2007 Trip 6
It’s been a several weeks since I’ve played and I’m ready for a nice long trip. I see two cliches for the first time today. The first is that I am seated next to a woman who crosses herself both on take-off and landing. It is easy to become blasé about taking a flight when you travel all the time, and everyone else around seeming casual so such a reaction seems quite unusual. I’m used to hearing applause on touchdown, but this is a first for me.
The second is what I believe to be a real-life internet bride and her Sugar-Daddy who are in front of me in at passport control. From her Eastern accent, appearance, and shiny new Western Passport, plus the vast difference in age and attractiveness to her male companion, I doubt that it’s a love match, but perhaps that’s just cynical old me.
The flight is on time, which I needed it to be, since I have to take a bus from the airport to the nearest town, from where the bus to my destination leaves. From prior experience I know that the connection between buses is tight. If I miss the first bus after my scheduled arrival time, or even if it’s slightly late, I will have no direct bus and I’m not sure of the timetable for the others. My bag is among the last to come off the plane and I just catch the bus. Or so I think, but in the end it leaves 10 minutes late, making me miss the other one by five minutes. I check my alternative bus and I have nearly two hours to wait. At least I have time to get something to eat. I take the bus and arrive to find I have another hour and a half for the bus to my destination. The information office was already closed but the timetable tells me it is the last one of the night. This is still high season but they aren’t very frequent. They turn out to be even less frequent as this bus fails to show up. I have no choice but to take a taxi. The driver explains to me that sometimes the bus I wanted often doesn’t come. At least the taxi fare isn’t too expensive.
I get to the casino town. They have a good comping system and they have booked a hotel for me. The one I requested isn’t available but they booked me another. They tell me the name and it is one I remember being far inferior to the others around. Oh well, serves me right for not booking early enough. However, I discover that the hotel has had major refurbishment and is now one of the nicest around. Things are looking up. Pleased with my state of the art room, I take a nap then have dinner, ready finally to put some hours in at the blackjack table. It is late and I’ll have only an hour of two of play but I’ll show my face, especially since they are paying for my room. This feeling lasts until the second hand of the night, whereupon I get a 15 against a dealer 10. I try to play a certain option only to be told that they no longer have that rule. It appears that it was seen to be slowing the game down so they stopped it at the start of the year. Don’t know whether this is an excuse or not, certainly they didn’t think the rule was profitable enough for them, for surely they would have kept it otherwise, despite the slowing effect it had. Either way, this makes the game a lot less attractive because the cut is variable at best. The second dealer I get has a much better cut so it may be playable if this better cut is more prevalent. Perhaps they have tried to speed up the game by cutting out fewer cards. We’ll have to see tomorrow.
Day Two
With the rule change, it’s playable with a decent cut but it’s obvious from this night’s play that this cannot be guaranteed. In addition, the tables are too crowded too often to justify staying here. However, my hotel has been paid for, so I’ll stay another day and figure out where I go from here. My problem is that I have plans in a neighbouring country next week. I had intended to stay here until then and go to another game in the area afterwards. If I went to this game from here I’d only have a few days before I had to leave and the journey from here would be long and tiring. There are possibilities near here but they are far from ideal. They are small places which may not take the action for long and which have small minimums. Back to the present casino. I play for a few hours before the tables all fill up completely. This is why I usually avoid high season. I thought I’d just miss it, but obviously not. I have won tonight though.
Day Three
I’ve decided to check out one or two games in the area. If I go to the other game now it may still be very busy there, so the long journey probably wouldn’t be worth it as long as there is a chance of a game near here. This game is busy again tonight so I only play a couple of hours and opt for an early night to catch the early bus in the morning, so that I can get settled in the new place early so I’m fresh for the night’s game.
Day Four
The taxi I ordered is late and I make the bus by minutes. I’m glad I didn’t miss it as I would have had to wait 5 hours for the next one. I get to the hotel where the casino is situated and find that they have a room free.
I enter the casino as soon as it opens. Just one blackjack table. I get it opened no problem and am glad to see them show me the cards without me having to ask. The limit is low and the cut is borderline but the rules are good. I play for a few hours and catch some bad shoes and am down from the start. I’m spreading to 3 boxes in order to get more money on during high counts because the maximum is low, but every time I do it, I seem to give the dealer an ace which would otherwise land as second card on my first hand. However, after a few hours I get a nice shoe which closes the gap and then a really nice one which puts me ahead. The dealer busts several times in the shoe and I finish a few thousand up- very good for those limits. Maybe the manageres has seen this on the camera as she comes over to watch me on the next shoe but goes away before the end so perhaps she’s not too suspicious. I don’t imagine they get that many big players here so they may not be used to having big swings on the blackjack, either for or against them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they reviewed the tapes and refused to let me in the next day, but we’ll have to see.
