Chapter 118: Trial Run at the Spirit Mountain Casino

Sunday, April 24, 2005 (Continued)

Julia and Carol chased me upstairs to get changed for Prof's and my trial casino trip, but I asked to divert to our study to see my website first. I learned that my website's address was www.EggsSearch.com.hk. [[Don't bother trying it, as the need for it disappeared long before I wrote this.]]

Julia explained, "Lily hosted it through her father's business in Hong Kong. We could have gotten an American 'dot com' address, or done it on one of the social network sites, but I like having it so disconnected and apparently unrelated to America. It has to be available to the girls that want to use it, but I'd prefer the whole world doesn't know about it, or can't connect it to us. Any girl too stupid to find it because she's hung up on 'dot com', we don't want."

The first screen was almost totally blank, having just two fields: a heading of "Eggs Search" and a place to enter a password.

Julia explained, "The password is what 'EGG' stands for, all lower case and without commas or spaces. We'll publicize that at school. The password isn't meant to be highly secure; it's just to keep complete strangers out."

Once in, the next screen was almost as simple. Three column headings: "Date", "To who", "Description". There were three entries under the headings, all dated "Always" and addressed to "Everyone". The descriptions were: "Our purpose", "Current List of Liaisons" and "Application Form".

Julia explained, "I'll get Lily to fix her grammar later. She's shown me how to add new entries to the list, and how to edit or remove existing entries. The list of entries can be as long as we want, as it'll automatically create scroll bars when it gets more than a certain number of lines."

Julia clicked on the first entry. Carol and I gathered close to the screen to read what "Our purpose" was: "We are searching for one or two new girlfriends for Egg because his girlfriend is only available half the time for him."

Julia commented, "I'll edit it tonight while you're away, to add the idea I had today about making assistants a subject of our search too. I'll have to edit it even more if Mom's pipeline idea is implemented. I'm supposed to be the only person able to maintain the list, although Lily can if she wants because she told me how to get into it. The idea is that we get all the girls at school to keep an eye on it, and we use it to broadcast information to them. It's deliberately a one-way system, so anything girls want to communicate back has to come through their Liaisons. Mom's pipeline idea might change that, but we can redesign the site as we go if we need to. That's about it. Simple, and I hope useful. What do you think?"

Carol replied, "I like it. Donna and I can tell the middle school girls too?"

"Yes, it's for everyone who's interested in dating Mark."

I said, "I didn't have any real idea of what the site was for, but now that I see it, I understand. It's essentially the same as a notice board, isn't it? Where you can control what's displayed."

"Yes, exactly right. If we adopt the pipeline idea, I just need to type up a description and replace the outdated document with the new one. From then on, everyone will read the new one. I'll be telling everyone to check the site frequently."

"It'll save you heaps of time. I've never dreamed of having my own website, but if I had, I wouldn't have imagined this. I see it fits your needs very well, so all I can say is, 'Well done.' I like it. My only request is to see the 'Application Form'. What's that?"

Julia navigated to it, and it was her database idea. Instructions to fill in all the fields, then print out the result, attach any pictures, and pass the hardcopy back through their Liaisons. I was amused that including a full-length bikini shot was advised.

Julia said, "We'll never refer to you by name, always by 'Egg'. We'll also never talk about underage sex or anything else that might get us in trouble. The Liaisons will be sometimes emailing me text documents they want put on, for the girls under them to read, and I'll check them first to make sure they're anonymous and safe. I can put a password on each document. So let's say we use Mom's pipeline idea and we have Intake1, Intake2, etc. Each intake can have a password that I'll put on all their documents, so only they can read them. That reduces the risk of other girls crashing the dates."

"What about girls who don't have easy access to a computer, or don't check often enough?"

"Then they miss out. Who cares? There are plenty of others who do have easy access. One thing I know I'm NOT going to do, is cater to the problems of individual girls. That'd be a disaster."

"Yeah, I got that impression already! I'm starting to appreciate how troublesome that could be, after those girls said they didn't have a way of getting home. I like your mom's idea of the pipeline, because rapidly getting rid of girls who cause trouble should quickly teach the others to be even less troublesome, even though I'm still struggling with the idea that any girls at all want to chase me."

