So this weekend a few of us went down to the local Indian tribal casino to play some games of chance.

When we arrived, Blake was already playing Craps, and he said the table was doing quite well. So, after watching for a couple minutes, I decided to jump in.

The table was doing quite well. There were about 10 people playing and everyone seemed to be growing their chip stack quite quickly. I was doing well for myself too, though still playing conservatively despite the insane run. I was at one far end of the table and across from me was a girl shooting; I think she rolled the dice roughly for half an hour before she finally crapped out. The dice came around, Blake rolled a few good rolls, he craps out and the dice come to me.

Anyone who has ever rolled dice in craps knows the first roll ends up being somewhat imperfect. There’s this calibration, especially being at the far end of the table. You need to throw hard to hit the other back end of the table, or the roll doesn’t count and everyone gets mad. Also in the back of my mind I’m remembering some “dice rules” – keep them over the table, never touch them with more than one hand, etc. So, all this floating around in my mind, I wind up and toss the dice.

The dice hit the girl opposite of me directly in the face.

“Bad bounce,” you might think – maybe they hit the table kind of hard and jumped out and plunked her. It’s not common for the first roll to kind of bounce out, but also not terribly uncommon.

But oh no, I can’t say that’s what happened. The dice didn’t even touch the table – I looked like a raving lunatic that just threw the dice hard at someone’s face. Because that is exactly what I did, you see.

Anyway, my first real roll I hit a 7, then I roll a 4 and hit the point a few rolls later. At this point I think everyone, girl included, has forgiven me. Unfortunately I crap out on the next roll, but still more or less everyone’s made a bit of money off my rolls.

Shortly after this I go over to the blackjack table and do quite well the first shoe. I tried doing a A/5 count and played relatively close to the strategy and did pretty well. The shoe was overwhelmingly positive the entire time. The next shoe was pretty negative (-3 or more) almost the entire time though, and then I lost track on the third and successive shoes so I ended up losing a bit of cash. By the end of the day, I ended up more or less even (earning $4.50, and a $20 comp).

Anytime you can play craps for about an hour or two and not lose a ton of money is always a win though – lots of fun, but way too easy to lose a lot of money quickly (though just as easy to earn some decent bank, ask Blake).