Day Five
The conditions are the same today, they open up the blackjack table again as soon as I ask for it. They tell me the casino will close permanently after the summer as they don’t get enough players. I can see why- even last night, a Saturday, there were only a few people playing table games and even those playing the machines didn’t stay very long. However, I am still surprised when I am told that they will have to close early tonight as the sister casino in the next town over is busy and needs more staff, so the dealers are going there for the rest of the night. I knew this group was rather shambolic and disorganised but not to this extent. I could of course go to that casino but if it’s busy it won’t be a good game, especially at those limits. Moreover, if I don’t see the cards spread in that casino I won’t play and if it’s busy I may not be able to open up a new table to do this. In addition the owner/ manager there knows me from before and could very well get suspicious and this attitude may filter back to the other place. An early night again, at least it’s after a small win.
Day Six
A tale of two cuts. Three staff are on, one deals, one watches the game and the other takes a break. When another table game is opened the manager watches the game. One of the regular staff just watches the game so I have one of two dealers. The man cuts out only 1.5 decks, the woman cuts out nearly 2.5 but her shuffle is more easily trackable so both are playable. As the night goes on her cut gets steadily worse but the guy’s stays the same. Before I leave the woman stays dealing for an hour. I want to see if the man’s cut has stayed good because the manager has been watching me for nearly an hour, even when there is another member of staff to inspect the game. Has she told both dealers to give a bad cut from now on? I’m only slightly ahead, but I was down around $2000 before coming back in a short period, so this may have worried her. It depends how paranoid she is. The smaller the casino, the more likely this is. However I need to take a break and it’s nearly the end of the night so I finish there and then.
Day Seven
I come in refreshed, ready and willing to play, only to find that the limit is reduced The maximum has been halved, although the minimum strangely has stayed the same. When I ask about this I am told that this is normal since it is now the end of the season and the head office at the casino in the next town has ordered this and the manager here has no discretion in this matter. It seems strange as it is mid-week and I would have thought that such a move would have been made right after a weekend. It isn’t the first of the month or anything so I don’t think the date has anything to so with it. I could still play albeit at a lower win rate but the maximum is now only 5 times the minimum (!) and if I spread across to more boxes I’ll probably get cut down to a greater extent than I have here already. So another early night and a slightly earlier departure than anticipated. Some trips you seem to struggle to get your play in, others you’re able to camp out at a place and put in some substantial hours.
Day Eight
Having been away for a few days visiting friends in a neighbouring country I come to a new country, next to the one I played last week. I get the train by minutes and then only because I go to the front of the line at the “international Departures” ticket office and ask to push in. The guy at the front lets me in, albeit begrudgingly.
I was here on my final trip last year and I usually don't leave it so long between visits here, but other matters intervened and I gave other places priority. This casino has quite tolerant management. Granted, they give me half a shoe and have done so since the second session I ever played here but I’ve had some good wins from them and they still welcome me. I’ve even got a VIP card that entitles me to free meals and occasionally free accommodation. Since I have not been here for nearly a year I reckon I can get away with asking for a free hotel room. Unfortunately they don’t have a comping system as refined as the one in the place where I started the trip, you have to ask the manager yourself. It’s always a balancing act this, you want to ask without appearing too concerned over whether you get it or not, since you gamble far more than the price of the room and therefore for the imange high roller image I try to project it shouldn't really matter either way. I ask for the manager, show him my VIP card and ask in a “I thought I might just ask on the off chance since you gave me this card, but it’s beneath me really” type way. They take half an hour to sort it out but come back with a voucher for a few nights in the plush hotel nearby. Time to check in and get some shuteye before a mini-session.
I come back for an hour. First I have dinner, always very nice here. I would usually play for a while first before taking the comp meal but the only thing I’ve had to eat in the past 12 hours was a sandwich that I bought on the train so I’m famished.