"Other than your being a genius, wonderfully caring, hunk of manhood, you mean?"

"Ahh, thank you for that, but as delightful as it is to have girls desperately eager to have sex with me, you have to admit it's damned stupid of them, because most of them have barely said a dozen words to me all year."

"That WAS stupid of them. We don't have time to get into that again, because we have to get you changed for tonight."

#3: <I wonder how we managed to get changed before we met Julia?>

#1: <There's no need to ask her, as we all know what she'd say. She'll go from excessively complimenting us to excessively criticizing us, and she wouldn't think she was being inconsistent.>

We headed to the bedroom, me still feeling weird about having an 'official' website devoted entirely to me.

Julia had purchased a couple of outfits that made me look rich and stupid (to spend so much on clothes), so therefore a casino's ideal customer.

There was a knock on the door while I was getting dressed. Being only semi-decent, I hesitated, but then realized that there was no one left in this family who I cared about seeing me naked anyway. I called out "Enter," and Vanessa came in.

She asked, "Mark, do you need any help applying the disguise?"

"I'd like you to watch while I do it, to make sure I get it right. Also, I've been wondering about the sideburns. We don't really want Andrew or Robert to see me wearing them, do we?"

"Not that it'd cause trouble, but the less explanation required the better. We'll put them on here, and I'll check that the coast is clear before you slip through to the garage. Prof will meet you there. On the way back, take them off in the car before you arrive."

I put the disguise on, which was easy, although the experienced females couldn't resist teaching me how to properly brush makeup on. I couldn't wait to never make use that knowledge again, outside of this project.

Carol and Julia spent a minute wishing me good luck, and kissing me several times in case that helped somehow. Then I was smuggled down to the garage. Prof joined me almost immediately. I jumped in his car, buckled up, and we were off on our little, but very important, adventure.

On the drive to the casino, Prof informed me, "We're going to a place called Spirit Mountain Casino. It's about an hour's drive north. I've got a few topics to discuss. First and most important, we do NOT want to get arrested tonight!"

"ARRESTED! Could we get arrested? I didn't think that there'd be any laws against TK?"

"I find it hard to imagine there would be, but if some very funny things happen around us, we could be arrested on suspicion of cheating. We'd hopefully make bail and the prosecution would be difficult because of insufficient evidence, but we still don't want that drama. Especially as your ID is illegal and that would very quickly be discovered."

"You've got my ID, haven't you?"

Prof handed it over, adding, "I suggest you take out your real ID and leave it in the glove compartment. You don't want to accidentally hand over the wrong one when we're checked at the door."

"Ahh, I've never actually had to hand over an ID before. Is it safe? I mean, I won't be arrested then and there, will I?"

"No. They'll just have a private security guard who'll eyeball it. They can't run it, the way a policeman can. If he asks for ID, just casually hand it over, let him look at it, and he'll hand it back. We should have practiced that somewhere. It's been so many years since I've thought about that. You know your ID is visually identical to a real one, so there's nothing to be worried about, right? The only way you can give yourself away is to be nervous. Can you act well enough not to look nervous?"

"Yes. That's very easy. Don't worry about that at all."

"Are you sure? If you've never done this before, I'd expect you to be quite nervous. You're not exactly a hardened criminal, are you? Haha."

"Honestly, it's not a problem. I've got a way of suppressing all the symptoms of nervousness which works very well. I might have been caught by surprise if you hadn't described the process, but I know what to do now. I'll be fine."

I finished changing IDs, making sure I kept the right one, while Prof resumed, "Okay. Back to not being arrested. We want to avoid doing anything that will bring suspicion on us. I'd much rather take this slow and easy than rush and get arrested. We can come back to the casino night after night if we need to, so there's no hurry. Okay? I'm relying on you for this."

"I got it: 'Slow and easy.' I'd much rather not get arrested too."

