Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Do you gamble? If so, what's your game?

Cards? Billiards? The lottery? Horse races? Car races?

OR.................. Love?

A career change? Pursuing an art form you've not yet tried?

Talk to me about your gambling experiences.

Do you enjoy gambling even when you lose?

Do you hate gambling and never participate?

What do you find exciting about gambling?

What do you love about it?

What do you hate about it?

Feel free to answer in poetry or prose.....

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Note- This post was prompted by my new gambling excursion with LR. We're going to play an on-going Gin game for a dollar a point. The loser will buy the new living room furniture. We'll both be winners when it gets delivered. We need to sit and lie on the couch more often and get away from this machine. Would you gamble for living room furniture? How good is your Gin game? Go ahead! Deal!

I used to bet the horses. Still go down to the gambling tavern in town for the Kentucky Derby. It's my favorite gambling arena, horses.

I also buy a lottery crossword ticket once a week. I've made it part of my weekly jobsearch. Heh.

Gambling is fun, it's really what we do everyday. I think gambling is most enjoyable when the winners are gracious.

Maybe we oughta bet on who'll win between you and Lrod.
Anybody in?

H

Place yer bets!

Get this.... This was *his* challenge.

He challenges me, then gets too "busy" doing other stuff to deal.

First, it's a dollar a point, then it's some kinda diagram on a piece of paper with boxes where the scoring turns into 4 games equal a dollar.

Geesh.... hahahahahaha...... not one card's been dealt.

I'm going to have to have a talk with my opponent.

At $1 a point, I could have new living room furniture in a coupla days.

At 25¢ a game, we might as well scrap the idea and take a trip to the second hand store and buy some beanbag chairs.

Hell, that might work, come to think of it.

Place yer bets!



I only went to the horse races once, hest.... but I had a great time! It was years ago. The people I was with were all studying the racing form. I looked at the horses like dancers as they trotted up to the gate and quickly went and placed my bets on the best bodies out there. I did well. Drank beer for free all day. It was a gas! I loved it! That was many years ago... I don't drink beer any more.

I think you're right.... every day is a gamble.... I'm betting I'll make it through this one, too, despite the odds.

I will establish the curmudgeon baseline in this game, and tell why.

My father was a world-class compusive/ addictive gambler.

My childhood was warped into the shape of his addiction ( and other addictions).

A world of misery and continual poverty was to be had (of Dostoyevskian proportions) from his gambling. I shall not enumerate instances further, but there was deep misery.

While I now credit, to a large extent, my total withdrawal from my parents' world and habitation to the world of books and all that followed to these extreme ghastly indulgences on my father's part, for decades I could not see it.

I strove to become a soul apart, in a world apart. And I accomplished my goal without ending in a mental institution.

While I understand ( quite well) the attractions of gambling, I personally do not recommend it to anyone. I lived, for a while, in Reno Nevada and was a Nevada resident while I taught at the University of Nevada. I had the chance to scrutinize, up close, many serious ( and completely addicted) gamblers. One cannot live in Reno, Nevada and escape entirely the influence of the ubiquitous casinos.

I am not trying to temporize a Johnsonian moral tale to you or anyone. I merely state my own position.

I am a great lover of "sins" of various kinds.
My medical condition precludes carrying on with the great drinking career I enjoyed in the closing decades of the last century.

And I have gambled, personally. Not much, but enough to gauge my own instincts.

To this day, I abhor all games, even Scrabble. Trivial pursuit is about my limit.

So I am an exteme case. Here is a web site which explains some of the reasons for my personal stand,

http://www.addictionrecov.org/addicgam.htm


and it describes my own home situation with my parent admirably well. I left home at 19 never to accept another penny from my parents, and had some very rough times until I finished working my way through college. My father and his various addictions were the main reason I left. My father died of lung cancer, very prematurely, at 53. He was an enormously energetic, imaginative, strong, resourceful person. He was simply consumed by his various addictions, many in number. The cigarettes (3-4 packs per day, unfiltered) and the cancer just happened to be the efficacious one to do him in.

Please understand. You asked us to recount our gambling experiences.

I am also not trying to claim the "truth" of any Reaganese claptrap about addictions.

I speak only for myself.