Since they know I’m here, I don’t expect to get away with a shoe or two at the regulation one deck cut that normal punters get that I sometimes have before being recognised. As it is, the dealer recognises me from a previous trip so she would probably use her intiative and give me half a shoe in any case. I get a good start . “Yes, you’ve got good control”, she says in a manner that suggests she now understands why I only get half a shoe. “You’ve lost all those hands you played at only $10”. An observant dealer. I go up a bit further before dropping back a bit and then I lose my solo game. We’re in the last hour and I feel the day’s travelling catch up with me, so I leave around $1500 up.
Day Nine
Up and down today. $2000 up, then $4000 down and finally $3000 up.
Day Ten
Well, it had to happen sometime. I’ve led something of a charmed life in this casino over the past couple of years in that despite some big swings during sessions, I’ve never had a really big loss at this place although I have had some big wins in my favour. It is the kind of loss that the casino management envisage when they continue to let me play. They expect it to catch up with me and wipe me out sooner or later. By the same token it is also the type of result which reminds you why you have blackjack bankrolls. Moreover, sessions like this serve to illustrate why everyone does not play blackjack for a living. Two steps forward one step back, a half-decent shoe seems always to be followed by a far worse losing one, a win of a unit or half unit on a hand (for example when one hand wins on a double and the other loses or one loses and the other gets a natural) is balanced by a multi unit loss when all splits and doubles go down.
It did seem to be one of those nights when nothing went right, I even was able to sneak quite a few shoes with only a deck cut off, through coming off a break and finding a freshly cut shoe and also jumping between tables. It looked quite natural as there was a guy jumping in for a hand or two on my table when waiting for the shuffle on his, so when there was a shuffle on mine and the other table had just started, I jumped in myself if the count went up before the shuffle on my table was completed. Typically in view of my luck tonight, I lost every time I had that great cut. The counts came in, my bets didn’t.
At least I had a 2 nice wins prior to this. However, it is irritating that I only have one more day left of this trip, as I have commitments back home in a few days and I could only get a flight sooner rather than later. A $12,000 loss is one of the worst I’ve ever had and wipes out most of the trip win in a single night.
Hand of the day. On night like this, there rarely seems to be a picture when you really want one. 2 x $250: 18 and 8-8 v 7. I split the eights. Picture, 8. Resplit, picture on the first, eight on the second. Split again, picture, 2. I double the ten for a seven. Thus I have four hands of 18 and a doubled hand of 17. I’ll happily settle for a picture to push the double and win the others. Not tonight: 2, picture for a dealer total of 19 total loss for me on that hand of $1,500.
I’ve not had a shoe on my own all night. When you play half a shoe you really want to have all of any profitable situation that comes along, even more than normal. Most of the time there have only been at most two other hands in play but the good hands have missed me. My fan from last time spotted me when I was finishing dinner and came over. He talked about his time playing BJ, he even asked me what count I did within earshot of casino managers having dinner. Luckily they were engrossed on their own conversation at the time. When you first start you do tend to have a cavalier attitude to such matters. Then you get barred a few times and realise that casinos are well aware that the game can be beaten. Even in a tolerant place like this I don’t want them to know for absolutely certain that I’m counting cards. The guy does play with me for a while but leaves quite early.
Day Eleven
Same punishment, just a smaller dose. Again, I don’t get a solo game all night, the cards never run for me. Plus my fan is just sitting behind me, jumping in when I raise my bet. I think he is doing his own count but likes to leave the play of the hand to me. I try to explain to him discreetly that it would be better if he played on the other table where the cut is much better but he doesn’t take the hint. Another local counter is there, and although he does come over and play behind me occasionally when his table is on the shuffle, he plays on the other table. With a couple of hours to go I’m $6000 down. I take a break as the conditions on the higher limit table should be good until the end of the night, as there’s only one other player on there now and with a bit of luck she’ll leave, giving me a solo game. 20 minutes later I come back to find that the other player has gone and they are in the process of closing the table. The other tables are still full. Typical luck for the night. I don’t feel like trying to grind out the final hour on a full table so I decide to leave it there, get a few hours sleep for my early start tomorrow.
Day Twelve
Not a great journey home. The bus I intended to catch to the capital never turned up, I got the next one an hour later but by then I’d missed the one to the airport, so I had to take a taxi. The flight was ok, but getting across the country wasn’t. Arriving at the station, I had to wait an hour for the next train home, which will take a few hours. Next time I’ll stay over after my flight or I’ll fly to an airport close to my home town- I’ve decided it’s worth a little extra expense to cut my journey time. A poor end to the trip all round, two bad nights turned a good trip into a losing one and even getting home turned out to be problematic.