"So no impossible ball movements please. Don't have it rolling uphill unnaturally. Especially don't have it hovering in midair, the way you did during your demonstration on your wedding night. I don't know much about casinos, but I know they have lots of security cameras. Video evidence of a hovering roulette ball is not the sort of thing they're going to dismiss as a momentary figment of their imagination."

"I'll be very careful, I swear."

"Please do. I gave serious thought to having Vanessa or one of The Boys follow in another car, to keep an eye on us from across the casino and to call a lawyer if anything went wrong, but we figured it wasn't useful enough to put them to the bother and risk their getting caught up in it if anything does go wrong. Caution the WHOLE time tonight, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

#1: <Let's be VERY cautious tonight, okay?>

#2: <Damn right!>

"Good. Another way to avoid being arrested for cheating is to lose rather than win. Ideally I'd like us to lose every single bet we place tonight. I realize we might win some by accident, but I want you to always try to get the ball in a slot well away from any number that we're betting on. We'll have to do some betting to have an excuse to hang around the roulette table so long, but we'll say we're just beginners - which is certainly true - and we'll watch and bet cautiously. Remember those people on the video I showed you? You could see their hands dropping bets all over the table, like mad people. We'll be much less active than that.

^-- "Another thing we need to do is avoid arousing their suspicion by the ball landing on a strange sequence of numbers. I know you're not so silly as to do this, but don't aim for the same number every time. Likewise don't always choose red numbers, or odd numbers. One good way to pick a random number is to look at the second hand on your watch. Go for whatever number it's pointing at, 24 seconds past means 24, obviously. If it's on any number more than 38, just subtract 30, as that's easy. So 50 seconds would mean aim for 20. Unless that's what I bet on, in which case, use the minute hand, or add them together."

"I got that, Prof."

"Good. When we arrive I intend to just watch for a while. If people ask why we're not playing, we can say we don't know how, which is substantially true. If we're not allowed to stand and watch, we'll walk around and watch. I want us both to get a feel for how the game works before we attempt any funny business. Remember that we're in no hurry. As much as possible we'll stick to the truth. You're my daughter's boyfriend, and we've come to the casino to see how to play roulette. Okay?"

"Very okay. I'll find it easy not to know what's going on, considering I don't have a clue."

"In Vegas we'll probably pretend not to know each other, because I expect that winning several million would cause some commotion among the senior management of the place and it'd be best if you don't get swept up in that, especially as your ID is illegal. But tonight I think it's best for us to be together. It's a small place and for all I know everyone is a regular, so our arriving at the same time will stand out. Plus we'll probably need to talk. On the subject of talking, either one of us can tell the other 'I want some fresh air, ' then we can go outside to talk. Anything we don't want to risk being overheard should be said outside in the car. So far, so good?"

"Yes indeed."

"Good. We should return to the car every hour or so, to re-spray you with the alcohol to wrinkle you up again. I'll keep an eye on you, and let you know if I think you need it.

^-- "When we're playing, I'll do the most betting, mainly because you should be concentrating on your job. I don't care who has to bet, as I want us to lose anyway. It might also be a rule of the place that you have to bet in order to stay by the table, so then you'll have to. When we're ready to start playing, I'll buy us both some chips, and you can play with yours, or keep them in your pocket, or whatever seems appropriate. Just don't go crazy, as I've only brought five thousand dollars. I'm guessing that it should be ample, if we go slow."

#1: <Good grief! Prof's willing to lose five thousand just on a test run.>

#4: <And come back night after night if need be.>

#1: <REALLY good grief!>

"I will try REALLY hard not to lose your $5,000 too quickly. Do you really think it might cost that much? That's a LOT of money!"

"If it costs less, I'm not going to complain. Remember that I've never been into a casino before, or even talked to other people about them much. They've always seemed like such an obviously stupid idea that I've always ignored the topic. I don't know what it might cost, so I brought more than I guess we should need because it'd be a nuisance to run out prematurely.

