17th February 2002
As some of you may have realised from the blankness of these pages in the last few months, I've had a tough time coming up with things to write about. Taking the piss out of shit football players is easy. It's a lot more difficult coming up with funny stuff from 5000 miles away. So I've decided to tell you about last weekend's snowboarding and gambling trip. I don't know if it'll be funny but it should give you an idea of life in California. People over here like to do stuff with their weekends. This is partly because there is so much to do, being a short drive from some of the best snow in America. Although the term 'short drive' does not translate straightforwardly into English. A 'short drive' in this country means anything less than 6 hours. The 'short drive' to the mountains for us takes just under 6 hours. But we put the time to good use....

Let me tell you about my flatmates. You've already met one of them, Harley minus kebabs, aka G.I. Joe, who can bench press about 250lbs and plans to join the marines as soon as he hangs around long enough to pick up a Masters. The third, Fitness Freak, is one of the top members of the Stanford bike team, and has been flatmates with the fourth, Cris, for 3 years. Cris also lives to go biking and is part of the team that organizes parties for the residents here. As you might expect, he is a funny, affable guy, with a truly encyclopedic ability to quote the Simpsons. You would certainly not think him a nerd if you met him. However, you would be wrong. He has countless pop-physics books lying around, so when we decided to go on the weekend away, I asked him if he had any books on gambling strategy, hoping for some tips on blackjack. He handed me a book containing 200 pages of everything there is to know about the game of 21. When I discussed it with him it got scarier:  "I actually got interested in this a few years ago so I wrote a computer program to calculate the exact odds of busting on any hand....it's pretty simple....blah blah blah....recursive functions....blah blah blah."

When I woke up, I had given up hope of meeting anybody who isn't a nerd in the next 5 years. The result however was that the four of us spent the 6 hour drive discussing and memorizing the basic strategy for blackjack. The 6 hours flew by, and by the time we hit the Nevada state line, we were experts on the game. It was time to put the theory into practice. We strode to a table, put our $20 on the fasc and crossed our fingers. I should say straight up that I have a good record in casinos. I've played 3 times before in my life and have on average doubled my money. I should also tell those who don't know that blackjack is a very friendly game. Everybody plays against the dealer, and everybody, including the dealer, wants the dealer to lose. This means there is plenty of opportunity to discuss what you should do with your friends, or in this case, with the laid-back guy sitting next to me, who didn't seem to know much about the game. But I was in no mood to discuss things. There is no room for rational disagreement in blackjack. If the book says hit then you hit. If the book says stand then you stand. And I'd just spent the last 6 hours studying the book.

Suddenly I reminded G.I. Joe of his Sergeant. "STAND!", "HIT", "DOUBLE", "YOU ALWAYS DOUBLE A SOFT 13 TO 18. I DON'T CARE IF THE DEALER'S GOT AN ACE. IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO DOUBLE IT I'LL DOUBLE IT FOR YOU, YOU PITIFUL EXCUSE FOR A MAN." And so on and so forth. And the outcome? After 2 hours and 5 free dinks I had turned the $20 into $60. Cris, following the same strategy had turned $40 into $0.

The funny thing is, I'd made a lot of the money doubling my bet on soft 13 to 18 (that is, when I have an ace and count it as 11). I had won pretty much every time. But Cris had a niggling feeling that you should only double that hand when the dealer has a poor card showing. I ignored his advice and kept wining. And can you guess what happened when we checked the book? Yep, he was right. You only double that hand when the dealer has a very poor card showing. Which means I'd kept making the wrong move. And I'd kept winning. Which just goes to show that there's no substitute for being a lucky bastard.

Next time – Snowboarding