Fuengirola2
Fuengirola2
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February 14th, 2013 at 3:28:17 PM permalink
I did not find another thread about this.. maybe I was just careless.

I started at very young age. I was maybe 10 years old, when I got addicted to slot games, which we have in nearly every shop, snackbar, pub.. They were forbidden for under 15yo back then so it was always like hit-and-run or the red-faced staff kicked you out. Once I even got barred from a grill for repeatedly playing their slot machine when they had told me not to touch it.

Those days I put always all my spare money into slots and lottery tickets. But it was never a problem to me; I took no loans from friends nor stealt from my family, and always did the other things (like buying sweeties) before gambling the rest.

So is it nowadays - I don't have an addiction in a sickly manner so that I would take loans to compensate losings or gamble before paying my bills. We have just one casino in this cold nordic country, and it's 650 kilometers away from me, so I merely stick to online playing and nightclub Blackjack. I have big plans to get a new decent bankroll and start playing Hold'em, and some day take a plane to Vegas! To try out the real BJ tables and Poker and feel the Big World.

It would be nice to hear your stories. I'm a curious stranger!
GH
GH
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February 14th, 2013 at 3:32:09 PM permalink
My aunt owned a liquor store and had a set of (surplus?) slot machines at her house. As an up and coming hacker at age 9; getting to mess around with the internals made her one of my "favorite aunts."
Fuengirola2
Fuengirola2
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February 14th, 2013 at 3:39:48 PM permalink
I today told my dad and brothers about my previous big loss. They just can't understand. They're not gamblers.
bbvk05
bbvk05
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February 14th, 2013 at 3:40:56 PM permalink
I would drive my grandmother to gamble right from when I got a license. My grandmother would give me money and I would play poker and blackjack. I looked pretty old and nobody seemed to mind.

Nobody ever carded me and I never played slots because I didn't want to have to deal with ID on a handpay. As a result I hate slots and this has probably been good for me. I learned to card count at 18 or so and it has been moderately profitable as a hobby. I am about a $4 an hour profit type of player as my bankroll is quite small. I've only been barred from one place.
Fuengirola2
Fuengirola2
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February 14th, 2013 at 3:49:24 PM permalink
This is a nice song (and a nice movie): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNGe7iK1O-4
teddys
teddys
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February 14th, 2013 at 4:33:12 PM permalink
Quote: Fuengirola2

We have just one casino in this cold nordic country, and it's 650 kilometers away from me, so I merely stick to online playing and nightclub Blackjack.

Is this the infamous Finnish "worst blackjack rules in the world" game?

Here in Finland we have blackjack tables in some nightclubs and restaurants but these tables follow the following rules: six decks, stand off only on 21 and blackjack, stand offs on 17,18,19 and 20 the house wins!! No surrender, European no hole card rule, double 9-11, unlimited splits! I understand this is a bad deal for players but how bad is it? What is the house edge in this game?
— Kim from Helsinki, Finland
I have actually seen these rules when I went to Helsinki in 1986. Without a doubt the worst blackjack rules I have ever seen. Again I turn to Stanford Wong with questions like this. His Blackjack Edge software indicates that the house edge under these rules, aside from the losing to ties, to be 0.75%. This assumes the dealer stands on soft 17 and doubling after splitting is not allowed. You didn’t indicate these rules in your e-mail. When I need to know about an unusual rule variation I turn to Wong’s Basic Blackjack which says on page 93 that losing all on a tie, except 21-21, adds 7.0% to the house edge. Thus the overall house edge is 7.75%!
"Dice, verily, are armed with goads and driving-hooks, deceiving and tormenting, causing grievous woe." -Rig Veda 10.34.4
Wizard
Administrator
Wizard 
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February 14th, 2013 at 4:48:37 PM permalink
Here is a picture of me (on the left) playing poker with my brother. Click on the picture for a larger version.

.
"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow." -- Ecclesiastes 1:18 (NIV)
vendman1
vendman1
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February 14th, 2013 at 4:54:12 PM permalink
Quote: Wizard

Here is a picture of me (on the left) playing poker with my brother. Click on the picture for a larger version.

.



The question is Mike, who won?
Fuengirola2
Fuengirola2
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February 14th, 2013 at 4:57:08 PM permalink
teddys: You're right. The nightclub/pub rules are: 6 decks, pen. 1/2, S17, nDAS, D10/11, one split, split aces and get only one more card, no surrender, ties lose, no hole card, BJ pays 3:2. Not sure about the Casino rules, but at least ties don't lose. The minimum bet is 10€ per hand in Casino. 1-2€ in clubs.

