Tag: gambling

Thoughts from a much-needed weekend off

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Paris – my #2 favorite place in Las Vegas

As mentioned in the fanny pack post, I was actually in Las Vegas over the Labor Day weekend.  This was effectively the first real, multi-day, kids-free breather that mythical wife and I have had since, before the arrival of #1 back in March of 2020, right before the pandemic shut the world down.  Since then, we’ve literally never had longer than a single day where we were both not without children.  We obviously love our kids and our budding famiry very much, but we’d also be kidding ourselves that having gone through such a stretch has been difficult at times, and it’s amazing we’ve gone this long without a true break and not ended up going insane in the process.

Needless to say, the highlight of the trip was without question, simply getting to sleep in for two straight nights.  As in, turn off all alarms, pin the blinds shut, and go to sleep, only to wake up naturally, once our bodies deemed it no longer necessary to remain asleep.  I know we were in Las Vegas, the city that never truly sleeps and we’re supposed to be out gambling, drinking and being total shitheads all night every night, but damn if it wasn’t so refreshing to wind down the evenings knowing that we could sleep as long as we wanted.

To any of my zero readers who might be under the age of 32, I can imagine just how depressing of a paragraph the preceding one was, as a glimpse of what life after the age of 40 and with multiple kids can await but I really do love my famiry I really do.

As for Las Vegas itself, it was a good weekend to get away from the grind of daily living, but I have to say I had a lot of thoughts about not just Las Vegas, but the experience of traveling, and the state of the world itself.  And not to shit on what was a very welcome weekend to relax some, but me being who I am, of course these aforementioned thoughts are quite critical.

If I could get right to the point, I would have to say that I feel like there is a pretty wide disconnect when it comes to the world of business and the people of the world, and where they stand on how “re-opened” everything really is versus how re-opened everyone thinks it is, or should be.

Case in point: travel to Las Vegas is expensive as fuck, due to supposed demand and inflation.  What should be no more than really a $350 RT give or take anywhere in the continental United States was like an $800 RT per person, resulting in mythical wife and I settling with Greyhound Spirit Air in order to not get to the casinos already broke.  Except when you get to Las Vegas, casinos and restaurants all over the city are operating at less than pre-pandemic capacities, almost all of the buffets are either shut down or completely impossible to get in on account of them being the only ones left, table minimum bets are way higher than they used to be, and it’s basically impossible to be spontaneous or do anything substantial on short notice anymore.

Aside from sleeping the fuck in, two things that I wanted to do at my first time in Vegas in like 5-6 years was to eat at a buffet, and visit Ellis Island.  Neither of which happened because pretty much every buffet in Las Vegas was either closed or required a massively advance reservation, and nobody in my party wanted to go to Ellis Island and even if we did go, there’s no doubt that their restaurant would’ve had a massive wait and been impossible to get in at.

Not that they were that bad by any means, but we had several meals at places I probably wouldn’t have gone to if there were buffets available, not to mention that they were all way more expensive than good Vegas buffets were.

But due to the general feeling of restrictions and handcuffs here and there, I found myself breaking a couple of my own neurotic rules in Las Vegas, out of a feeling that I didn’t have any choice.  Two of them, at the same time, which was no playing where you stay, and no playing at tables with robotic female Asian dealers, because to me, both are omens of horrible luck.  But I did both anyway, and found myself down a good bit in short order, and going to bed feeling agitated and dejected.

Fortunately, a positive gambling session at Paris the following day helped salvage my gambling exploits, but I still left the city an overall net negative in the process, not that such isn’t always the case when it comes to going to Las Vegas, but the point is, there’s a noticeable disconnect between how much the city wants to operate versus the demand of things from the people who are visiting, leading to a lot of obnoxious waits, crowds, rushes and rejections.

Such sentiments weren’t limited to Vegas itself, just the traveling experience in general, is very similar in the sense that airports want to operate in these pandemic-era manners with skeleton crews, early closures and basically taking away all seating from travelers, but not taking into consideration every single flight is basically oversold, because of the reduced number of flights is making every ticket a hot one, and all these people are stacked on top of each other, sitting wherever there’s floor space and an outlet on the wall.

