Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage Page B

learn to play the game. And if you do that, son, you’ll make money. But the only way to make real money is to do something stupid every once in a while.”
    The dealer didn’t try to stop the experienced gambler from coaching me. He just kept on turning over cards, a little service-industry smile on his face.
    â€œIt’s stupid time,” the experienced gambler said.
    The dealer caught my eye. I couldn’t read his expression; his face was a blank.
    The experienced gambler started making hundred-dollar bets— hundred-dollar bets!—one right after another. He wasn’t on a winning streak, though, and his stack of chips quickly disappeared. After about two dozen hands, the experienced gambler lost his last hundred-dollar chip.
    â€œWell, that’s it for me,” the experienced gambler said. He got up, wished me better luck than he’d been having, and left for the craps tables.
    The dealer looked down at me and held his palms out, asking me with a gesture if I was in or out. I moved a five-dollar chip out onto the green felt.
    â€œDon’t listen to him,” the dealer said softly, leaning towards me. “Gambling isn’t easy. If it was easy, they would call it winning .”
    He turned over a few more cards and took my last chip from me.
    â€œAnd just between you and me, stupid is just stupid.”
    For three nights in a row, I had returned to the Diamond Jo, sat at the same dealer’s table, and lost seventy dollars. I always arrived intending to gamble larger sums of money, but I couldn’t bring myself to put more than one five-dollar chip on the table at a time. I wasn’t a whale in Dubuque—just an inept five-dollar-a-hand blackjack player. The dealer was always there, and he smiled when he saw me coming. He smiled exactly like the craps dealer in Las Vegas, like a cop. The fourth night I went to the Diamond Jo, the dealer didn’t smile—he gave me a look. He even lifted his eyebrows.
    â€œWelcome back,” he said, gesturing to an empty chair. “Still haven’t learned your lesson?”
    He began taking my seventy dollars from me, as was our custom. I looked up at him, and he smiled—a real smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling up, his eyebrows rising on his forehead. He shook his head and asked me why I was doing this to myself.
    â€œI’ve come to Dubuque to learn to play blackjack,” I said. “How do you think I’m doing?”
    â€œAs far as the casino is concerned, you’re doing beautifully.”
    I asked him if the experienced gambler, the man I played with the night before, came around often. I needed some more lessons.
    â€œFirst of all, that ‘experienced gambler’ sat right next to you and lost a couple of grand in twenty minutes,” said the dealer. “So I wouldn’t recommend you model your game off of his. And all he taught you was how to place different kinds of bets. Which, if you don’t know what you’re doing with the cards, is as good as teaching how to lose money more quickly. He didn’t do you any favors.”
    â€œBut how complicated is blackjack, anyway?” I asked. “You give me two cards and I ask for more until I get close to twenty-one. That’s pretty simple.”
    â€œYou can play a simple game if you want to give the casino all your money,” the dealer said. “But if you ever want to leave this boat with money in your pocket, you’re going to have to learn how to play a more complicated game.”
    The dealer owned a used bookstore in downtown Dubuque, and he suggested I drop in sometime. He didn’t think it would be right for him to give me advice, but he would happily sell me one of the paperbacks on gambling strategy that he had in stock.
    I handed him my last five-dollar chip and said I’d see him in the morning.
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