^-- "Moving on to what we're trying to achieve tonight. In Vegas, when I win, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the casino bosses are reluctant to hand over the millions. One of the few things I've heard about casinos is that they're not in the business of giving away money. I presume they'll check as carefully as they can that everything was kosher before they pay, so the ball's movement has to look natural. So natural is MORE IMPORTANT than accurate. That's critical because an unnatural movement could forfeit our winnings and get us into legal trouble. If there's a choice between your getting the exact number 100% of the time but looking slightly unnatural, or spreading the result somewhere over half the wheel in a natural looking way, we'll choose the second option. We can design a betting scheme that works with that, and still reach our goal. 'Natural is MORE IMPORTANT than accurate, ' okay?"

"Got it."

"So tonight, what we're hoping to achieve is the most accurate result you can achieve while ALWAYS LOOKING PERFECTLY NATURAL. I suggest you spend the first however long you need just watching the ball, so you get a feel for what natural looks like. If you need to try different ideas, to find out how far you can push the accuracy with each, always start with the minimum effect and slowly build up. I don't know enough about your ability to be able to give more detailed advice, but I'd prefer if you didn't find out what the limit of the accuracy was by going OVER what looks acceptable. If you can get the ball within two pockets either way, for example, and you think that getting it within one pocket might look unnatural, then don't even try. Within two is fine for us. If you're ever in any doubt about what to do, either don't do it or tell me you want some fresh air, and we can go outside to discuss it. Okay?"

"Yes. That's what I was intending already."

"Good. Once you've arrived at a method for your ability, you'll probably need to run some tests to measure its accuracy. For example, if you can get within two pockets of the target, it'd be good to know roughly what the probability of each pocket was. We need that information to design our betting scheme. It doesn't have to be highly accurate, but an approximation would be good. When the time comes for you to do some testing, that might be a good time for some fresh air, so you can tell me where you're at and what you're testing. I might have some ideas about that, and I might be able to help you remember the results as they build up. Okay?"

"Need some fresh air before I start my statistics gathering. Got it."

"It would be very important, for example, to know whether you can hit the target number 100% of the time, or only 80%. If you only tested your method for half a dozen turns, they might all hit perfectly. But we'd look pretty silly if we went to Vegas, bet all our money on one number, and you hit the number next to it. I'd never bet like that, and have already decided never to bet more than half of our remaining money on a single turn, just in case something like that happens. So with $100,000, I'd bet no more than $50,000 the first time, and if that lost, $25,000 the next, etc. That's assuming you think you can achieve 100% accuracy, which would be fantastic. Likely your accuracy will be less, and I'll have to reduce my bets in proportion.

^-- "The next issue is practice. I much prefer you to practice here rather than at Vegas. In Vegas the bosses might do a lot of asking around between my win and their paying me, so the less playing around you've done down there, the better. You'll be at the Vegas table before me, specifically so you can confirm that whatever you do still works on their wheels, but the less of that the better. Which means that once you've found a good method, whether it's tonight or some other night, then you practice it enough to be confident that you can do it for real almost immediately upon arrival in the casino in Vegas. It may be that you get enough practice during your statistics gathering, or maybe not. I'll have to leave that up to you, as it's more than a little difficult for me to see how well invisible things are working, haha.

^-- "The last issue on my agenda is obvious, but still worth mentioning: leaving. As soon as you want to leave, tell me you want to leave. The sooner the better as far as I'm concerned, consistent with achieving our goals for tonight. If you hit a brick wall and can't get any further, just say you want to leave. If you later think of a solution, we can always go back. If you get as far as you want to, and know you can't do any better tonight, then tell me you want to leave. I'll also call it a night if I think it's getting too late or if I think people are starting to get suspicious about us for any reason. I'll be on the lookout for that. Better to run away, try to figure out what we did wrong, and then try again at another casino. So if I say it's time we left, and I look determined, then we scuttle out of there posthaste. If I'm suggesting we leave because it's late, and I'm getting tired, but you're only a few minutes away from achieving success, then tell me you'd like a few more minutes. Is that all clear?"

"Yes. Phew! You put a LOT more thought into this than I did. I didn't think of hardly any of that, and I haven't thought of anything you didn't cover. I would have turned up tonight with no thought of what to do. I didn't even think about bringing money, which was amazingly stupid, considering where we're going."

