I would have doubled my money had I not played a martingale trying to recover losses playing the field.
I haven't played craps in years. For years, I had walked into a casino, hawked a few blackjack tables, chalked up the counts in my head for each hand. I never reached the point of instantly knowing the counts. I had to verbalize it in my mind, so it sounded like this: an eight plus a nine is a seventeen, a hold if the dealer isn't showing face. A five plus a nine is fourteen, and that's a stiff hand. Hit it if the dealer is showing face. I would stand there watching each player take his cards, adding up the count and guessing at their best move, hit or stand or split or double down. If I were fast enough to total the hand before the player made his hand gesture, I felt smart and mentally vigorous. If not, I fetched a cup of coffee. I had memorized the optimum blackjack chart way back when I lived in a town with four casinos, counting Windsor. My losses in blackjack were negligible. If the table wasn't hot, I walked. Three losses in a row, got up. Never played at a table with more than three players. When visiting a casino with tables eight players deep, I had shaken my head to see how many people didn't know they were spreading the luck of the table too thin. It's the ten cards that win the day, and I don't want to split those ten cards with eight people. If a fellow wants company, it's cheaper to seek company at the bar than at the blackjack table. I had groaned when I walked into any casino using a machine that shuffled a deck of nine decks continuously, making each deal statistically equal to all other deals. I had moaned when I discovered that some casinos play blackjack on tables with computer screens, no cards to hold, no shoe to cut. No table to grow too hot, pay out to much.
I had enjoyed craps as a spectator sport too. When the table wasn't too crowded because it's bad manners to belly up to the rail when the table is crowded. Craps might be a classic game that game designers can't ever mess up. Put a five dollar chip on the pass line, and you've got yourself a business. If a four comes twice before a seven, your business is 100 percent profitable. If a seven comes before a four is rolled twice, your business must recaptialize.
So, I was feeling really risky when I threw three twenties and a fiver on the baize and uttered, "Change, no action". I threw it upon the Come field. Without those words, it was a bet, which would have doubled my money on seven or eleven. Lost it on a two, three or twelve. Eight ways to win versus four ways to lose on the next roll. Real quick, I had 13 red five dollar chips and a 5 dollar bet on the Come field. When the roller hit a hard 8, a four on each dice, I had a five dollar bet on eight. I backed it with another 5 dollar chip.
I have developed a way of managing my money, separating buy in from action, the money won from the house. 13 chips placed on the first rail told me I still had my buy in. Five chips on the second rail told me I had earned some cash for my time and risk. The one dollar chips were too hard to count, so I alway placed them on the YO line, paying out fifteen when it hit, riding for another roll,
It was a choppy game. My eight come bet backed by five paid off with eleven dollars. The next bet, a statistically safe bet on six backed by a five chip lost me ten when seven rolled. One cat at the right end of my table rolled four sevens in a roll coming out, making me an easy twenty dollars. Another can rolled three threes in a roll, knocking me down fifteen. I had a pass line bet, locked so I couldn't pick it up, on five backed by six dollars, and I risk managed and only lost six dollars when I hit a Come bet when Seven rolled, crapping out my pass line bet. One time I took down my backing bets on the pass line and the nine when a cat bounced the dice over the rail. Bad luck, and I saved myself a twenty-one dollars loss. Instead, I only had a loss of ten. I hit three YO bets, once having a bet for the Sara the cute stick girl beside mine, meaning fifteen dollars for Sara. I usually don't like to bet them, but I backed a point of four once and won and I backed a bet of ten once and won. There's only 3 ways to roll a four against 6 ways to roll a seven, so that way a backing bet of five earns ten in return when the point comes in. Same goes for the ten.
I was growing bored. I don't think the house was pumping oxygen into the atmosphere and people watching hadn't impressed me. I had twelve chips on the action rail, sixty dollars. I had two bets on five and nine, for eleven dollars each. I was 82 dollars ahead of my buy-in. And I put five on the field, a sucker bet to some. Four ways to win. Five ways to lose. Two ways to win 2 for 1, the twelve and the two. And then the seven rolled, costing me twenty seven dollars. That was the first triple loss in the game, the usual sign to quit a cold table. But I was up eleven chips, and I had always wanted to play a martingale. When one loses a five dollar bet, one makes a ten dollar bet. If that wins, one is whole again. If that loses, follow with a twenty dollar bet. My ten on the field was lost when the roller shot a hard eight, good news for those playing the hard ways. Bad news since I had put my money on the field. So I doubled up to twenty, and shooter gave us a no-field five. So I was out fifty seven dollars in three rolls. I gathered up all my red chips and made my way to the bank, no one offering to color me up, Sara wishing me a good night. So I got myself a free steak at Bourbon. In the end, the house and I had a push.
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