Drink, Play, F@#k

by Andrew Gottlieb

  “You’ve got a great opportunity here, Bobby. Most people just go though their lives complaining that they never have any fun. You’ve actually put yourself out there on the front lines and you’re looking for the action. That’s awesome!”

  I agreed that in principle it was awesome. But right now it wasn’t feeling so awesome. I had come to Vegas looking for adventure and had already gotten my ass handed to me at the tables.

  “Give me a break,” he answered. “First of all, adventure doesn’t mean smiles, balloons, and handshakes. Sometimes getting your ass handed to you can be one hell of an adventure. And what did I tell you yesterday in the cab? You gotta pace yourself, remember? Life isn’t a sprint, brother. It’s a marathon—but not a grueling marathon where you cramp up and lose control of your bowels. It’s a nice long, leisurely jog through experiences and relationships and a lot of fun and a little heartbreak, with the occasional balls-out sprint thrown in there for good measure.”

  I could see his point, but I had paced myself for my entire adult life, and where had it gotten me?

  Rick said, “There’s a difference between pacing yourself and running in place. But maybe I should show you what I mean. I’ve got a feeling that I’m talking to a fellow golfer, right?”

  I assured him that he was indeed talking to a fellow golfer. Along with drinking and gambling, playing golf was one of my top three things to do with every second of every day.

  “All right then,” he said. “I’m going to show you how to do Vegas right. Let’s hit the links.”

  19

  Let me say a few words about how I feel about golf. I love golf. That’s it in a nutshell. I love golf. I don’t know if I need to elaborate upon that sentiment, but I will.

  I love the feeling that vibrates up from my hands, through my arms, and into my whole body when I hit a ball just right. I love the sound that a well-struck ball makes. I love the sound that a poorly struck ball makes. I love the smell of the cut grass. I love the smell of the hot dogs spinning in that weird rotisserie thing at the snack shack. I love not knowing how I’m going to play from one minute to the next. I love being outdoors. I love wearing the soft spikes and seeing the starlike indentations they leave in the grass. I love all the ridiculous rules and the fact that I have to enforce them all on myself. I love that some people think playing golf an elitist waste of time but I know how good it makes me feel inside and out. I love hitting a perfect pitching wedge and sticking it five feet from the hole. I even love shanking a four iron and watching it skip halfway across a lake. I love the caddies and the golf carts and the clubhouses and the shining pyramids of freshly washed balls stacked up for me on the range. I love playing a really crappy golf course, in the rain, when I have blisters on my hands and feet, and I’m playing horribly, and I’m losing money to three obnoxious jerks that the starter forced me to play with.

  So you can just imagine how much I loved that round with Rick.

  Rick drove us out of town toward the mountains. He clearly no longer needed me to spring for a cab ride as somehow, somewhere, he had gotten his hands on an extremely lovely vintage Jaguar convertible. His sticks were in back and he told me that he had arranged for a set to be waiting for me at the club. I asked him where we were playing and he informed me that it was a nice track and he hoped I liked it.

  Then he pulled up at the bag drop at Shadow Creek. I had to stop myself from screaming like those teenage girls did when the Beatles got off the plane at Idlewild.

  Shadow Creek is ridiculous. It was originally built by renowned course architect Tom Fazio for mega-quadrillionaire Steve Wynn. For a long time it was Wynn’s personal golf course. There were no memberships. Only Steve and the people he invited ever played it. He had moved tons of earth to create grassy berms all around the perimeter so that no one could see in. Then he imported all kinds of amazing flora and fauna to make the place completely unique. There are actual Australian wallabies living there. Wallabies! In Nevada!

  More recently, the course has been opened up to the guests of Wynn’s hotels in Las Vegas. But they still have to shell out five hundred dollars for one round on the glorious green. I had always heard about Shadow Creek but never expected to play there. As a guest of the Bellagio, I was allowed to play there—the thought of actually playing there just never entered my mind. It would be like some goofy kid throwing a ball around in the park suddenly standing on the mound at Yankee Stadium.

