes away.

(Speaking of testing.  My grandson Zachary, who hadn’t been  home from Afghanistan very long, is again away from his family.  His National Guard unit has been activated once more – this time to fight the Corona virus.  They have been decontaminating nursing homes and now are helping to set up more much-needed testing sites.   I am so proud of him – and proud of his wife Taylor who is holding down the fort at home with 3 sweet but never-still kiddies!)

And a final note: I don’t care that our governor is letting us out of jail today – far too early according to the scientists and doctors I choose to trust.  Brad and I are staying in for a good bit longer.  We are seasoned gamblers but I like the odds a little more in our favor!