It’s been a several weeks since I’ve played and I’m ready for a nice long trip. I see two cliches for the first time today. The first is that I am seated next to a woman who crosses herself both on take-off and landing. It is easy to become blasé about taking a flight when you travel all the time, and everyone else around seeming casual so such a reaction seems quite unusual. I’m used to hearing applause on touchdown, but this is a first for me.
The second is what I believe to be a real-life internet bride and her Sugar-Daddy who are in front of me in at passport control. From her Eastern accent, appearance, and shiny new Western Passport, plus the vast difference in age and attractiveness to her male companion, I doubt that it’s a love match, but perhaps that’s just cynical old me.
The flight is on time, which I needed it to be, since I have to take a bus from the airport to the nearest town, from where the bus to my destination leaves. From prior experience I know that the connection between buses is tight. If I miss the first bus after my scheduled arrival time, or even if it’s slightly late, I will have no direct bus and I’m not sure of the timetable for the others. My bag is among the last to come off the plane and I just catch the bus. Or so I think, but in the end it leaves 10 minutes late, making me miss the other one by five minutes. I check my alternative bus and I have nearly two hours to wait. At least I have time to get something to eat. I take the bus and arrive to find I have another hour and a half for the bus to my destination. The information office was already closed but the timetable tells me it is the last one of the night. This is still high season but they aren’t very frequent. They turn out to be even less frequent as this bus fails to show up. I have no choice but to take a taxi. The driver explains to me that sometimes the bus I wanted often doesn’t come. At least the taxi fare isn’t too expensive.
I get to the casino town. They have a good comping system and they have booked a hotel for me. The one I requested isn’t available but they booked me another. They tell me the name and it is one I remember being far inferior to the others around. Oh well, serves me right for not booking early enough. However, I discover that the hotel has had major refurbishment and is now one of the nicest around. Things are looking up. Pleased with my state of the art room, I take a nap then have dinner, ready finally to put some hours in at the blackjack table. It is late and I’ll have only an hour of two of play but I’ll show my face, especially since they are paying for my room. This feeling lasts until the second hand of the night, whereupon I get a 15 against a dealer 10. I try to play a certain option only to be told that they no longer have that rule. It appears that it was seen to be slowing the game down so they stopped it at the start of the year. Don’t know whether this is an excuse or not, certainly they didn’t think the rule was profitable enough for them, for surely they would have kept it otherwise, despite the slowing effect it had. Either way, this makes the game a lot less attractive because the cut is variable at best. The second dealer I get has a much better cut so it may be playable if this better cut is more prevalent. Perhaps they have tried to speed up the game by cutting out fewer cards. We’ll have to see tomorrow.
Day Two
With the rule change, it’s playable with a decent cut but it’s obvious from this night’s play that this cannot be guaranteed. In addition, the tables are too crowded too often to justify staying here. However, my hotel has been paid for, so I’ll stay another day and figure out where I go from here. My problem is that I have plans in a neighbouring country next week. I had intended to stay here until then and go to another game in the area afterwards. If I went to this game from here I’d only have a few days before I had to leave and the journey from here would be long and tiring. There are possibilities near here but they are far from ideal. They are small places which may not take the action for long and which have small minimums. Back to the present casino. I play for a few hours before the tables all fill up completely. This is why I usually avoid high season. I thought I’d just miss it, but obviously not. I have won tonight though.
Day Three
I’ve decided to check out one or two games in the area. If I go to the other game now it may still be very busy there, so the long journey probably wouldn’t be worth it as long as there is a chance of a game near here. This game is busy again tonight so I only play a couple of hours and opt for an early night to catch the early bus in the morning, so that I can get settled in the new place early so I’m fresh for the night’s game.
Day Four
The taxi I ordered is late and I make the bus by minutes. I’m glad I didn’t miss it as I would have had to wait 5 hours for the next one. I get to the hotel where the casino is situated and find that they have a room free.
I enter the casino as soon as it opens. Just one blackjack table. I get it opened no problem and am glad to see them show me the cards without me having to ask. The limit is low and the cut is borderline but the rules are good. I play for a few hours and catch some bad shoes and am down from the start. I’m spreading to 3 boxes in order to get more money on during high counts because the maximum is low, but every time I do it, I seem to give the dealer an ace which would otherwise land as second card on my first hand. However, after a few hours I get a nice shoe which closes the gap and then a really nice one which puts me ahead. The dealer busts several times in the shoe and I finish a few thousand up- very good for those limits. Maybe the manageres has seen this on the camera as she comes over to watch me on the next shoe but goes away before the end so perhaps she’s not too suspicious. I don’t imagine they get that many big players here so they may not be used to having big swings on the blackjack, either for or against them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they reviewed the tapes and refused to let me in the next day, but we’ll have to see.