Either way, I don’t regret the trip, and I’m grateful to have gotten away from ordinary life for just a few days, and could sleep in and feel like a self-absorbed adult for that time.  By the time it was time to pick the kids up from grandma’s, I couldn’t wait to see my girls, and give them big hugs and kisses again.  But obviously me being the headcase that I notoriously am, nothing goes by without me overthinking about it, even good shit like small vacations.  But I would wager that I’m not the only one who feels that it’s kind of obnoxious that the commercial world is trying to have their cake and eat it too when they try and use the pandemic as an excuse to operate at 75% when the consumer world is ready and itching for things to be operating at 110%.

Being a man of my word

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A wise man; the Ultimate Warrior to be specific; once said: blah blah blah skeletons, blah blah blah, sacrifice.  Rooooarrrrrrrr snarrllllll

Chris Jericho said it best about the Ultimate Warrior: I don’t know what he said but it sounded cool yaaaayyyyy

Anyway, this isn’t a post about the Ultimate Warrior, Chris Jericho, or professional wrestling, for once.  Those were referenced just to zone in on a single concept, that’s kind of stuck with me, especially when it comes to trying to tempt fate and potentially get the things that I hope to get: sacrifice.

I have this belief that seldom do good things occur without some degree of sacrifice involved.  It’s basically like when kids behave and act good because they want something.  And when I’ve wanted things like, the Braves winning the World Series, I most definitely think that there should be some sacrifice made by all Braves fans, if they really wanted to see a World Series win.

A few weeks ago, I dogged on Dugout Mugs, and basically how I thought they were the most useless products on the planet.  And how in an era of pandemic, wealth inequity, teetering on the precipice of financial ruin everywhere, the absolute last fucking thing anyone needed was a cup made out of a baseball bat.

One of the last things I blathered about how was that I should probably make a sacrificial bet that if the Braves won the World Series that I should get a Dugout Mug, in spite of just how abhorrent I think they are, because if I really wanted to see the Braves win, I should make a sacrifice, after all.

I wasn’t at all writing all that, in an attempt to superstitiously manipulate fate, and put on a show.  Believe me, I have done it before, and naturally it doesn’t work, but my disdain for Dugout Mugs is very much legitimate.  They’re useless products, AND they have a ridiculously ludicrous $70 price point for a fucking hollowed out bat head.  The Braves winning the World Series would definitely cost me something, that I would never purchase in any other circumstance.

And despite the fact that I made this bet with myself, and probably zero people even read or knew about it, when the Braves finished the Astros, I went ahead and bit the bullet and purchased a fucking Dugout Mug.  Thankfully, there was some sort of promotional deal for early purchasers, and I was able to get my mug for not-$70, but it was still basically the cost of a brand new video game once taxes and shipping were applied.

I didn’t have to do it.  I could’ve denied everything and just said eating my words should be enough.  But when it comes to fates and superstition, I am that gullible, so I believe that it’s probably for the best that I remain a man of my word and fulfill the obligation I made for myself if the Braves were to win.  

Considering how long I’d been hoping to see this, $57 is a paltry price to pay, and even if I think this mug and all other Dugout Mugs are bullshit, at least everything will taste something like victory for a little while from it.  Even gross-ass IPAs.

Blet Money, a year later

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I will always maintain that one of the better things I’ve ever incorporated to my brog, would be the On This Day plug-in that lets me narcissistically look back at the posts I made on the day in all prior years where I’ve posted.  Presumably, fewer things are going to inspire words to write other than myself, and every now and then I’ll see an old post that will inspire me to write pretty immediately.

That being said, a year ago on this day, I wrote about how I’d earned a not-insignificant amount of money from noting but doing internet surveys, earning anywhere from 29¢ to $1.58 a survey, sometimes taking a minute, sometimes 20, but covering a vast gamut of topics, whether I had any business opining about them or not.

