The Crowning Experience

Long ago, there was a Los Angeles policewoman who gave it up to become a prostitute. She was then targeted by her former cop colleagues, of course, and she became news. I happened to hear a softball interview with her and, although I don’t remember her being as interesting as promised, she gave one very funny response:

“So what was it like, going from the world of police and lawyers and judges to the world of pimps and johns?”

“Well, for one thing, as a prostitute you meet a better class of people.”

EduTECH24 was the kind of world that made you long to meet a better class of people.

Last week’s EduTECH was held in Jeff’s Shed. At one point, desperately in need of a break, I skipped out and crossed the road to wander another world, of Melbourne’s divey casino. As it happens, I have very fond memories of this divey casino.

Crown Casino opened thirty years ago, soon after I returned to Melbourne from PhD-ing and post doc-ing in America. My father liked to gamble, on the horses (ok-ish) and the pokies (stupid-ish). Not recklessly, but more than was smart: let’s say, avidly. Of course, Daddy was delighted when the casino opened. At the time, I knew essentially nothing about gambling. With Vegas in easy reach, gambling was in the California air and I had vaguely pondered it, but no more than that. Now, with Daddy intent on going to the casino anyway, I suggested he might want to try card-counting at blackjack. He thought it would be too hard but I figured it was worth a look. I looked, and it turned out to be very easy. Daddy and I both learned to count, and thus began a lovely and lucrative period of family bonding at Melbourne’s divey casino.

Daddy and I were complete amateurs but in the early wild west days at Crown it didn’t matter. Everyone was an amateur. The other players, the dealers, the pit bosses, the management, no one knew what they were doing. And no one much cared. The gamblers flocked in and the casino was happy to fleece them. Thus happily busy, the management did not pay much attention to the small gangs of clumsy counters.

Of course the casino management, who definitely knew who the counters were, would have preferred it if we were not around. Government rules, however, meant that they could not simply kick us out, and formal procedures were administrative and clumsy, typically more trouble for the casino than it was worth. They could also cut thick into the shoe, which dramatically affects counting, and they did for a while, but that only made it worse for the casino: the frequent shuffling meant that they lost time, and thus money; and the pauses in play meant that they lost impatient punters, and thus money.

That’s not to suggest that the management weren’t prone to being hostile, particularly early on. Pit bosses and Company-Man dealers would frequently engage in petty harassment. They would allude to us counters being cheats and manipulate the regular gamblers to also resent us, for screwing up the odds or the fabric of the universe or something. They would try to deal quickly, before we could bet, and they attempted to rush our play. It was unpleasant but it was just sound and annoyance, signifying nothing.

In any case, this cold war pretty quickly settled down. The petty tactics tended to disappear, and there was a tacit agreement that if we counters didn’t bet too large then management wouldn’t bother us too much. Many of the dealers and pit bosses and supervisors got to know us well. They came to understand that we were not cheating, and that we were no real threat to the casino. And, in any case, what did they care if we were? They also appreciated that we were polite, and that we didn’t get angry or blame the dealers when the hands didn’t go our way. Many dealers became actively friendly. Not that they would cheat for us, of course, but they were patient and would look to cut the shoe thin. Some would cut very thin.

Beyond blackjack, there were other games and promotions to pursue, various enticements to attract the regular punters. These offers could be taken up or, if need be, evaluated easily enough and, if accepted/played properly, the offers could bring in small returns. Many times. There were always a few ways to make at least some money.

In the early days, Daddy and I would play most week-days, from mid-evening until the early hours, typically ending with a (free) “breakfast”, around 3 or 4 in the morning. Daddy became friends with Gary, who quit school in his early teens to gamble on the horses. Successfully. Then Sue, Daddy’s girlfriend and mother of my half-brother Ed, began to come along. The four of us would typically play together, again typically long into the night.

The casino became a regular meeting place for the family, the various brothers and half-brothers, and friends and girlfriends. We’d meet for coffee or to eat, or just to chat at the blackjack tables. We had countless free meals, courtesy of the Frequent Gamblers points that were accumulated as a natural byproduct. There were the 2 am coffee and cakes in the food court, served by the sweet and nutty lady at the Italian kiosk. She would charge us an amount that was entirely impossible to predict but was always at least an order of magnitude less than the correct amount. She simply liked us. Lots of people liked us. Daddy was a character, and we were regulars, an odd and interesting and polite group.

Eventually, too soon, it all died. Eventually, too soon, my father died.

After Daddy’s death, Gary and I continued for a few years. The casino got tighter and blackjack became harder, and then, with the introduction of continuous shuffling machines, effectively impossible. There were other schemes to try, and for a while there was still some money to be made, but it became more difficult and less fun. It ended.

Walking into Crown last week, the first time for well over a decade, was strange and poignant. It was grim, of course, in exactly the way most people picture casinos to be grim. The blinking lights and jangling poker machines don’t even attempt to disguise the fact that a casino is a very depressing place to be on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. The deadened eyes of the pokies players, and the more frantic manner of the Asian groups blowing their, or someone’s, money on $100 baccarat, it was all as bad as people believe and as bad as it ever was. But this grim hellhole of a casino was also the home of so many such fond memories.

It was equally strange walking back over the road to EduTECH. The real world, perhaps, but much less real for me.

To return to the beginning, did the casino have a better class of people? No, probably not. Albeit with many notable exceptions, the casino staff were generally robotic or mean, and the gamblers were generally greedy and self-centred and stupid. But if they were not a better class of people, they were not clearly worse. EduTECH exhibited plenty of robotics and meanness and greed and self-interest and stupidity. And there is something clearly preferable to witnessing human failings in honest nakedness, rather than cloaked in professional sanctimony and corporate glitter. Given the option next year, to attend EduTECH or to wander a divey casino, I have zero doubt which I would choose.