We came back from 3 days in Vegas. We ate too many times at buffets, very expensive, but very good.

My wife did a lot of shopping, 3 days worth, but not so much in dollars. We tried to control our impulses to gamble, saving only the 3rd day for my gambling.

1st and 2nd day, we lost about $27 on slot machines, so we decided that our chances are best with me playing blackjack tables.

Gambling is a game of chance, that much everyone knows, but it is the self-control or lack of that ultimately determines the outcome.

She went shopping on the 3rd day around 1PM, and left me to start playing blackjack.

I found the only remaining $5 blackjack table in a good Vegas Casino hotel. I put in $100, and spent 2 hours on that table.

People still lost a lot of money there, but I managed to break even.

1 Cola later, and I had to leave the table. I took my $100, and was immediately replaced at the table by another sucker.

After my natural break, I was frustrated by the $5 table, 5 of them there losing their spare money to the dealers, Tony and Fred.

I watched behind the guys I left behind. One of their wives was smoking and making idle chats with me. I didn't have the heart to ask them how much he had lost, if this was their honeymoon, or this was her shopping money. But she didn't seem to mind so much that he was losing.

After a few minutes, I spotted an open seat on the $10 blackjack table next to me, so I sat down with the faster losers.

This table rotated around dealers, Tony and a lady from Kabul Afghanistan. A group of 30 something friends were on that table. They seem to be on vacation together.

The blonde girl next to me was very serious, not talking much. But she seemed to be not losing so much as the others.

As Tony and the lady dealer rotated every 30 minutes, most of the people came and went, losing their money.

An old man with a wallet of player's club membership cards. A 40 something business guy. A 20 something skinny kid. It made no difference whose chips dropped on the table, the cards were mostly unfriendly.

Now, my strategy going in this time was different from my previous times. I decided that my previous casino failures were due to my scheme of covering my bets, or hedging. Hedging only works if you have a lot of money, but no body has the kind of the money to bet against the casino bank. Each time you "hedge", you have to double your bets after each loss, so after 10 consecutive losses, you have to bet 1024 times the original, with a minimal bet of $10, that's $10,240 on the bet, and there is still no guarantees of winning on the 11th hand.

It doesn't work when you only have $200 on you.

So a change of strategy, I decided to try to work on the minimal bet and use strategies to win over on the dealer, ie. make the dealer bust.

It didn't work so well on the $5 minimum table, but I was going to try again on the $10 table.

It seemed the Kabul lady gave me some luck, or it could be the blonde next to me.

I started with $200 in chips, and then after an hour, I had more than $400.

Up and down my chips went, in and out people went. The blonde was about as persistent as me. She sat next to me the whole time.

By the time my wife came back to the hotel around 5pm, I had over $550 in chips.

Then my ultimate flaw, I lost my patience, I started to bet foolishly, and I went back down to $400 in chips.

That was when I decided to quit, taking my $200 winning with me, so my wife was happy.

At least the winning covered all of our food expenses and some in the 3 days.

If I have time, I must write more about blackjack strategies.