Oh, shut up!

27 October 2015

By Frank Scoblete

Here are two examples, just two, in the larger litany of hundreds of casino patrons that I wish would take themselves out of Lady Luck’s temple and (oh, I don’t know) take up knitting, parachuteless sky diving or something to that effect.

These players are the inveterate complainers.

Now most casino gamblers, meaning the overwhelming majority of them, have the sense to know that the casino has the edge on every game and that over time, sometimes a long time, sometimes a short time and sometimes an even shorter time, the casino player will be a loser. That is a fact of casino-playing life.

It is rare indeed that someone hits something so tremendously big that he/she cannot ever lose it back to the house. Here we would be talking about someone who hits one of those outrageous, 50-million-(or-so)-to-one shots such as Megabucks. Otherwise, the operant sound for the money with which people gamble is a resounding “phfft!” from your pocket or purse into the casinos giant underground safes.

But facts don’t stop the complainers from voicing (loudly voicing; cursing and voicing; whining and voicing; voicing, voicing and still voicing even more) their displeasure at losing this hand, that hand, the other hand and decision after decision on that or this; be those decisions on slot machines, video poker machines or every table game you can imagine.

There was a young woman who was playing blackjack in a Strip casino in Las Vegas. It was about seven in the morning and it looked as if she had been playing all night. Whatever cuteness this young woman might have had was now lost in a wild-eyed scowling.

“Do you? Do you know how much I am down?” she screamed so everyone on Earth could hear her. “They have to be cheating me on almost every hand. I can’t win! I can’t win! Damn!”

I stood a ways away from her and she just kept up a constant stream of disfavor with the game of blackjack, this particular “cheating” casino, with the dealer who she claimed was making fun of her losses (not so, the dealer had that look which said, “I hope this b—— gets hit by a car on Las Vegas Blvd”). She’d slam her chips when she lost a hand. There was a lot of slamming going on.

You find some of these complainers at craps tables. They get angry when someone sevens-out, as if the person is deliberately trying to make everyone lose. “Can’t you shoot the stinking dice? Why don’t you pass them next time and let someone who can shoot shoot.”

If a few shooters in a row seven-out early, these craps complainers will yell their conniptions to whomever will listen, which is usually no one as many other craps players will leave the table and head for a table that has more cordial players.

I always felt that if you are going to be a player, then be a player with some class. Don’t take out your frustration on the dealers, your fellow players or the gods of good fortune. Most of the rest of us actually don’t care about your bad fortune and you jabbering about it over and over is one of the biggest annoyances in casino playing.

I only have a simple thing to say to the complainers: “Oh, shut up!”

Frank Scoblete’s new book is “I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps!”