"Don't worry about it, Mark. The preparation was my job. Your job is CONSIDERABLY more impressive and important than mine. I'm nowhere close to pulling my weight on this one."

Prof is a cautious driver, so the trip took us slightly longer than the estimate given by his car's navigation system. My ID was checked on entry into the casino part of the building, but my suppressing all the symptoms of nervousness made it very easy for me to look relaxed and natural. I thought Prof appeared more nervous than I imagined I did. We had no problem, my ID was handed back, and we strolled in. Prof appeared quite relieved. He'd obviously been worried about that, or perhaps about me.

Two things were quickly apparent when we walked into the casino: slot machines are REALLY popular, and Prof and I were WAY overdressed.

We eventually made our way past all the slot machines, and arrived at the real games. Our standard of dress immediately caught everybody's attention. My outfit alone probably cost more than all the other patrons' clothes combined. It was just as well we hadn't been pretending not to know each other. So the first lesson we learned for Vegas was to research dress standards, because there we did want to appear to be strangers.

We ignored the other players who stared us up and down. One of the casino staff came rushing over to introduce himself. He was primarily talking to Prof and I didn't catch his name as there were too many distracting new experiences. He was a "Pit Something". It must be an important job, judging by his attitude. Although it appeared not to pay well, judging by his clothes (I've learned far more than I ever wanted to know about clothes, from listening to Julia critique the many clothes I've tried on when shopping with her).

Prof told him our first names - giving me a momentary panic that we'd not discussed whether or not to use false names, but then I remembered that my ID was in my real name. Prof was still talking to the Pit Something, giving the spiel about me being his daughter's boyfriend, that it was our first time in a casino, and we were interested in learning how to play roulette. He eagerly escorted us to a roulette table, and started explaining how to play the game.

Prof interrupted, "I think I understand the game itself because I read up on it on the internet before we came. What we don't know anything about is things like where we buy chips from, what different colored chips are worth, and such like."

He launched into a description of 'color chips' and 'cash chips', which almost immediately confused me. Prof too. Gamblers must be a GREAT deal more intelligent than Prof and I had thought, if they could understand what a Professor of Mathematics and an Einstein-level genius could not. Either that or it wasn't a very good explanation.

The Pit Something waved a waitress over and offered us a drink on the house. Prof ordered a glass of white wine and I ordered a glass of milk. Apparently my order doesn't occur very often in casinos. Prof explained, "He's in training." Which was true, as I was training how to win millions of dollars at roulette.

Prof ended up having to painstakingly extract the information we wanted out of the guy. Apparently, on roulette tables, you can use color chips or cash chips, but they prefer you use color chips because many players can bet on the same number. Cash chips are the same across the casino, so there's no way of telling who put down what chip, but color chips are many different colors and each person has his or her own color. You can choose what value your chips are worth when you buy them, which contradicted what little I knew about chips, but that piece of information came straight from the Pit Something, so I wasn't going to argue.

The Pit guy showed us how the values were indicated for the stacks of color chips, and we could see that most of the people playing at the moment were playing with chips worth $1 each. At two minutes per turn, Prof's $5,000 was going to last a LONG time! Except, for some reason, everyone wasn't just placing one bet per turn, they were placing chips ALL OVER the betting area of the table. I'd swear that some of them bet on more than half the possible numbers, not to mention some of the other bets like red, black, high, low, etc. I'd seen the same behavior on the internet video, but it had only shown the part of the betting area closest to the wheel and I'd assumed it wasn't representative. Apparently it was.

Pit guy asked, "What value do you want for your chips, sir?"

Prof said, "I don't understand the game well enough yet. I'd like to get more information before I answer that. Why are people betting so many times?"

I listened to the explanation carefully. It was such a common behavior that there had to be a good reason why they all did so much of it. It turned out that I was wrong, because the reason wasn't "good"; it was actually so silly that I massively reduced my opinion of gamblers' intelligence again. It boiled down to "losing slowly is boring." He didn't use those words, but that's what he meant. If you bet on half the numbers, for example, then half the time you win. Isn't that exciting! Taken to its logical conclusion, people should bet on all the numbers, that way they'd always win something, just not as much as they'd had to bet to cover the table. If you take that to it's logical conclusion, you'd stay at home!