But the dealers are mostly nice attracting women, and it's fun to socialize with other drunks while practicing BS and couting. But I hate the dealers never accept not splitting tens without my action although I always tell I never split tens. Would speed up the game, and leaves more time to drink beer and chat with girls. I'm not too keen on my 1€ bets, win or lose. Btw.. I often get a girl to play with me, and give her some of my chips and tell her to play how she likes. It's fun, and they may think "woah, must be a wealthy guy letting me play his money."
24Bingo
24Bingo
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February 14th, 2013 at 5:09:24 PM permalink
The year after I turned 21, I spent a lot of time hanging around in bars, and one of them held a freeroll to drum up business. I began going to that, and that led to a cash game and some tourneys, and that led to talk of the casino, until one day when I was sort of down that way anyway, I went, played some 2/4, and even though at the time I knew not a lot about the no-limit I'd been playing and nothing about limit, I left about $20 up through dumb luck, and, well... you know what they say is the worst thing that can happen to a new gambler.
The trick to poker is learning not to beat yourself up for your mistakes too much, and certainly not too little, but just the right amount.
Scot
Scot
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February 14th, 2013 at 5:14:21 PM permalink
I got started with gambling on harness racing at a state fair, with my grandfather.
Ibeatyouraces
Ibeatyouraces
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February 14th, 2013 at 5:20:31 PM permalink
deleted
DUHHIIIIIIIII HEARD THAT!
MrV
MrV
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February 14th, 2013 at 5:21:43 PM permalink
I started when I was a kid.

My uncle was a crooked cop, and he acquired a nickel slot machine in a raid that he kept in his basement, near the full bar.

Every family get together while my folks drank I played slots.
"What, me worry?"
Beardgoat
Beardgoat
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February 14th, 2013 at 5:55:37 PM permalink
No real story to it other than wanting to get some money and the casino seemed like a great idea. The casinos here allowed us to enter at 18 years old so a bunch of us would go after class our senior year of high school. We played $1 black jack machines and thought it was crazy if someone bet $5 a hand. And if you had to double down while betting $5... Oh brother that was a lot of money haha.
Fuengirola2
Fuengirola2
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February 14th, 2013 at 6:02:51 PM permalink
I just asked an online casino to email me my transactions/betting history in some more readable format than their WWW site's transactions browser. Quite a good run I turned 15€ into 10 000€ in 1,5 months playing slots, VP, BJ and Roulette, so all being -EV against the house. Seems it all started with 0,2€ bets in JoB VP.
Doc
Doc
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February 14th, 2013 at 6:07:56 PM permalink
I managed to make it through my youth and then some, essentially without gambling at all -- maybe $10 total play before I turned 25 and all of that in nickel slot machines at places along the way while traveling with my parents.

From 1975 to 1978 (age 29-32), I worked in an engineering group at a synthetic fiber plant. Once or twice a month, some of the guys from work got together for a social evening of dealer's-choice nickel/dime/quarter poker. And I'm referring to chips representing those actual coins. A typical night meant the big loser lost $10 and the big winner won maybe $20. Did I mention these were social evenings? During that period, in the summer of 1976, my wife and I went on our first cruise, and aboard that ship was my very first casino, where I played $2 blackjack. I played in five more cruise ship casinos by the end of the century, and that represented all of my gambling.

