The gist of this article is a well-intentioned one. For me, life is too short to worry about all the minutiae to become an extremely serious AP. I play the best games I can find and that also have the best players clubs and perks. Entertainment and fun are the main reasons I play, but always with an eye on the bottom line. If the bottom line doesn’t add up over the long run, I’ll quit.

That being said, I leave for Vegas in 10 hours….ha.

to Kevin Lewis….it’s never too late to pen that novel!!! remember clara peller? she was ‘where’s the beef’ lady on the commercials. I believe she was in her 80’s when she got her first ‘big break’. some artist, whose name escapes me, started his work very later in life! it can be done!

I have spent many, many hours of my life gambling–if that’s the word for it–playing as an advantage player in blackjack, poker, and VP (in roughly that order). For the last twenty-odd years, that’s been my major source of income. Yet, I really wish I had done almost anything else. I had NO personal growth of any kind while I was playing; my health–especially my back–suffered; it was a lonely and stressful existence; and perhaps worst of all, I can never get back all the thousands of hours that I might have used more productively. Society did not benefit from my presence all those years.

Many (, many) people have told me that I should have become a writer. Yet, while I could have been penning the Great American Novel, I was squinting at a video poker machine, trying to recall how many penalty cards could dance on the head of a pin so I could squeeze out an additional 0.01 percent. Everything we do has an opportunity cost. My feeling is that the money I’ve earned from advantage gambling, substantial though it has been, is dwarfed by the opportunity cost I’ve paid–the things I never did, said, saw, or wrote.