Sometimes I had idea of what the surveys were collating information about, but there were tons of times where I had absolutely no reason to be taking these surveys, but it was supposedly $1.58 for 8 minutes of survey, so sure I’m now an IT manager for a large enterprise company sharping opinions about cloud deployment and SaaS whatever.  I treated it like LAIRE from Role Models, where I was role playing as things that I didn’t really have any substantial knowledge of.

Anyway, it’s been a year where I was humblebragging over $401.  I’ve been continuing on doing what I was doing then, and since then, the above is what I’ve currently got in the PayPal account designated for this little endeavor: literally one thousand more dollars than I did a year ago, for doing rando internet surveys for pocket change at a time.

I should also point out that this was originally done to earn money to buy wrestling blets with, and this amount seen above is after I’ve purchased two blets for myself (NXT UK, NWA Television), as well as a pair of WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships for my two daughters.  In all, I’ve made a fair amount more than what’s in this PayPal account, and I don’t see much reason to stop, as long as I’ve got the ability to earn something, when I’m doing nothing, which isn’t always, but I can make some here and there at least once a day.

Recently, I was spying on eBay one of my unicorn blets that happened to pop up: an original Figures Toy Co. Ring of Honor world championship blet, which is something that I’ve wanted for a little while now, but I didn’t want to spend $600 to meet the buy it now price the seller was asking.  I floated a few low-ball offers to test the water, which were predictably auto-declined, but I was hoping to wait until the end of the selling window and maybe float in $500. 

Unfortunately for me, there was someone who was willing to walk in the door and just pony up $600, and just like that the blet I wanted was gone.  Who knows when the next time this specific blet shows up again.

The thing is though, I was mentally prepared to unload this $500, but thanks to anonymous money bags, I didn’t.  But as far as I’m concerned, this $500 is truly disposable, and it’s almost like I want to do something reckless with it.  Sure, I could be the bigger person and donate it or give it to someone who could really use it, but I never claimed to be a saint, and I kind of do feel like gambling it in some degree.

And since I’m not about to go to any casinos any time soon, my mind has been very curious about dabbling my toes into the marketplace, and seeing what investing is like, because I know dick from butt when it comes to it.  I just know that I’ve always been fascinated with films like Boiler Room, the Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short, and I see a very realistic chance to take a little bit of risk with some truly expendable money.

I asked around, and didn’t get much excitement or real fun-sounding options, but $500 isn’t necessarily too small to take a chance on.  All the same, if I don’t find something intriguing enough soon, the feeling will fade, and I’ll just sit on it until the day my unicorn blet shows up again.

Anyway, what started out as blet money has grown into something a little more substantial, and with the potential to take the plunge with something a little more high stakes than internet surveys.  All I know is that the time I’ve spent writing all this bullshit, I could’ve been making a $1.80 on what I like to call, over-max surveys, when for a short period, there’s suddenly a number of surveys that exceeds the usual maximum $1.58 threshold, and my eyes get big and excited at the thought of making a whole thirty more fucking cents.

Tempting, if I knew how

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really know shit about stocks.  I know the general basic concept of buying shares when you can afford to purchase them, and then it’s a waiting game of hoping they rise and not fall, and if they do fall, sitting on them until they can hopefully rise back up.  And then you sell them, hopefully for more than what you paid for them.

Regardless of my general lack of knowledge, I’m absolutely fascinated with stories about the stock market, whether they’re films like Boiler Room or The Wolf of Wall Street, or numerous books written by Michael Lewis who seems to have a niche writing about stock market stories and/or gambling, but I guess in a way the stock market is basically like gambling, and gambling is something that I do enjoy doing myself, which probably explains why I’m so easily fascinated by stories about the stock market.

The thing is, despite my general fascination of the stock market, I don’t even have the slightest clue to dipping even a toe into the pool.  Supposedly, I could get on apps like Robin Hood or set up an account with like eTrade or some other service, but like I said, I have no idea.  Furthermore, I often ask myself if this is the kind of rabbit hole I even want to explore going down the first place, because as I said, it’s basically gambling outside of a casino, and I’ve most certainly done my share of losing money in a casino, so it might not be such a great idea to put myself in a situation where I can lose it outside of one.

