{"id":4910,"date":"2016-12-13T09:16:51","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T17:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamblingwithanedge.com\/?p=4910"},"modified":"2016-12-13T17:34:07","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T01:34:07","slug":"where-i-grew-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/where-i-grew-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Where I Grew Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone pointed me to an article in a West Hollywood publication about the Cavendish West<\/a>. I was surprised to find that I was quoted in the article as the author never spoke to me. He did, however, paraphrase some things I\u2019ve said on the radio show.<\/p>\n

The Cavendish West is the place where I learned many lessons about gambling — from about 1975 \u2013 1991. Although I did play a bit of contract bridge there for money, I was never a winning player at that game. My game of choice was backgammon, where I was successful — for a time.<\/p>\n

In the mid-1970s, when backgammon was a sexy game, was played in discos, and was written about in popular magazines, I was sufficiently above average that I did quite well financially. Eventually the game passed out of favor and the Cavendish was left with only the good pros beating up on the not-so-good pros. I fell into the higher end of the lower category — and eventually, around 1980, I had to go out and get a job to support myself. It was awful.<\/p>\n

I wrote a \u201cLessons from the Cavendish West\u201d chapter in my Million Dollar Video Poker<\/em><\/a> autobiography, but today I want to primarily address other things.<\/p>\n

At the Cavendish, there were a LOT of good players. You could sit and watch them play, and so long as you were quiet you were generally allowed to look on. As Yogi Berra said, \u201cYou can observe a lot just by watching.\u201d You could take notes and see how the big boys did things.<\/p>\n

Sometimes they\u2019d take three or so minutes to make a play and you could see what they finally did, but you had no idea of what their thought process was. For me, just watching was pretty boring. Playing<\/em> was a lot more fun than watching<\/em>. Still is. I basically had a free backgammon university education available to me, but instead chose to go and play backgammon against somebody over whom I had little or no edge. That led to a form of gambler\u2019s ruin.<\/p>\n

Today I hope I\u2019m smarter than that. Video poker opportunities are less plentiful and less lucrative than they used to be. Studying, scouting, and waiting for the good ones are all part of succeeding these days. It\u2019s easy to predict a day will come that I\u2019ll be playing two hours a week or less. I\u2019m preparing for that day. Perhaps you should too. Those who continue to play even though they are not the favorite will continue to lose.<\/p>\n

Other factors that were drummed into me concerned sleep management and substance abuse. During certain periods in the 1980s, I worked 50+ hours a week in IT departments and then tried playing and\/or studying 40 hours a week of backgammon. Both careers suffered — as did my social life. Today I can\u2019t stay alert and play more than 6-8 hours at a time, although if I get a good four hours of sleep I can put in another session of that length. However much EV I calculate a play is worth, that calculation presumes an insignificant number of errors. If I play long enough, I make many more errors than I calculated and lose all my edge.<\/p>\n

The Cavendish was housed in an office building and one flight up was a small roof that covered a portion of the building. Players frequently smoked marijuana or other substances on the roof and getting an invitation to join them was fairly easy. I didn\u2019t do that very often, but when I did, my results suffered greatly. I am not someone who can smoke a joint and then concentrate on playing the way I need to in order to succeed.<\/p>\n

Because of our last election, recreational marijuana is about to be legalized in Nevada. That\u2019s fine for those of you who want that, but for me it\u2019s poison. I\u2019ll stay away. It\u2019s possible that someday I\u2019ll be in sufficient pain that I will take marijuana to help deal with it, but I\u2019ll give up gambling for as long as I\u2019m consuming.<\/p>\n

The end of the article tells of the last days of the Cavendish, when voters of the then recently incorporated West Hollywood decided they didn\u2019t want the club in their city. Previously, West Hollywood was a part of the City of Los Angeles. It was said around the club in the 70s and 80s that the mother of the DA (or was it the chief of police?) regularly played gin rummy at the Cavendish, so the club was safe from being raided. That was probably true, but I don\u2019t know which public official, which mother, or even which jurisdiction this applied to. I was just happy that I could play there.<\/p>\n

The Cavendish died a couple of years before I moved to Las Vegas. I was sad to see it go, although by that time it was just a time-killer for me. There were relatively few backgammon players at the end and, although I could get into a game where I was a slight favorite (I was a MUCH better player at that time than I was back in 1980 when I had to leave and go get a job), the house rake absorbed most of my edge. Still, it was a pleasant diversion one or two nights a week and I liked that.<\/p>\n

When I got to Vegas, there was a backgammon club here. I briefly considered staying active in the backgammon scene, but I already knew I couldn\u2019t support myself playing backgammon in Los Angeles and had heard it was tougher in Las Vegas. No thanks. I decided to stick to games I thought I could beat.<\/p>\n

If you read the article, you\u2019ll see a picture of a backgammon board at the top. This is a folding board, sold at toy stores with toy store dice. This is NOT what we used at the Cavendish. In a reply that I sent in response to the article, I explained what the differences are.<\/p>\n

The picture is also missing the most important part of the game — i.e. the doubling cube. Without a doubling cube, backgammon is just a game. With a doubling cube, backgammon is a great gambling game.<\/p>\n

I suspect my many thousands of hours at the Cavendish helped make me a better gambler today. After you\u2019ve been through many many dozens of winning streaks and losing streaks, it\u2019s easier to keep your balance when you\u2019re in another one.<\/p>\n

At the time, especially when I was losing and had to go and get a job, I thought I had \u201cwasted\u201d several years of my life. Today I believe I couldn\u2019t have gotten to where I am today without going through that first. Among other things, the Cavendish introduced me to Richard Munchkin and for that I\u2019m very grateful.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone pointed me to an article in a West Hollywood publication about the Cavendish West. I was surprised to find that I was quoted in the article as the author never spoke to me. He did, however, paraphrase some things I\u2019ve said on the radio show. The Cavendish West is the place where I learned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2,7,687],"tags":[44,1320,679,85,1321,255,196],"yoast_head":"\nWhere I Grew Up - Gambling With An Edge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/where-i-grew-up\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Where I Grew Up - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Someone pointed me to an article in a West Hollywood publication about the Cavendish West. 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