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“The right time to quit: it’s an age-old question. This extremely prevalent question is generally looked at so illogically by people who are otherwise sensible and logical, yet it has such a simple answer.”
Fred Renzey, Blackjack Bluebook II
By design, our connecting flights were both through Cincinnati. I strolled into our usual airport restaurant and had no trouble locating D.A., duffle bag in tow, reading the Wall Street Journal and nursing a 22-ounce draft. It had been almost three years since we first started playing seriously. We’d averaged more than one trip per month and they began blending into one another.
Throughout the previous year, especially when it was just the two of us, we’d continued to work our system to perfection. It was nearly flawless. Our playing sessions were long, sometimes two to three hours, and it was rare that we felt heat like the early days. We got backed off on rare occasions at casinos like the Hard rock and the Mirage in Vegas, and we were shuffled up on at Resorts in Atlantic City. But they were the good back-offs—a handshake and a polite request to play something other than blackjack. And they were very rare. So at those casinos, we just came back under aliases and limited our playing sessions to 60 minutes.
We were a little disappointed about the Mirage, because we had some of our most successful sessions there and we both liked the layout and the atmosphere. As Turney Jones, I played there unscathed for many more trips.
Mostly we played without heat at the Strip casinos, as well as one-time sessions in Arizona, Louisiana, Florida, Oregon, and even London.
We were exhausted.
The novelty of new casinos had long before worn off. We saw past the colorfully patterned rugs, the noise from the slot machines, the roars from winning crap tables, and the bright lights and techno music that pounded from the latest clubs. We knew several dealers by name and we’d eaten at about every restaurant, café, and buffet up and down the Vegas Strip and along the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. And we’d seen a all manner of shows and sporting events.
Following each trip, my subsequent moods had grown more dependent on the swings of the bankroll. After a healthy win I was upbeat, whereas a bankroll decline made me irritable. I knew that the swings would always be a part of the game. I had usually been good at taking the emotion out of the profession, but since the excitement had worn off and profit was the only goal, I found myself held hostage by the swings.
It had been only a few months earlier when I started seeing someone new. Celeste and I had been friends throughout our childhood, but never dated. After high school we took separate paths and eventually found each other a little later in life. On trips I found myself eager to get home to see her. I took her on a couple of trips with me, along with D.A. and his wife, but we wanted to begin our life together outside of the backdrop of the Vegas skyline.
As financial planners, D.A. and I were living through the greatest financial crisis in the history of the nation since the Great Depression, and our profits stopped being reinvested into the bankroll. Any excess in our bankroll was being liquidated. Eventually, taking profits off the top wasn’t enough. D.A. and his wife were trying to buy a house and I had proposed to Celeste and we were planning our wedding.
“I’ll have a beer,” I said to the waitress, as I pointed to D.A.’s glass. I hadn’t sat down yet, but I knew how busy airport waitresses could get and didn’t want to miss the opportunity.
“How are things?” D.A. asked.
“Same as they were three weeks ago, my friend.”
“The Dow was down another two-hundred and fifty today,” he shared, knowing I had been on my flight at the close of the market.
“Ups and downs, just like blackjack.”
“Yeah, well, between Wall Street and Vegas, I know it all too well.”
The waitress returned with my beer and the tab.
“Wanna’ cut cards to see who pays for the drinks?” I asked, as I reached into my bag and pulled out my deck of blue KEM playing cards.
On the flight from Cincinnati to Vegas, we agreed that it was time to take a step back from the game. This was to be our final trip. We were both worn out and our bankroll could be put to better use elsewhere. It was time to stop.
The career of a professional blackjack player is often short-lived. Sometimes, an improperly bankrolled player will go bust right away. Sometimes, life’s obligations get in the way. And often, players get barred from too many casinos to keep on playing. For us, longevity wasn’t the problem. Fatigue was.
As we got off the plane, our routine was the same as it had been dozens of times before. We rode the escalator down to the monorail, took the walkway to baggage claim, and grabbed a shuttle to the rental-car agency. Sometimes we asked for a limousine when we knew our trips were short and that we would stick to just one or two casinos, but Mike had been correct years earlier and having a car in Vegas made a tremendous difference.
Philip usually worked the Thursday-afternoon shift at Thrifty Car rentals. He knew our deal. He already had my driver’s license on file and knew that I wanted no added insurance, no prepaid gas, just one driver, and we weren’t going out of state. The paperwork was prepared to be initialed and signed. We appreciated the efficiency and Phil always greeted us with humor.
We made our way out of McCarran, west on Tropicana, right on Koval, and quickly into the MGM garage. Aside from it being on the Strip, the variety of restaurants it offered, and the many comps that we’d earned there over time, the best thing about the MGM grand was its proximity to the airport. It was particularly convenient in allowing us some extra rest before Sunday flights. As we pulled into a spot near the elevators on the fourth floor of the parking garage, we rolled up the windows.
“Well, this is it,” D.A. said. “We’ve had a good run.”
“Let’s go out in style.”
We agreed that after any significant win, we’d end the weekend and our careers, right then and there, and spend the remainder of our time doing what we rarely allowed ourselves to do on these trips. Enjoy it.
We experienced fairly typical playing sessions on Thursday night and Friday morning. It wasn’t until Friday night that our careers as advantage players would come to a close.