If I were single and without children, the circumstances would probably be different to where I might feel inclined to try, but my life in general these days is more than just myself and I always have to consider that, so in spite of my temptation and curiosity, the likelihood of me actually partaking in it is pretty minimal.

Regardless, it’s hard to not be fascinated, curious and of course tempted, when hearing of the wacky hijinks of the internet where from what I understand, Reddit has basically colluded in a manner, to seemingly artificially inflate the price of GameStop stock, to where it start off at worthless, but has ballooned up like 140%, and people are literally making large returns on investment in quick in-and-outs. 

There are numerous people that I know that are buzzing about it, and have put some skin into the game, and I’d definitely love to be among them, but like I said, I don’t feel like I’m really in the position to be as flippant with my money, and that’s coming from someone who spends hundreds of dollars on replica wrestling blets, but more importantly, I don’t want to create a habit or become addicted to it, because I love winning, I hate losing, and I’m not saying that I’ve ever had any inkling of a gambling problem, but I’m also not able to access Las Vegas every day.

But damned am I fascinated by it all, and tempted if the circumstances were different, because it literally seems like a really easy way to make some real quick and thrilling scratch if I just ponied up a little start-up capital and pulled out quickly.

Sounds like a Clemson grad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The importance of an education: unknown man wagers $8,600 on #1 ranked Clemson vs. negative-ranked Syracuse . . . on Clemson to win.  And at -100,000 odds, the payout on Clemson’s inevitable victory would be an $8.60 payout

Either this person is a Clemson homer/grad, and/or they really don’t understand how sports betting works.  And/or they are just dumb.  Most likely all of the above.

Honestly, before I clown too much on this guy, I’ve kind of been there before.  Betting on sports isn’t as cut and dry as it is amongst casual friends, where everything is a pretty straight up bet.  But to do it on a book, it’s vastly more complicated, and usually involves match-ups that aren’t so overwhelmingingly favored in one direction as it was between Clemson and Syracuse.

In 2005, I felt really good about the Washington Redskins’ chances against the Seattle Seachickens in the playoffs, as the Redskins were riding momentum, and the Seahawks were going to be without Shaun Alexander when he was still good.  I actually called up a sports book that I’d been hearing advertised on television, and whereas I thought it would be as simple to just say I wanted to put $50 on the Redskins, I quickly learned that it’s vastly more complicated.  Such as money lines, spreads and partial games, but ultimately I went with the straight money bet, since that’s all I wanted, and I stood to make like $75 if the Redskins were to pull off the upset.

Naturally, I lost, because , because the Redskins are the Redskins and I’ve literally never won a sports bet in my life, but I learned a little something about sports betting that evening.  Mostly, that it doesn’t really have any meaning unless the matchup is remotely competitive, which is something that pretty much any college football game featuring Clemson is not, to the point where lots of books won’t even offer straight money bets on Clemson, because they win every game by like 40 points, and they don’t want to pay $8.60 to the 400 oafs who take the sure-lock bet, because that’s still $3,400 they lose, even if it would have netted them $3.4 million if the upset were to occur.

I get it though, kinda.  This loser with $8,600 to blow wanted to boast about how much they gamble, and conveniently leave out the fine details, like how they’re betting on the best college football team of the last decade, against a school that’s more known for basketball than football.  They brag to their friends and over social media about how much money they’re risking, and when they inevitably win, they’ll brag about winning, but fail to mention the odds or how minuscule risk there actually was.  If it’s not stupidity, then it’s all a really excessive effort dog and pony show for the internets; which still makes it stupid.

The only true justice is if and when one day, Clemson actually gets upset by an actual scrub.  And in all fairness, one of the last times that actually happened was against Syracuse a few years ago, but that was also before Trevor Lawrence.  But hopefully, one of these days, this particular guy, or anyone like him, when it occurs, the internet is ready to identify, ridicule and meme-ify them to the rest of the world.

