Qte.dk

Sunday night I stepped into a casino for the first time in my life. Aalborg Casino had a open night event with no entrance fee, a small buffet and an opportunity to play a free game of roulette or black jack.

We walked up casino 6.50pm, 10 minutes before the doors were supposed to open (7pm) and only 10 people in front of us, so it looked good, although Tinus thought it took too long before we could loose our jackets and get registered, and he suggested that we could have showed up 15 minutes later. I pointed out that there was around 50 people behind us, so guessed it was ok to wait outside in the cold 10 minutes before the doors were opened.

When we finally, after having been pushed around by some old ladies, stepped into the casino room down stairs Tinus and Lars wanted some of the free food, apparently the Burger King burger we got 20 minutes earlier was not enough. After another 15-20 minutes we walked over to the black jack test table, where a female (wohoo!) croupier introduced the black jack beginners (my self included) to the rules and we got 300 points. Rasmus quickly left the table, since he went bankrupt and wanted to play some roulette instead. Lars and I played for a while until the croupier was told by a head-croupier to close the table and allow other people to play test games later on. When I left the table I had around 3000 points, so small ego boost before going to the real-tables where real money are lost :-)

After a grabbing a beer in the bar we went over to one of the black jack tables to look at some of the gamblers loosing and winning lots (compared to my SU budget) until we finally sat down at tried our luck. 3-4 hours later we left the casino, only 250 kr poorer, so it clearly did not go as well as with the test game, but I blame that on the fact that the female croupier did not sit at the black jack tables when we wanted to play :-(

I found it really fun to be at a casino and fell the rush when playing and seeing others play (for considerable larger sums that I would ever dream of betting) and at the same time discovering wetter or not I would have a hard time stopping while it was still fun, instead of betting and loosing any savings I might have.

On a slightly related side note I watched most of half hour documentary about a brit with incredible control of his mind. He could mind-read other people and slightly mind-control as he demonstrated by having a girl pick out the exact card he wanted to complete his flush (poker) from a card deck. Furthermore he was able to remember exactly which cards had been in play at a black jack table and demonstrated with a hidden camera in a casino where he quickly won 2.500 pounds, by betting on getting smaller than a 5 instead of standing on 16. He got a 4 and stood on 20 instead... and won.

Finally he demonstrated that he could remember exactly where in a deck any given card was, even after the croupier had shuffled all 6 decks of cards, by "simply" counting and remembering positions when the croupier shuffled. His trick was to imagine a house with a floor for each thing he wanted to remember (one for cards). In the room on that floor he had 52 objects, each one representing a specific card. When he expanded from 1 deck of cards to 6 (the number of decks used at many casinos in black jack), he placed a small note for each deck on each object and removed it when the card had been in play. When all notes were removed from the object, the object was removed from the room as well. Quite simple? I think not. Remember, this all happened in his head!