I just returned from a quick two-day mini-vacation here in Mn, to one of the local casino's approximately an hour away. Casino's on the reservations have been big in Mn for a long time, but, I had yet to setp inside one. So, the past few days I finally took the plunge.I hated the machines where you simply put in money and hit buttons....why bother?....no cognitive challenge. So, I trundled over to the black jack table ($3 minimum.....you gotta start somewhere) to see if my college days of playing BJ would allow me to at least have some fun.
Low and behold, I came back $90 ahead!!! Of course, if I had been more aggressive with the size of my bets (I typically stayed in the 5-10 dollar range), I could have done much better.
Table talk, during the shuffle of a new deck, turned to "what do you do?" Of course, after telling the others (and the dealer) that I specialized in statistics and measurement, they all gave me that grin and joked about "counting cards." I wish.........I gave them a little mini-workshop on domain-specific knowledge and that there was almost zero transfer of my applied stat/measurement knowledge to BJ.
Never-the-less.....it was fun and I won! Maybe I should see if I could turn my quantoid skills to a new endeavor, but then again, I know something about probability.
Anyway...it was fun....I made some money, and it reminded me of one of my favorite movies....Duston Huffman's role as "Rainman." I can still here Rainman repeating, "we're counting cards." I only wish I could.
I'm now back and will start posting again with regularity.