I have been a completely reckless follower and self-indulger in many passions and addictions. There is not a single cell of Nancy Reagan ( or William Bennett-- he should KNOW!) self-righteousness in me.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2082526/


and




On the Revelation of William Bennett's Gambling Habit
by Calvin Trillin

Bill Bennett told a grateful nation,
'Be moral. Just resist temptation.'
By windbag airing of this thesis,
Bill Bennett got as rich as Croesus.
His preaching sold in wholesale lots,
While he dropped millions at the slots.
But here's a thought to ease his pains:
He only lost ill-gotten gains

There you have my gambling experiences and experiments.

I might hasten to add that you, Doreen, and LR are, as I have stated many times, two of the most imaginative, energetic and generous souls it has ever been my extreme pleasure to know.

Just in case you two might have forgotten.

Peace and Love,


Zlatko

Gin game for a dollar a point

Gin is not gambling, it is a skill, One of you is the better player. The better player will always win. Wait that is wrong, Duh me Well there is the chance that you all are about equal players, then it is the luck of the draw. But it ain't like poker, there is no bluffing. The cards fall as they are.

I used to hustle a college roommate of mine. I would play on his vanity I guess. And I excused my self by saying he would never miss it because he is rich and I would not feel guilty about taking his money. That back in the sixties before all those small garment factories on the eastern shore of Maryland were wiped out by the emerging new world order. His parents were wonderful people but his father committed suicide over the loss of his factory. Conscience makes cowards? Is that how it goes? This don’t mean much just Existential strip tease, to the tune of the metafiscal blues.a snake sheds his skin.

My father was a world-class compusive/ addictive gambler.

Crazy mike finally over came his poker addiction. He took up a new game. He gambled on chess. Back in the fifties he would play with the German rocket scientists at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. It took him longer to lose. He won more than he lost. He took me with him to the pentagon once. During the early fifties when the Washington DC chess club was playing the Moscow chess club by short wave radio. I fell asleep on a big pile of mail bags and he made a joke about me being a bed wetter. That is where I get my sick obsidian sense of humor I suppose. Thanks dad.



T

o this day, I abhor all games, even Scrabble. Trivial pursuit is about my limit.

To this day, I abhor chess. but
One day a childhood joy could return
I bought a chess set a couple of months ago.
As much as we were proverty stricken because of his addiction I still had a pretty good childhood. I owe it to my family.

I hear you Zlatko.....any addiction or excessive obsession to anything is not good. The fallout on others, the self-destruction, I know it well too. I admire you that you can see that it all lead, in a way, to a good. But that's not all it led to. Nope.

My thing with horseracing is more like a kid in a candy store thing, I love the atmosphere, the horses, like Doreen said, are dancers....I love the feel and smell of a racing form's potential, same as I love a good crossword puzzle, but I never got stuck on it. It wouldn't be so fun to gamble if I were addicted to it. This I know.

Booze was another thing entirely. That was my addiction.....cigarettes too.

Thanks for a curmudgeonly, ( ) but important post Zlatko...
H

An uncle of mine got into serious gambling addiction. Luckly he got out of it in time. I hate yes HATE gambling all the way!!!! I wish Las Vegas and Atlantic City as well as the whole set up of gambling would cease to exist!!!! The world would be a better place with out it!!!!
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Thanks for sharing your story, Zlatko!

Wow! I'm sure a gambling addiction must be tough.

I'm an addictive-type personality, myself, so I know better than to gamble on a regular basis.

Then again, money doesn't mean anything to me.

Maybe that's why I don't have any. LOL!

Thanks to all for your input on this.......

UPDATE - LR still won't deal the darn cards! I need new living room furniture! It's a cool gamble, really, 'cause it isn't one since his money is my money anyway, and versa vica... so no matter who wins, we both pay .... But dammit! If he challenged me and then won't deal the darn cards, when do we get the new living room furniture? Hmmmm????

Rules of Gambling

1. Bring cash.
2. Never bet what you can't afford to lose.
3. Your wristwatch or wedding ring or the deed to your house are welcome in the pot, but no I.O.U.'s
4. When the game is over you settle up.

Isn't that what Dostoevsky said????
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Dave The Dov wrote:Isn't that what Dostoevsky said????

I donno, sounds kinda Russian.

but it's actually what my grandfather taught me between the golf green and the gin table.

So between a round of golf and a round of drinks you learned something along the way!!!!
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