I once won $18,900 in less than two hours at a $10 craps table in
the Venetian on a Wednesday night in February. It was 11:30 p.m. and I was
alone, killing time before meeting my friend for drinks. When I stepped to the
table, I thought: I know what might happen.
I started with $600 and began with my standard pass line bet, with
full odds, buying just the outside numbers, four and 10. There was a kid from
Denver there who rolled the dice for approximately 27 minutes against a point of
nine. With each roll I picked up steam—laying more bets, doubling up on the ones
already out, pressing the hard ways, throwing down horn bets with gusto.
He hit his point, then rolled for 20 more minutes on some other
number. In the final moments before he rolled a seven, I had 26 separate bets on
the table, with more than $6,000 hanging on each roll. When the run ended, as
they always do, I was glad. It was late, I was rich, my voice was hoarse and I
had a golf game in the morning.
Late the next day, I stood over a six-foot par putt. The wind had
picked up, snarling off the desert, and I had punched a 5-iron from a fairway
bunker to this fairly miraculous spot. We’d started out with our standard $3
Nassau, with a menagerie of side and junk bets. With each hole the whole thing
gathered momentum to this point: 27 different Nassaus, presses and pieces of
junk riding on this putt. My partner squatted to get out of the wind. I was six
feet from glory.
“This is just like last night,” I shouted into the teeth of the
wind.
“What?” he asked.
“Like the last roll,” I replied. “Last night.”
He couldn’t hear me. He squinted at the line and shrugged. “I
think it’s pretty straight. I don’t think it moves right.”
“No, man,” I yelled. “I’m saying there’s a lot of action. It’s
like last night, in the casino. There’s a lot of action.”
He smiled and gestured out toward the course and the casinos
beyond. “It’s Vegas. It’s a golf course. What do you expect?”
I nodded. Once again, I knew what might happen.