Day Five
The conditions are the same today, they open up the blackjack table again as soon as I ask for it. They tell me the casino will close permanently after the summer as they don’t get enough players. I can see why- even last night, a Saturday, there were only a few people playing table games and even those playing the machines didn’t stay very long. However, I am still surprised when I am told that they will have to close early tonight as the sister casino in the next town over is busy and needs more staff, so the dealers are going there for the rest of the night. I knew this group was rather shambolic and disorganised but not to this extent. I could of course go to that casino but if it’s busy it won’t be a good game, especially at those limits. Moreover, if I don’t see the cards spread in that casino I won’t play and if it’s busy I may not be able to open up a new table to do this. In addition the owner/ manager there knows me from before and could very well get suspicious and this attitude may filter back to the other place. An early night again, at least it’s after a small win.
Day Six
A tale of two cuts. Three staff are on, one deals, one watches the game and the other takes a break. When another table game is opened the manager watches the game. One of the regular staff just watches the game so I have one of two dealers. The man cuts out only 1.5 decks, the woman cuts out nearly 2.5 but her shuffle is more easily trackable so both are playable. As the night goes on her cut gets steadily worse but the guy’s stays the same. Before I leave the woman stays dealing for an hour. I want to see if the man’s cut has stayed good because the manager has been watching me for nearly an hour, even when there is another member of staff to inspect the game. Has she told both dealers to give a bad cut from now on? I’m only slightly ahead, but I was down around $2000 before coming back in a short period, so this may have worried her. It depends how paranoid she is. The smaller the casino, the more likely this is. However I need to take a break and it’s nearly the end of the night so I finish there and then.
Day Seven
I come in refreshed, ready and willing to play, only to find that the limit is reduced The maximum has been halved, although the minimum strangely has stayed the same. When I ask about this I am told that this is normal since it is now the end of the season and the head office at the casino in the next town has ordered this and the manager here has no discretion in this matter. It seems strange as it is mid-week and I would have thought that such a move would have been made right after a weekend. It isn’t the first of the month or anything so I don’t think the date has anything to so with it. I could still play albeit at a lower win rate but the maximum is now only 5 times the minimum (!) and if I spread across to more boxes I’ll probably get cut down to a greater extent than I have here already. So another early night and a slightly earlier departure than anticipated. Some trips you seem to struggle to get your play in, others you’re able to camp out at a place and put in some substantial hours.
Day Eight
Having been away for a few days visiting friends in a neighbouring country I come to a new country, next to the one I played last week. I get the train by minutes and then only because I go to the front of the line at the “international Departures” ticket office and ask to push in. The guy at the front lets me in, albeit begrudgingly.
I was here on my final trip last year and I usually don't leave it so long between visits here, but other matters intervened and I gave other places priority. This casino has quite tolerant management. Granted, they give me half a shoe and have done so since the second session I ever played here but I’ve had some good wins from them and they still welcome me. I’ve even got a VIP card that entitles me to free meals and occasionally free accommodation. Since I have not been here for nearly a year I reckon I can get away with asking for a free hotel room. Unfortunately they don’t have a comping system as refined as the one in the place where I started the trip, you have to ask the manager yourself. It’s always a balancing act this, you want to ask without appearing too concerned over whether you get it or not, since you gamble far more than the price of the room and therefore for the imange high roller image I try to project it shouldn't really matter either way. I ask for the manager, show him my VIP card and ask in a “I thought I might just ask on the off chance since you gave me this card, but it’s beneath me really” type way. They take half an hour to sort it out but come back with a voucher for a few nights in the plush hotel nearby. Time to check in and get some shuteye before a mini-session.
I come back for an hour. First I have dinner, always very nice here. I would usually play for a while first before taking the comp meal but the only thing I’ve had to eat in the past 12 hours was a sandwich that I bought on the train so I’m famished.