  I asked Rick if he was sure about this. I hadn’t played in over a year. I was too busy drinking in Ireland—although God knows they have some staggeringly beautiful golf courses there too. And before that I was too depressed lugging around the decaying corpse of my marriage to hit the links.

  Rick assured me that this was going to be just what I needed. He also told me not to worry about the five hundred bucks. This round was on the arm.

  “Seriously?” I asked. “Why? Are you Steve Wynn’s personal trainer too?”

  “No,” he replied. “I saved his life once when we were heli-skiing in New Zealand.”

  I was beginning to discover that Rick was a man of many mysteries. Or he was an incredibly good liar. After all, I was pretty sure that Steve Wynn was legally blind. What the hell was he doing heli-skiing? Or was I just being prejudiced and small-minded assuming that the sightless shouldn’t be allowed to heli-ski? Whichever way it turned out—that Rick was a true Renaissance man or a true bullshit artist—at that precise moment I could not have cared less. I was about to play Shadow Creek.

  I have played a few great golf courses in my day. And as I stood on the first tee of each of those world-class tracks, what I felt must have been something like what devout Catholics feel as they enter the Vatican, or what attractive young women feel when they enter George Clooney’s house. It’s a combination of respect, admiration, appreciation, and anticipation.Looking out over the first fairway of Shadow Creek, I somehow felt tiny and enormous at the same time.

  As I teed up my ball, Rick told me, “Remember. You’ve got to pace yourself out here too.”

  At first I thought he was trying to psych me out like the majority of people with whom I play golf. But then I realized that he was just trying to help. He could tell how jacked up I was. I had already started wondering where I should try to play this tee shot. And what I would do if I sprayed it right into the gorse, or yanked it left into the trees. Rick was right. I had to take it easy and pace myself.

  I took a deep breath, stepped up to the ball, and striped it right down the middle.

  I played out of my head that afternoon. I made crazy swirling forty-foot putts. I blasted out of fairway bunkers to inches from the hole. I pounded a drive over three hundred yards on the signature fifteenth. And the whole time Rick and I talked about whatever: baseball, TV, politics, choriz. It was incredibly hot out but it didn’t bother me. Instead of complaining, I allowed the sun’s warmth to pour into my body and loosen up my joints. I felt myself turning farther on my backswing than I could ever remember. I felt easy and confident and peaceful. The more relaxed I became, the better results I had with my golf shots. I had always assumed that difficult shots required tremendous effort. But here I was firing at the pins like I was tossing horseshoes at a state fair.

  At one point I thought that Rick had spiked the pitcher of Arnold Palmers with beta blockers. But he assured me that I was going low based purely on my talent and my attitude.

  “You see, Bobby. If you want to have fun gambling, then you have fun gambling. And if gambling stops being fun, then you take a break and hit some golf balls. If you get tired of doing that, you shoot some pool or read a book. And pretty soon you’ll be ready to start gambling again. When I say, ‘pace yourself,’ I mean, ‘take it easy.’ Don’t beat yourself up, guy. There’s too many people out there waiting to do that for you.”

  By the sixteenth hole I was in a state of bliss—what those yoga idiots always talk about but I could never achieve because even stretching to tie my shoes burns my hamstrings like h
ellfire. I finished up par, bogey, par to shoot an eighty-three from the tips of the most challenging and beautiful golf course I had ever laid eyes on.

  By the time we got back to the clubhouse for a drink and a bite to eat, I was convinced that it made absolutely no difference if Rick was who he said he was or a total liar—I had met my guru.

  I insisted on paying for the meal. Rick acquiesced but it turned out my adamant stand was wasted since the staff refused to accept payment. The maître d’ passed along Mr. Wynn’s best wishes. He was currently white-water rafting in South Africa but he hoped to see Rick soon. I figured if he could go whitewater rafting, he could probably go heli-skiing too. So good news—Rick wasn’t full of shit!

  He asked me if I was feeling a little better after our round. I told him that I had never felt better. Then he asked me if I was ready to hit the casinos again and put a serious hurting on the house. I told him to lead the way.