The thing that worried me, and I think was worrying Prof too, was that this "cover half the table with bets" betting style didn't suit what we wanted to do in Vegas. We didn't particularly want to cover the table here either, because we wanted to lose our bets. If we covered half the table, we were bound to win sometimes, which could fuel their suspicion that we were cheating if that thought occurred to them.

There were some more explanations: about how to buy chips, don't take them away from the table you bought them on, how to place bets, minimum and maximum bets on the inside and outside...

"Hang on. Would you explain that maximum bet restriction again please?" asked Prof.

He was more than pleased to discuss the maximum bets. We were NOT pleased by what he said though. Never mind all his stuff about the difference between inside and outside, and how the 2-to-1 maximum was twice the 1-to-1 maximum, and other crap. The only piece of information we cared about was the limit for betting on a single number: "On this table the straight-up maximum is $10."

"Is that all! What if I wanted to bet $50?"

"No problem! You can bet $10 on five different numbers."

#3: <FUCK!>

You didn't have to have an Einsteinian level of genius to spot the teensy weensy problem with that! I reduced my opinion of gamblers' intelligence further. Also, while I was at it, that of Pit Somethings too.

#2: <Let's see. $10 x 35-to-1 odds, is $350. To win, say $7 million we are going to have to guess 20,000 exactly correct numbers in a row. Do you think the Vegas casino will get suspicious if we guess the right number 20,000 times in a row? They'll have to be quick to catch us though, as we're out of there in just - give me a second - 666 hours, presuming we never need to sleep or eat.>

Prof asked, "You said, 'on this table the maximum was $10.' Do you have tables with higher maximums?"

"YES, sir!" said the very happy Pit Something. "On Friday and Saturday nights, that table over there has a $25 maximum."

#2: <The good news is that takes us only 8,000 goes. The bad news is that it'll take us months of playing just Friday and Saturday nights. I'm too depressed to bother working out how long.>

"Do you know what the limits are in Las Vegas?"

"Do you mean at the Strip casinos?"

#4: <They have casinos with strippers! I hope we get to go to Vegas!>

"Whichever casinos have the highest limits."

"That's the big Strip casinos. I don't keep current with what's going on down there, and they can vary from casino to casino, but I'd think $100 would be a high limit for regular tables. Maybe a little more in some places."

We didn't need "a little more," we needed a SHIT LOAD more. Assuming I could get 100% accuracy - which I was hopeful of being able to do - Prof was talking about our first bet being $50,000. Our second bet would be even higher. A "little more" than $100 wasn't going to cut it.

Prof asked, "You said 'for regular tables'. What does that mean?"

"Tables open to Joe Public; that anyone can walk in off the street and play. VIPs can negotiate special arrangements with their hosts. If that's what you're after, you'll have to talk with a casino about what they can do for you. If there's nothing else, I should get back to my station."

He seemed to have lost interest in us, and Prof let him go.

"Shall we get some fresh air, Mark?"

"Good idea."

Sitting in the car, Prof said, "That's disappointing, isn't it?"

"I was going to put it a bit stronger than that."

"I never thought there'd be a limit on how much we could bet. I assumed casinos would welcome every dollar they could get, as the odds are in their favor. The only research I did was to read up on the rules, and I assumed the rest as it seemed simple and obvious. I spent most of my time worrying about our end of it, the profit split and that side of things. As it stands now, if roulette maximums are as low as it sounds, this scheme looks like a non-starter. There'd be no point in our taking the risk of your doing any experimentation inside tonight, and we should go home. The question is whether the limits are that low in Vegas. Maybe he didn't know what he was talking about, or maybe VIPs can get the limits we want and we can become a VIP, however that's done. I think our first step should be to call Vanessa and ask her to google 'roulette maximum bets'. We'll wait here for her to call back. Maybe we'll learn enough to decide, or maybe we'll need to call some casinos and ask them, but I'd rather not talk with any of the Vegas casinos yet, not unless we have to. What do you think?"