64. The Win
My imagination had sent me on a track where we would walk down a flight of stairs to a shady basement dripping with rain. The reality was an inconspicuous modern five-story building. One half was a middle-class hotel and the other half was the casino. We walked into the building and followed a sign to a gallery with five roulette tables, six poker tables and four blackjack tables.
It was a Tuesday. All tables were played but there were plenty of seats. While Pearl went to pay our deposit, I watched the poker games and kept an eye on the blackjack tables. I considered playing one or two rounds of poker to disguise our true interest but decided against it. It would raise more suspicion if I switched games after only a few rounds. The casino rules were excellent. I calculated the house rules against basic strategy and counting. I came out optimistic. Many things could go wrong; sometimes you had 8 tails instead of 5 out of 10 when you threw a coin. The odds in basic strategy were based on thousands and thousands of hands. Playing a few hours meant 90 hands at best. That could tilt the odds considerably – one way or the other. We could be lucky and have a good streak or the house could have an even bigger edge on us when the cards fell unfavorably. Well, it was gambling after all.
I kept my deliberations to myself. When Pearl came back with our chips, I chose a table with the second and the last two positions free. The best position for basic strategy and card counting was the last seat, but I was more likely to be identified as a counter than Pearl. To keep a low profile, I asked Pearl to take the last position.
Pearl had memorized the basic moves on our way to the casino and promised to follow my discreet instructions for the trickier hands. A cough, a sneeze or a slight touch meant she should hit. When I did nothing, she was supposed to stay. Pearl was a quick study and she never got carried away. Within an hour, she hardly needed any help in applying basic strategy. She took losses with a straight face and wins with a slight smile.
We won slowly but steadily. We placed bets of 500 euros each, doubled cautiously if ever and always surrendered when advisable. Without any effort we kept the appearance of young and innocent lovebirds. The other players also bet in the range of 300 to 700 euros per bet and none of them knew what they were doing or applied basic strategy. I was confident that we had not popped up on anyone’s radar.
We had played almost three hours and were up 35,000. Three hours was our limit and the shoe was coming to an end. It was going to be our last hands. We expected the same flow of low energy we had maintained throughout our game, when I had an inkling that we were in for an unusual game. The first player split 5s (instead of doubling down) and kept hitting until he had a hard 17 on both hands – all with low cards.
I asked Pearl to place 1,000 on her hand no matter what. I had a hard 11 and doubled down against the dealer’s 6. The right, the only thing to do, but Pearl was getting nervous. Then she got two aces and split as she was supposed to and ended up with a blackjack and another two aces. The dealer paid out the blackjack. She split the aces again and ended up with two soft 19s. Basic strategy demanded she stay, but I asked her to double down which the casino’s very good rules allowed. We had started out with 2,000 on two hands. We had pocketed 1,500 on the blackjack. When I asked Pearl to double, we had 4,000 euros on our three hands. Pearl looked at me nervously when I asked her again to double on her soft 19s. She didn’t know that I had counted every card in the game and knew for certain that there were three times as many 10-cards than lower cards after the first player had drained the deck of low cards with his splitting. With the splitting, we had added another two extra hands and the dealer’s odds to bust had risen 84.5%. Pearl’s eyes widened with fear.
“Please, darling,” I pleaded quietly.
Reluctantly, Pearl put down another 1,000 euros on each hand. We stood to lose 6,000 euros if the house won.
But the house didn’t win. The dealer busted on the 6 with two more 10-cards and we won 12,000 euros in one single game plus the 1,500 from the blackjack.
We left the casino with 42,500 euros and in a good mood.
We found Martin and Rachel in another coffeehouse with long opening hours. They were clutching sodas and talking to stay awake. They came instantly back to life again, when we shared how we had won a lot of money. By the time Pearl told them about our last hand, she was shaking.
“What?” Martin asked. “You doubled on all hands? Are you out of your mind?”
“I don’t think so,” I said calmly.
“You knew the dealer would bust,” Rachel said.
“With the extra hands the chances that the dealer was going to bust rose to 84.5%. It was worth the risk.”
“You counted cards,” Martin said. “True count, I mean.”
Rachel’s mouth fell slightly open.
“You two are officially crazy,” she said.
“We can’t go back there,” Pearl said.
“Not after the attention we attracted with our last move,” I agreed.
We took the tram to the next casino. Although privately owned, too, it was a casino the way I had imagined it, when we read Dostoevsky’s The Gambler with Kellan. It had a grand hall with chandeliers and high ceilings, three roulette tables, four poker tables and six blackjack tables. Slot machines were banished to one wall and to a separate room. Rachel and Martin played the first blackjack table and Rachel and I the last. We avoided spectacular bets and played as inconspicuously as we could. At 2:00 in the morning, we had won 110,000 euros in total in both casinos and left.
Copyright by Ines Strohschein, Berlin 2023