Since they know I’m here, I don’t expect to get away with a shoe or two at the regulation one deck cut that normal punters get that I sometimes have before being recognised. As it is, the dealer recognises me from a previous trip so she would probably use her intiative and give me half a shoe in any case. I get a good start . “Yes, you’ve got good control”, she says in a manner that suggests she now understands why I only get half a shoe. “You’ve lost all those hands you played at only $10”. An observant dealer. I go up a bit further before dropping back a bit and then I lose my solo game. We’re in the last hour and I feel the day’s travelling catch up with me, so I leave around $1500 up.
Day Nine
Up and down today. $2000 up, then $4000 down and finally $3000 up.
Day Ten
Well, it had to happen sometime. I’ve led something of a charmed life in this casino over the past couple of years in that despite some big swings during sessions, I’ve never had a really big loss at this place although I have had some big wins in my favour. It is the kind of loss that the casino management envisage when they continue to let me play. They expect it to catch up with me and wipe me out sooner or later. By the same token it is also the type of result which reminds you why you have blackjack bankrolls. Moreover, sessions like this serve to illustrate why everyone does not play blackjack for a living. Two steps forward one step back, a half-decent shoe seems always to be followed by a far worse losing one, a win of a unit or half unit on a hand (for example when one hand wins on a double and the other loses or one loses and the other gets a natural) is balanced by a multi unit loss when all splits and doubles go down.
It did seem to be one of those nights when nothing went right, I even was able to sneak quite a few shoes with only a deck cut off, through coming off a break and finding a freshly cut shoe and also jumping between tables. It looked quite natural as there was a guy jumping in for a hand or two on my table when waiting for the shuffle on his, so when there was a shuffle on mine and the other table had just started, I jumped in myself if the count went up before the shuffle on my table was completed. Typically in view of my luck tonight, I lost every time I had that great cut. The counts came in, my bets didn’t.
At least I had a 2 nice wins prior to this. However, it is irritating that I only have one more day left of this trip, as I have commitments back home in a few days and I could only get a flight sooner rather than later. A $12,000 loss is one of the worst I’ve ever had and wipes out most of the trip win in a single night.
Hand of the day. On night like this, there rarely seems to be a picture when you really want one. 2 x $250: 18 and 8-8 v 7. I split the eights. Picture, 8. Resplit, picture on the first, eight on the second. Split again, picture, 2. I double the ten for a seven. Thus I have four hands of 18 and a doubled hand of 17. I’ll happily settle for a picture to push the double and win the others. Not tonight: 2, picture for a dealer total of 19 total loss for me on that hand of $1,500.
I’ve not had a shoe on my own all night. When you play half a shoe you really want to have all of any profitable situation that comes along, even more than normal. Most of the time there have only been at most two other hands in play but the good hands have missed me. My fan from last time spotted me when I was finishing dinner and came over. He talked about his time playing BJ, he even asked me what count I did within earshot of casino managers having dinner. Luckily they were engrossed on their own conversation at the time. When you first start you do tend to have a cavalier attitude to such matters. Then you get barred a few times and realise that casinos are well aware that the game can be beaten. Even in a tolerant place like this I don’t want them to know for absolutely certain that I’m counting cards. The guy does play with me for a while but leaves quite early.
Day Eleven
Same punishment, just a smaller dose. Again, I don’t get a solo game all night, the cards never run for me. Plus my fan is just sitting behind me, jumping in when I raise my bet. I think he is doing his own count but likes to leave the play of the hand to me. I try to explain to him discreetly that it would be better if he played on the other table where the cut is much better but he doesn’t take the hint. Another local counter is there, and although he does come over and play behind me occasionally when his table is on the shuffle, he plays on the other table. With a couple of hours to go I’m $6000 down. I take a break as the conditions on the higher limit table should be good until the end of the night, as there’s only one other player on there now and with a bit of luck she’ll leave, giving me a solo game. 20 minutes later I come back to find that the other player has gone and they are in the process of closing the table. The other tables are still full. Typical luck for the night. I don’t feel like trying to grind out the final hour on a full table so I decide to leave it there, get a few hours sleep for my early start tomorrow.
Day Twelve
Not a great journey home. The bus I intended to catch to the capital never turned up, I got the next one an hour later but by then I’d missed the one to the airport, so I had to take a taxi. The flight was ok, but getting across the country wasn’t. Arriving at the station, I had to wait an hour for the next train home, which will take a few hours. Next time I’ll stay over after my flight or I’ll fly to an airport close to my home town- I’ve decided it’s worth a little extra expense to cut my journey time. A poor end to the trip all round, two bad nights turned a good trip into a losing one and even getting home turned out to be problematic.
posted by The Jugador at 5:42 AM
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