  20

  That night we hit Vegas and hit it hard. From the Bellagio to Caesars to the Mirage to Treasure Island and then across the Strip to the Venetian, Harrah’s, the Flamingo, the Paris, and Planet Hollywood, we went bananas. We played blackjack, roulette, Pai Gow poker, three-card poker, Caribbean stud, and Let It Ride. And we won everywhere. To this day I still don’t know the rules to Caribbean stud, but I can tell you that I beat it for eight hundred dollars. Whenever the action started to turn against us, we’d cash in and head for the next table, the next game, or the next casino.

  At the Venetian we played Spanish twenty-one at one hundred dollars a hand. I had no idea at the time what made it different from regular twenty-one—or, for that matter, what made it Spanish. The dealer, whose name was, somewhat boringly, Peter, dealt me two sevens of hearts. His up card was also a seven of hearts. When my second seven of hearts came up, Rick nudged me in the ribs and told me that this was the one.Everyone else around the table started chattering and pointing at me. I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was looking at a fourteen against a probable seventeen and I needed some help.

  I told Peter to hit me. He wished me luck and then peeled off a seven of hearts from the shoe. The place went insane. I thought it was strange that everyone was so excited that I had hit twenty-one. Lots of people hit twenty-one and no one started hollering and applauding for them. Even the normally unflappable Rick was jumping up and down and telling everyone to “Check out my boy!”

  The pit boss clapped Peter on the back and told him to pay me off. Then he congratulated me while the cheering and screaming continued. The reason for all the excitement became clear to me when Peter reached into his chip well and handed me five yellow chips. I was completely perplexed—yellows are worth $1,000 each. Since when does twenty-one pay fifty to one?

  Rick explained to me that one of the bizarre rules of Spanish twenty-one is that if the player gets three suited sevens that exactly match the dealer’s seven it’s called a “super bonus” and he gets paid out to the tune of five G’s. I was stunned. Then it turned out that everyone else at the table received an “envy bonus” just for playing with me when I hit the big one. So they each got $50. The amount of enthusiasm and goodwill was almost overwhelming. I had complete strangers getting me drinks of every hue and flavor. Granted, the drinks weren’t costing anyone anything, but they were tipping the cocktail waitresses extravagantly on my behalf.

  For the next hour I was the hero of the Venetian. A family of four visiting from Cameroon asked me to take a picture with them in a gondola. Peter even asked me to take a picture with him with the four sevens of hearts still on the table. Apparently he was getting some residual celebrity for having dealt that rarest of rare hands. He also got a healthy tip from yours truly.

  Rick was pumped for me. Even he had never seen a super bonus, and he had spent more than his fair share of time in Vegas. He told me to enjoy the rush I was on. The winning wouldn’t last forever. But, if I could hold on to that enormous, overpowering feeling of happiness and warmth, I could tap into it whenever I needed to. Rick didn’t believe in “luck” in the traditional sense. He didn’t think that some people were lucky while others were doomed to be unlucky. He just thought that it was important to recognize when good luck came your way and to really appreciate it. I could see what he meant. Being lucky is such a fickle concept. You grasp on to it during good times and then lament its absence when things go south. If you’re too convinced that you’ve been bitten by good or bad luck, it prevents you from having the resolve to get the job done regardless of how your luck happens to be falling.

  But if you just take those lucky moments for what they are—happy accidents raining down from the sky—then who gives a crap why they’re happening or when they might come again? Just the other day I slammed my bare foot against the side of my bathtub. It stung so badly that my eyes started to tear up like when you yank out a clump of nose hairs all of a sudden (please tell me that this has happened to you too). I sat down on the edge of the tub and massaged my aching foot. It hurt like a bastard—but while I sat there, I suddenly remembered seeing that third seven of hearts land on top of its two identical triplet sisters. I don’t know why that image popped up. I didn’t summon it as a talisman to ward off toe pain. I just suddenly remembered it—and I smiled. That didn’t stop my toe from hurting, but it definitely helped ease the pain.

