My first trip to Las Vegas came later in life than it should have. I was twenty six, and on the spur of the moment my then-girlfriend and I decided to pick up for a weekend and find a weekend package in Sin City. We found one that was pretty inexpensive - and later found out why (we were staying in the Stratosphere, a nice enough hotel casino, but one that was pretty far off the strip) - and jumped on it.
I had done some casino gambling before, so I knew what I was getting into. Growing up in Connecticut, there had been a prolonged hassle over whether or not certain American Indian tribes would get the right to host casino gambling on their reservations. In the end the Mashantucket Pequots won the right, followed by the Mohegans, and by the mid-90s two fully fledged casino gambling resorts had sprung up in southeastern connecticut. Thanks to the location - about an hour and a half from Boston, about two hours from New York - and the economy - the dot-com, easy money boom of the 1990s - they soon became the two largest casinos in the world in terms of pure revenue.
And I contributed some of my hard earned cash to their cause. I was pretty hooked on blackjack early on, and like just about everyone else, I lost more than I won.
But eventually I didn't. It happens for everyone with casino gambling: You get on that run, you get every card you need, you walk away from the table with a stack of chips. It's one of the greatest feelings in the world, and one that can't quite be replicated in any other venue. The key to walking away from the table as a winner with casino gambling is recognizing when that streak has arrived, and pressing your bets as hard as you dare. You may be sitting at a ten dollar table, but if the dealer's sitting on nothing but fours and sixes, you can and should up your bets. Remember, you're betting on them butsting nearly as much as you're betting on yourself beating them. Recognize the cards, recognize the streak, and press your bets!
This worked for me that weekend in Vegas, too. There's nothing better than walking into a casino with a few hundred dollars and walking out with a few thousand. Yes, there's always the danger of easy come, easy go, but that's why it's casino gambling.