March 30, 2013

21 of 65

A Special Kind of Luck

“March Madness” usually returns to normalcy long before the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is finished. During the first few days of the tournament, productivity declines in offices across the country as employees fill in their brackets and follow the opening games on the internet. It does not take long, though, for an upset or two to “bust” most of the brackets, damping the interest in the remaining games and bringing the business world back toward normalcy.

The odds against predicting even the majority of the games correctly are daunting. Still, I always feel a twinge of regret when the team I chose to win it all is eliminated in the Sweet Sixteen or Elite Eight round. Although I do not follow college basketball, it seems that I should nevertheless be lucky. Simply because I am “special” (everyone thinks he or she is “special”), the Universe should conspire to have the games played according to my predictions.

So far, the Universe has not cooperated. After the twinge of regret passes, I lose interest in the tournament – and I remember that there have been lucky times throughout my life.

When I was in 4th grade at Fremont Elementary School, the PTA held a school carnival. There were games and face painting and refreshments. One game was guessing how many jelly beans were in a large jar. After looking at the jar carefully, I wrote down the first number that popped into my head. As luck would have it, that number was the one closest to the actual number of jelly beans and I won an electric popcorn popper. This was long before the days of microwave ovens, so we had no microwave popcorn. Bringing home a machine that would make popcorn was special and exciting. How much more lucky could I be?

In 1991, “limited gaming” (which is a euphemism for casino gambling) came to Gilpin County, Colorado. Under a constitutional amendment, the gaming was permitted in both Central City and Black Hawk, as well as in Cripple Creek (which is in the mountains West of Colorado Springs). In the years since then, casinos have come and gone. Some have been successful, while others ended their days in bankruptcy.

One of the largest casinos, the Isle of Capri, opened in 1998. In the prior seven years, I had only set foot in one casino in Central City. I had also visited a few in Cripple Creek when Cathy and took a weekend trip through that part of the state. My luck remained good. I was ahead almost $20 from those casino visits.

Shortly after the Isle of Capri opened, I was passing through Black Hawk and decided to visit that casino. My title company had done the title work and issued title insurance policies for the property, so I was curious to see what was built with the millions of dollars that had been invested. I was a little disappointed. The interior looked like a warehouse with small machines jammed close together. Though I was not impressed, I had a few quarters in my pocket so I decided to see if my lucky streak was still intact. Remember, I was ahead $20 over the previous seven years.

I randomly chose a machine and began inserting quarters and pulling the handle. Sometimes I won and sometimes I lost. After I had used all my quarters, I found that I won a few more than I had played. I cashed those out and invested my winnings in another randomly selected machine. When I was again slightly ahead, I recalled that someone had told me the smart way to play slot machines is not to bet one quarter at a time – as I had been doing – but to bet the maximum permitted by the machine. In this case, the maximum was three quarters. I pushed the button that said “Bet Maximum” to test whether that was good advice.

The first reel stopped on a diamond that read “10x”; the next reel stopped on a red 7; the last reel stopped on another diamond that said “10x.” Bells began ringing and lights flashing. I wasn’t sure what to do. A casino employee promptly approached me, turned off the lights and bells and said he would be right back. While I was waiting, I tried to determine what I had won. It seemed that if the reels had shown three red 7s, I would have won $50 on my 75 cent wager. The first “10x” multiplied that 10 times to $500. The second “10x” multiplied it again to $5,000.

Five thousand dollars? Could that be right? It was. Three casino employees came back to the machine and handed me a large stack of $100 bills, and a few smaller ones to make it easy for me to give tips should I feel so inclined. I was more nervous than happy. I wasn’t comfortable walking around with that much cash. I gave $20 to each of the employees (somehow I felt they deserved it). I stuffed the rest into my pocket and immediately left for home.

I did not feel that I deserved the money, though. When I got home, I showed the stack of bills to my family and gave a few to my children, Michael and Suzanne. I saved enough money to pay the taxes on the winnings and gave the rest to charity.

A year or two later, Bullwhackers, another casino in Black Hawk, held a free contest for the football season. Entrants would try to choose the winners of the National Football League games that would be played the following Sunday. Cash prizes were given to the three top entries each week, and there were other prizes for those who had the highest total for the whole season. I passed through Black Hawk at least once a week, so I regularly stopped at Bullwhackers and submitted my entry. Some weeks I came close to winning money, but I never did. When the season was over, though, I learned that I had the third highest total of correct picks. I won $1,000.

I felt I deserved that money. After all, I worked hard at guessing each week.

Luck has let me win a few other things. Usually it felt nice. It made me feel “special.”

More importantly, I know that I am extremely lucky that Cathy agreed to marry me and to put up with my quirks all these years. I am lucky to have two children as wonderful as Michael and Suzanne. I have been lucky to remain reasonably healthy and to have a house in which to live and food to eat. I am lucky to live in a society that is more free than most. There are so many things that can go wrong in the physical world that I am lucky to be simply living a normal American life. I do feel “special.