Originally Posted by
Anton Chigurh
You are right to focus on bankroll and game conditions: these are fundamental aspects of winning.
You seem to have an analytical attitude, so you have a better chance than most of putting together a disciplined, lucrative game.
Looking back at my own preparation, I wish I had foreseen the psychological load this venture puts on you. It's not just about handling the losses and keeping your hands off the bankroll after the wins, or even the distractions of pit scrutiny. It's the sitting and sitting, listening to idiots bellow in your ear or being scraped repeatedly by drunks high-fiving across your face. It's the smell of your fellow patrons, from the dragon breath of the smokers to the interesting whiff of ordure about some of the others. Endless fills, buy-ins and colorings-up, dealers who would rather flirt with players and pit bosses than deal, players who would rather text or flirt with the dealers than play, hours and hours of nodding at utterly incomprehensible comments from Asian ploppies, and boobs and drunks everywhere. That stupid, grating tune from a particular slot machine that is near the pit in every casino. And it's not the stupidity, misery, or distraction of all this that's the real problem, although I'll admit the smell gets me down - how is it that so many people go around in public actually smelling like ****? It's the cumulative waste of energy and, far more important, time which all these distractions constitute.
Wanna hit that soft 18 against the dealer's 9? Watch the dealer roll her eyes with undisguised hatred. Ignore the disdain, because it's not the problem: the dealer is merely a contemptible POS who should be fired, and there plenty of those. It's the waste of your time and energy, having to tap the felt four times and look her straight in the eye. Similar is the dealer who asks all hot female customers walking past the table if they could show ID, because they "sure don't look 21," and then is visibly annoyed because he didn't see your repeated calls for a hit and thinks you're wasting time. Dealers will stop dealing to catch up with their friends at the table. At tables with sidebets, a small chunk of every hour will be spent listening to the Nth explanation of a particular sucker sidebet to a patron who can't read the odds written on the felt in front of her, or the (N+1)st lecture from a dealer that "you should play your hands consistently - pick a way to play that 15 against a 10, and stick with it."
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