Then, January through May of 2003, my job took me two weeks a month to a variety of military facilities in Southern California. A few evenings I visited casinos and a couple of card rooms with the guys on my project team, and we spent one weekend in Las Vegas. I loved the place, and that was when/where my interest in casinos and related activities blossomed.
TIMSPEED
TIMSPEED
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February 14th, 2013 at 6:10:09 PM permalink
Dunno, really...
I started counting cards before I was 18 (we played cards in high school at break and stuff)
Soon as I turned 18, I went to the Indian casinos frequently and beat their shoe games with zero heat (spreading 1-20!)
After I got burned out with bj and Indian casinos I turned to video poker and Reno....
And well, craps has always had the lore of big $$$
Gambling calls to me...like this ~> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nap37mNSmQ
Gabes22
Gabes22
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February 14th, 2013 at 6:15:03 PM permalink
Camping in the northwoods of Wisconsin as a kid we used to play games like cribbage and sheepshead. After a night of playing these game my father taught me blackjack. I went to my first casino 8 years later when I was 18 years old (back then you could gamble at Indian Casinos in WI at 18 if your parents were with you), that and we used to gamble on stuff while at baseball games at Milwaukee County stadium. We would go to the game with a roll of quarters. While batting if you were it was your turn, you would place a quarter in the bucket if your player made an out, if he reached safely you kept your quarter, if he hit a home run you emptied the bucket.
A flute with no holes is not a flute, a donut with no holes is a danish
rdw4potus
rdw4potus
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February 14th, 2013 at 7:04:37 PM permalink
Gambling start: penny ante (literally coins) poker with highschool friends. We'd play before, after, and sometimes during school functions. Just stupid kids rules. Let's play 5 card double draw with aces deuces and one-eyed jacks wild. Oh, what's that? Everyone has royal flushes? D'oh!

Casino start: I was the guy with a car freshman year of college. Everybody always wanted to go play $2 BJ at the casino. I started giving the keys away, then chauffeuring, then playing along. It's funny how that seemed like big money at the time. Winning $20 was the best thing in the world to an 18 year old with no serious job.
"So as the clock ticked and the day passed, opportunity met preparation, and luck happened." - Maurice Clarett
JW17
JW17
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February 14th, 2013 at 7:25:17 PM permalink
Quote: Beardgoat

No real story to it other than wanting to get some money and the casino seemed like a great idea. The casinos here allowed us to enter at 18 years old so a bunch of us would go after class our senior year of high school. We played $1 black jack machines and thought it was crazy if someone bet $5 a hand. And if you had to double down while betting $5... Oh brother that was a lot of money haha.



That's funny. When I turned 21 we rolled up to cripple creek and would play $2 a hand and yes those $5 bets looked huge!

But I started my love of gambling at the pikes peak greyhound park at age 18. We went everyday. $20-40 bankrolls. Lol those were the days
onenickelmiracle
onenickelmiracle
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February 15th, 2013 at 2:54:32 AM permalink
Thanks to the Catholic Church festivals letting anyone play including me, my brother and my friends all about 13-14. First $1 scratch off bought when I was 16 paid $100.
I am a robot.
boymimbo
boymimbo
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February 15th, 2013 at 6:15:18 AM permalink
Hmmm... well I would say the first casual gambling experience would be playing flipsies and topsies with hockey cards with my older (and more skilled) brother. Winner gets the cards. You'd take a bunch of hockey cards (each of you agree on what you'd be willing to lose - they'd have to have the same relative value with some worthwhile cards to make it ineteresting). You'd put each one of them at an angle to the wall. Each of you would take a turn flinging a card at the cards against the wall. If you flipped the card on the wall, you'd keep the cards that you flipped. If you topped a card that was a miss, you'd keep the topped card. We destroyed those cards -- it was the mid 70s when hockey cards had value and us kids were too stupid to realize it. We were probably so stupid as to take a Wayne Gretzky rookie card and use it to make noise in our bicycle spokes (clothespin, card in spoke, away you went).

My first adult gambling casino experience would be my first wedding in Vegas, circa 1997. The wedding itself was an eventual failure. The gambling experience - we won about $550 playing blackjack exclusively at the Monte Carlo, Rio, and New York. We upgraded ourselves on the flight back to Vancouver as a reward.
----- You want the truth! You can't handle the truth!
MakingBook
MakingBook
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February 15th, 2013 at 6:38:59 AM permalink
In 7th grade, about half the kids in my class bet.

I booked.
"I am a man devoured by the passion for gambling." --Dostoevsky, 1871
tsmith
tsmith
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February 15th, 2013 at 7:40:09 AM permalink
My father couldn't wait until my sisters and I learned our numbers so that he could teach us how to play poker, so I've been gambling since I was about 7 years old, which was over 50 years ago.

With my family if 4 people were in a room together it wasn't a visit, it was a poker game, so I grew up with gambling as a natural part of normal, everyday life, and tho the games I play have changed over the years, it's been that way for me ever since and I can't imagine living any other way.
odiousgambit
odiousgambit
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February 15th, 2013 at 10:09:48 AM permalink
Literally a Carnival Game. A fair came to town and they had a game where something like a volleyball dropped down and you bet on which hole it went into amongst about 12 holes. I must have been about 12 or 13, and even at that age I couldnt believe this game was being allowed. I played it for a while but saw you couldnt expect to last long. If you did win I am not sure what you got. Maybe they had prizes, certainly you could win more chances. No money payoff probably, but I'm not sure about that.

