Word: blackjack
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This past November, I finally broke the restraints of my collegiate exile with a trip to Foxwoods Resort and Casino. I hit the blackjack tables, that corner of the casino where so many poor souls hand over their paychecks. I proceeded to employ a tactic whereby I doubled my bet every time that I lost a hand. This approach is derisively known as "chasing a loss," and based on the structure of the casino's betting limits, it is statistically guaranteed to bankrupt the player--unless that player is extraordinarily lucky. And lucky...
That's precisely what has Nixon fighting mad. He contrasts today's anything-goes Web gambling joints with the tightly regulated riverboat casinos plying their trade on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. "Any 12-year-old with a credit card can play blackjack on the Internet," he says. "We don't know who owns these companies, what the odds are, whether winners will ever collect. We know nothing...
...government's imperative to collect revenue is often unconnected with morality. In the late 1970s, for instance, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission supported an Atlantic City casino ban on card counters, who were beating the house at blackjack, on the ground that if the casinos weren't profitable other casino companies would not seek licenses, thereby slowing the economic revival of Atlantic City and reducing the flow of state taxes. In other words, the state had a stake in seeing to it that its citizens were systematically relieved of their paychecks...
...slender build, he could more easily pass for a teenager than for a 44-year-old father of three--or, for that matter, for a world-renowned scientist. In fact, when he was an undergraduate at the California Institute of Technology back in the 1970s, Ho hung around the blackjack tables in Las Vegas, tilting the odds in his favor by memorizing each card as it was played. He got so good at counting cards that he was thrown out of several casinos...
...resources. These smaller deals involve more community interaction, more hands-on management (and thus opportunities to build confidence in the council's ability to organize and implement) and far less money. With regard to community- and credibility-building, spending an afternoon learning to skate, or an evening playing blackjack for charity, would accomplish everything that a concert could, and more...