Greatest or not, Jeopardy James changed the game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Man, that was some good Jeopardy! last night.  I felt like a black guy watching the NBA slam dunk contest at certain points of the consecutive matches, like whenever any contestant went all-in on a daily double or Final Jeopardy and got the question right.  And to think there are several more nights of this, I think it’s safe to say that there are at least two more solid nights of some solid Jeopardy! entertainment to be had.

Ken Jennings may have taken the first win of Jeopardy! GOAT tournament, and could very well  win it all; but I think it’s safe to say that when the smoke settles “Jeopardy James” Holzhauer is still the one who really changed the game.

It didn’t take a lot of time to see that from the very start, the contestants started with the high-dollar answers, a staple of the Holzhauer tactic, with the ultimate objective being finding the Daily Double(s), and then going all-in to either run away with the game, or crash and burn trying.  This was definitely not something that either Ken Jennings or Brad Rutter did in their previous runs, but by virtue of Holzhauer standing at the podium next to them, forced them to adapt.

Basically what it boils down to is that if you don’t play like Jeopardy James, there’s little way to actually beat Jeopardy James.  Contestants are forced to clear the Daily Doubles and wipe out all of the high dollar answers so that he can’t build any bank, because he’s so good at the game that he can win any game where he’s capable of remaining in striking distance.

Both Jennings and Rutter played a Holzhauer game where they sniffed out all the high dollar questions first, and unfortunately for Jeopardy James, between the two of them, they basically found every single Daily Double in the two matches of the night.  Rutter, who was there solely on his legacy from 19 years ago, found 3-4 of them, and blew it and zeroed out each time, and it’s painfully evident that in spite of his imprssive lifetime earnings through Jeopardy, he really has no place being in this tournament today.

It was a clear two-horse race between Holzhauer and Jennings; I think most assumed that would be the case from the start.  But even Jennings admit to being out of his comfort zone when he bet his entire 3,800 on a Daily Double, and you could see the immense relief in his face when he happened to get it correct.  But it no more clear the importance of playing like Jeopardy James than in the first match’s Final Jeopardy where all three contestants going all-in on their wagers, with Jennings getting the win solely based on him building a strong lead in the first two rounds.

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Not surprising, but still sad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I found out recently that the Hooters Casino & Hotel in Las Vegas is going under, and I can’t help but feel a little melancholy at the thought of that.  It was definitely not the most glitzy and must-see destination of all of the Las Vegas casinos, but it was still one of the casinos that seemed like it might actually have some staying power, based on its fairly decent location at the south end of the Strip and just the general fact that they were Hooters, a company powered primarily on one of the staples of Las Vegas’s commerce: boobs.

Then again, the south end of the Strip hasn’t always been that advantageous, especially looking at the sad state of properties like the Tropicana, Excalibur, and the revolving door of identities that Hooters was before it was Hooters, and it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that even the mighty titty-centric Hooters is even failing.  Especially considering that in comparison to the many casinos that employ go-go dancers and lingerie dealers, Hooters’ signature uniforms have become somewhat tame and daresay conservative, and their business model has grown stale in a city that’s always changing, in the name of making money.

It was a few years ago in which I went to Hooters last, when mythical wife was still mythical gf and it was her first trip out to Las Vegas ever.  We were staying at the neighboring MGM Grand, so we wandered over to Hooters, just so she could get the full gamut of casinos, seeing as how the night prior, we had wandered around through bougie joints like the Cosmopolitan, Aria and City Center, so now it was an opportunity to see some of the more tired and less-than-glamorous joints.  And walking into Hooters, it was the very definition of tired and defeated, with carpets that looked like they haven’t been changed since 2000, the odor of stale cigarettes, defeat and desperation, and barely any dealers working the floor.  Granted, it was a little earlier in the day, but it was still kind of a reminder of the harsh reality that not everything in Las Vegas is glitz and glamour.

Ultimately, it’s of no consequence to me that Hooters Casino & Hotel is getting shut down, because I’ve only ever stayed there once, and I don’t always go there whenever I go out to Vegas.  When the day is over, the emotion I feel is mostly based on the simple fact that it’s a change to something that I’d grown accustomed to, and there’s no secret that change itself is one of the chief evokers of emotion these days.

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