Wasn't too long after that when I was playing penny ante poker.
the next time Dame Fortune toys with your heart, your soul and your wallet, raise your glass and praise her thus: “Thanks for nothing, you cold-hearted, evil, damnable, nefarious, low-life, malicious monster from Hell!”   She is, after all, stone deaf. ... Arnold Snyder
AndyGB
AndyGB
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February 15th, 2013 at 10:33:32 AM permalink
Once we were in international waters on the cruise my parents took the family on when I was about 10, the slot machine room staff didn't care who played (or they could stop pretending they cared in the first place). I hit a Bar-Bar-Bar jackpot on a quarter machine, this was with a handle you had to pull, actual reels that thunked satisfyingly into place, and that paid off by dropping real life quarters into the tray. Probably won about $20, and of course put it all right back in. Slot machines haven't appealed much since, but my parents taught my sister and I to play Blackjack around the same time, which led to penny poker in jr. high, dime poker in high school, rubber bridge in college, now it is poker, craps and Superbowl props!
tringlomane
tringlomane
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February 15th, 2013 at 10:39:02 AM permalink
I occasionally scratched off tickets for my parents, but I didn't really gamble til the legal age. Lottery/scratchoffs at 18, casino gambling at 21, caught poker bug in 2004 at 24 after Moneymaker and Raymer. Very boring I was. I did start drinking at 14 though...doh.
ahiromu
ahiromu
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February 15th, 2013 at 10:50:44 AM permalink
About six months after my 21st birthday I went to Vegas with some friends. I prided myself on not being a "stupid with my money" gambler before the trip. Now I'm one of them.
Its - Possessive; It's - "It is" / "It has"; There - Location; Their - Possessive; They're - "They are"
slyther
slyther
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February 15th, 2013 at 12:08:42 PM permalink
When I was a kid my grandma would teach me "21" when i would stay with her. She said to always stick on 16. She was a slot player.
98Clubs
98Clubs
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February 15th, 2013 at 12:44:42 PM permalink
I picked up a book at Waldenbooks entitled,"Playing Blackjack as a Business" in 1980. Never regretted that purchase.
About 1 year later, I found a book there about "Wheeling Systems" for playing Lotto... that book taught me permutation math.
Some people need to reimagine their thinking.
AcesAndEights
AcesAndEights
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February 15th, 2013 at 3:28:04 PM permalink
Played some cash no-limit hold 'em games with my frat brothers in college, but not very often. First trip to Vegas (as an adult) was in 2008 to play Ultimate...didn't place one bet, was intimidated to be honest, and my friends weren't gambling. Next trip to Vegas was 2010 and I lost about $600 playing abysmal blackjack...then a friendly dealer at the Trop on grave shift taught me how to play craps...and the rest is history. Started dabbling in AP in late 2011, but craps will always be my favorite game.
"So drink gamble eat f***, because one day you will be dust." -ontariodealer
ThatDonGuy
ThatDonGuy
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February 15th, 2013 at 4:10:57 PM permalink
My earliest gambling was weekly bingo at a nearby church for a few months, when I was about 12. After that, and the occasional play of a bingo pinball at a pool hall near my middle school, I didn't gamble until I was old enough to go to the racetrack, and even then, I only remember doing it two or three times. My first casino trip was in 1985, up in Reno, but it was just VP, slots, and those old video quarter-horse machines; my second casino visit was at TI in Vegas, about 20 years later, but I never got around to playing any table games until I went back the next year.
pinetop
pinetop
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March 12th, 2013 at 10:17:50 AM permalink
Back in the 40's when I was about 9 or 10, we used to flip bubble gum cards against a wall. Closest one to the wall took all the cards flipped on that round. Another game we played was, "knuckles blackjack". We didn't have any money so we would bet so many "cracks". Whoever lost the hand (dealer or player) would extend his arm out horizontally and make a fist, knuckles up. The winner would take the deck, shade the bottom cards slightly and smack the loser's knuckles with the edge of the deck as many times as he had bet. When you shaded the deck, the edge of all the cards scraped the knuckles. A lot of kids went home with bloody knuckles. Yeah, times were different then.
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