Good Friends, Bad Friends, Casino Friends

23 November 2023

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: I have several good friends that have been friends of mine since high school. Even when we went to college we stayed in touch. Now we see each other a couple of times a month. A good friend always has your best interests at heart as do you for that person.

ABBIE: What about bad friends?

CINDY: A few of those over the years. I don’t really stay in touch with them. Once you discover what they are really about then you drop them.

ABBIE: Bad friends take advantage of you. I had one who stole money from me by asking to borrow some cash until she could get settled in her new apartment, and I never got it back. She kept giving me a song and dance about how she would pay me back because she wasn’t the kind of person to steal from a “good” friend. After a short while I cut off all communication with her and as you can figure I never got my money back either. It was not a small sum.

CINDY: Now, finally we have the people we call “casino friends.” These are interesting types going all the way from good friends to the worst of the worst but the word “worst” doesn’t do these “friends” justice.

ABBIE: My idea of a good casino friend is someone who leaves you alone to allow you to play the games you want to play and play them in the way you want to play them.

CINDY: You know the two of us are rather conservative players and we are careful with our money.

ABBIE: And we go to the casinos a lot so we have to be careful.

CINDY: That is incumbent on us or we’d probably end up broke and never going to the casinos anymore and that would be very, very hard to take.

ABBIE: I don’t like “casino friends to tell me what to do. If a shooter at craps has been doing okay the “friend” who tells me to “bet it up” is not a real friend. The more money you bet the more the casino’s edge can hurt you.

CINDY: Now you may ask where do we get such friends. It’s simple. Some are people we have known for years who show up in the casinos. They are casino buffs like us. We don’t hang out with them in our real lives but in the casino world they, uh, they…

ABBIE: Attach themselves to us. When I was with my husband the man would attach himself to my husband and I was stuck with the wife. She was often a slot player and I had to hear her endless tales about playing the machines. I really didn’t care to listen for more than a few minutes. I was polite but if I could escape her and I did. I’d go to a different casino if I could.

CINDY: Big drinkers bother me. I like a drink or two in the evenings but I do not want to be with a drooling slob. I certainly don’t want to be at a table with such a person. I do not like loud people whose voices carry all over a fine restaurant.

ABBIE: I know who you are talking about; yes, I do.

CINDY: Now we do have good casino friends and those folks are a pleasure to be around. Fun people. Good talkers about interesting aspects of life or even of the world of the casinos. I do like to talk about casinos as can be shown by our columns.

ABBIE: You know, I am guessing that we are not unusual; that many people share our opinions on these topics.

CINDY: You know. I think we want to be comfortable in the casino world. We have to deal with people in our lives so we want the casino to be an escape in every way.

ABBIE: Agreed!