  I’ve been lucky and unlucky in my life, just like everyone. And, in the future, I’ll be unlucky and lucky again. Rick just reminded me of that fact. And he encouraged me to hang on to the good moments, and let the crappy ones slide on by.

  Rick told me that winning the super bonus was a sign. It was time to shift over to some sports betting. I had already accepted Rick as my personal lord and savior by this time, so I heeded his opinion on this matter. We cashed out our checks and headed back to the Bellagio.

  21

  The sports book at the Bellagio is what it would look like if Pete Rose’s brain exploded inside the supercomputer that runs all the neon signs in downtown Tokyo. It’s a fantasmagorical Venn diagram dedicated to the overlapping of sports, gambling, the Internet, television, and alcohol. Picture the biggest sports bar you’ve ever been in on Super Bowl Sunday. Now multiply that by one hundred, fill it with deranged action junkies, and fuel it with free booze. You have just created a pale approximation of a sleepy Tuesday morning at the Bellagio.

  There is a fundamental difference between betting on sports and betting on table games. Regardless of what anyone tells you, luck is the common denominator of all table games. The rules are simple. The variations of how you can bet and what you can do once you have already bet are pretty limited. Ultimately, whether you win or lose comes down to luck. I don’t care if you’re married to the modified Kogen, or if you subscribe to any of the other hundred billion betting schemes out there. When you’re playing blackjack, your fate depends upon the vagaries of the cards.

  And I don’t want to hear any nonsense about card counting. I read Bringing Down the House and I saw the movie 21. Preposterous! All counting cards does is create a slight statistical advantage for the person (or persons) counting the cards. It’s not a magic trick. Just ’cause you can count cards and have deciphered that there’s an increased statistical probability that a ten will show up doesn’t mean that a ten is definitely going to be the next card played. Card counting doesn’t turn you into an all-powerful wizard. It just helps out a tiny bit.

  Roulette—while thoroughly enjoyable, and my favorite metaphor for life itself—is so simple that a complete idiot can enjoy it (yet one more way in which it is like life). People actually talk about “roulette systems.” That’s stupider than the movie 21. What system is going to predict where a ball will fall on a spinning wheel? Unless your system involves some kind of predictable shift in the earth’s gravitational pull, you’re just guessing along with the rest of us.

  Craps has some math-based logic decisions that can help prevent betting against your own money, but even that doe
sn’t require any skill or knowledge. Hey—can you throw two dice onto a table? Great! Then you can play craps. You want to know how easy it is to play craps? I have played craps before, and I have already gone on record saying that I have no idea how to play craps.

  But sports betting is a whole other kettle of fish. The jury is still out on whether or not expert knowledge can actually improve your chances of winning when betting on sports. What is no longer up for debate, however, is that everyone who bets on sports is positive that their expert knowledge will improve their chances of winning.

  Nobody bets twenty-nine on a roulette wheel and then gives you twenty reasons why twenty-nine is definitely going to hit. Well, I shouldn’t say “nobody.” Frankly, this is just the kind of thing that I would say to a table filled with goofballs and juice heads. But when I do it, it’s just messing around. Stop by the sports book, however, and the guy with the Chief Wahoo hat will talk your ear off for an hour explaining to you how the Indians are a lock to cover the over against the Royals because the heart of their lineup is batting .600 against Kansas City’s entire starting rotation.

  This gentleman is so sure of the outcome of the game based on his perspicacity and assiduous attention to detail that he has wagered his next month’s rent check on it. When the Royals win the game 1–0, and the score never gets anywhere near the over, you will see him talking some other poor schmuck’s ear off, explaining why you should take the Browns and lay the field goal. Cleveland is unbeaten at home in the snow over the past decade. They’re a stone-cold lock!

  To his credit, Rick was not one of these wide-eyed action addicts who deluded himself into thinking he had all the answers. He had a lot of information at his disposal. But he tempered it with a healthy dose of realism. And the final component that made him such an effective gambler was his feel.