I first started playing “big” in 1994 — which at the time meant playing $5 9/6 Jacks or Better with a 0.67% cash slot club, and juicy monthly promotions at Treasure Island and the Mirage. Other casinos had similar situations (Caesars Palace, Desert Inn, MGM Grand and the Golden Nugget, among others), but I didn’t find out about those until later.

I was 47 years old at the time — a fairly typical age for the customers of those casinos. For the most part, people in their 20s and 30s were still trying to buy a house and find a way to send the kids to college, so they generally didn’t have the funds necessary to gamble for sizeable stakes. 

I was engaged to Shirley and married her later that year. A significant number of the participants in these events were married and both spouses played — and the single ones were probably 80% men and 20% women.

I played these games and promotions for the next seven years — getting to know many of the players who played these promotions at most of the casinos and gradually increasing the denominations of the games I played. The monthly promotions were often on weekends, and there were more than four casinos having regular promotions, so we’d often double dip or triple dip the same weekend.

For a period of three or four years, enough casinos were having generous promotions that if you could afford to play $5 single line games and could play 9/6 Jacks or Better competently, you did very well. Shirley and I remained as frugal as when we didn’t have a lot of money, so our gambling bankroll grew significantly. This type of bonanza no longer exists. There are games you can beat, but not a lot of them.

I got to know two players, “Tom” and “Jerry,” —  one of whom died several years ago and the other I haven’t seen for a few years and may or may not still be an active player. They were gambling partners — not in any romantic sense but in a business sense. There were also teams, where one person put up the money and had several players playing progressives with the common bankroll, but this wasn’t the same as that.

Tom and Jerry both had been successful gamblers for years and both had a gambling bankroll. They just shared results, so if one hit a $100,000 royal flush, that windfall was split two ways. Same principle if one had a big loss.

I had several discussions with them, both separately and together, about what makes a good partner. First was absolute trust. Second, each had to bring something to the relationship the other one lacked. In this particular case, Tom was successful at poker and blackjack, in addition to video poker, while Jerry played progressives and flew all over the country to casino openings. 

A third feature was analytical skills. There were (and still are) a lot of positive gambling opportunities. Discussions needed to be had as to which were the best ones to attack — and how. Each promotion is a little bit different than the others, and sometimes there were arguments about which ones to approach and how. For me, this is a major benefit of having a trusted partner. I wouldn’t want a yes man. I would want someone who could challenge my ideas.

There were far fewer casinos nationwide then than there are now, and most of the brand-new ones had problems when they opened — which could be exploited by the knowledgeable player. Jerry liked doing that and was successful at it.

For me, Shirley was a gambling partner, of sorts, when we were married — but I was by far the driving force behind the decisions. She didn’t really like gambling very much, although she liked dancing at the events. When we became successful enough that she could quit, she happily did. That was a major contributing factor to us eventually getting divorced in 2012 — although her desire to move away from Las Vegas and her aversion to cigarette smoke were the dominant reasons for the breakup. I’d spend 60 hours a week on gambling-related activities, and she fended for herself. We just didn’t do enough things together.

After my marriage to Shirley broke up and I hooked up with Bonnie, I knew I had to do marriage differently for it to survive. Bonnie is a partner in life, but not so much a partner in gambling. She will never be a competent video poker player, but I play on both her card and mine, where allowed, and we go to out-of-town casino events together. 

We were in square dancing together for years, but when the pandemic shut things down, Bonnie decided she didn’t want to do that anymore. We might pick that back up if the recent tax bill remains unchanged and I quit gambling in a few months.

At one point along the way, I decided to have a gambling partner of my own. I’ll tell you about it, but not today.