David and Goliath

8 June 2023

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: Following up on last week’s biblical tale of Sampson and Delilah, we bring you another biblical story, an even more famous one, David and Goliath. We will all be Davids in this tale, men and women, battling our own versions of Goliath, the casinos in all their amazingly overwhelming might.

ABBY: I think we all know this story. David, the young Israelite, is sent to have one-on-one combat with the giant Goliath (yes, yes, another Philistine! They are so nasty). Goliath and his Philistines have been slaughtering the Israelites for forty days in pitched battles. Goliath challenges the Israelites to send forth a champion to fight one-on-one to determine who should win this war. Saul, a cowardly king, sends out young David.

CINDY: As the giant and great basketball player, the seven-foot-one Wilt Chamberlain said five decades ago, “Nobody roots for Goliath.” We do not root for Goliath. Nobody roots for that massive human killing machine.

ABBY: Goliath appears in his expensive armor (show off) while David shows up for the battle with a slingshot and five stones. No armor either. Just his shepherd clothes. Yikes! That kid is going to get slaughtered by the giant Goliath.

CINDY: We know what happened next, yes? David puts one of his stones in his slingshot and fires the stone at the center of Goliath’s big, ugly head. Whack! The stone hits Goliath in the center of his forehead and Goliath goes down with a huge thump. David then cuts the giant’s head off and the birds of the air and the animals of the land are left to eat the dead giant.

ABBY: God was on David’s side. Goliath only had his false gods. Come on, you don’t mess with God in the Bible. Too bad Goliath didn’t know this. Stupid giant.

CINDY: Okay, my fellow and sister Davids, how does this tale reflect our battles with our own Goliath?

ABBY: You know who our Goliath is, right? The giant casino industry, represented by whatever casinos at which you play. That industry is clothed in magnificent armor and it has an advantage that the biblical Goliath did not have. The Goliath casinos have an edge at every game and almost all bets at every game. It looks like we Davids in our shepherd clothes are going to find it hard to defeat our Goliaths. Can our five stones win this modern match?

CINDY: The answer to this question is too simple really. Five stones are not enough to defeat the casino Goliath. They just aren’t. And just one stone, as David used, is just too unimpressive to impress us.

ABBY: Our money, which is our weapon, and our strategies, which are our other weapons, can’t defeat the casino Goliath. While Wilt Chamberlain was right that “Nobody roots for Goliath,” the casino Goliath doesn’t need anyone to root for it.

CINDY: While David had the supreme God of the Bible to guarantee that he would win; the casino Goliath has a new god, the god of math and probability to guide it. That’s all it needs and the modern-day Davids flounder in their battles with the giant.

ABBY: You can think of the casinos as the Philistines, raging warriors who can’t be beaten except by divine intervention, which has not yet come and may never come except for this or that player who hits a big one on a slot machine and doesn’t give the money back. With only a few exceptions of the millions of winning players at any given time, only (maybe) a handful stay in the black for the rest of their playing careers. The rest? Dead on the battlefield. Killed by Goliath.

CINDY: Yes, nobody roots for the casino Goliaths, but they are today’s winners.