Lucky Mistakes

Reading about a mistake made by a convenience store clerk that netted one man $128.6 million made me start thinking about mistakes that I have made in my almost 26 years of gambling in casinos. And, yes, no matter how careful I try to be, I do still make mistakes – although I probably make fewer now than when I first started. Or, maybe not – “senior moments” seem to be increasing!

Usually gambling mistakes cause me to lose money, although I try to “learn a lesson” from each one so it won’t be a total loss. I’ve turned away from my machine to have a deep discussion with a friend and not noticed that someone came along and pushed the cashout button – that was about a $600 loss. I’ve hit a last-minute W-2G jackpot that delayed me from meeting friends for dinner, so when I got paid, I was in a hurry and forgot to cash out the balance left on my machine – about $200 gone when I remember to go back about 10 minutes later. Smaller losses have occured when I’ve misread coupons or not checked the details of a promotion I did and found out too late that I wasn’t going to get the bonus I expected.

I also have started playing a machine and not checked the paytable. Occasionally the casino had changed the schedule since I had last played there, but more frequently, the machine was on the default schedule (often the popular but lower-EV Double Double Bonus). I either neglected to choose the right game when I started to play or didn’t notice the machine had returned to the default game when I had run out of credits and had to insert more bills. I usually noticed and corrected my mistake within a few minutes and the loss was minimal even though I was often using the wrong strategy. However, my two biggest “lucky mistakes” came in this circumstance and made me big bucks. Both times I hit quads, one with a kicker, which paid thousands instead of hundreds! Hopefully that has covered a lot of my losing mistakes.