The House always wins.
We’ve all heard the adage before. As with all forms of gambling where there is an ante to participate, statistically the ‘expectation’ or average payout will always be lower than the amount of money you put in. An entire industry has been built around exploiting those whose hope, desperation or greed is stronger than their logic, contentment or restraint.
The game is always… Well, not necessarily rigged, but skewed in favour of the casino. Most people think of roulette as a pure game of chance where the odds and the payout are the same – red or black, it is 50-50, right? It is easy to forget that little green ‘0’ added to that wheel. A small disadvantage to be sure, but on most games it is more egregious – slots with computers determining your outcomes, blackjack where a draw means you have to fork over your credits… But the insidiousness doesn’t stop there.
I’m no aromatherapist, but I do know the scent of lavender has been shown to lower people’s inhibitions. Guess what gets pumped around bigger casinos? Furthermore, they will often sell cheap drinks – so cheap in fact that they may even incur a loss… Until the drunken idiots spend a fortune elsewhere, judgement thrown to the wind. Even the sensory stimuli in the environment… The clinking of falling tokens, the flashing lights, the jingles the machines play… All designed to deliver dopamine hit after hit… Until you’re a junkie.
Casinos are a prison. Sure, people are free to walk out, but it isn’t the body that is incarcerated… No, it is the soul. Even after countless defeats, people will walk back through those doors, not because they want to but because they NEED to. They are addicted to the chase, to the false hope, the sights and sounds, to the fabricated lifestyle a marketer has presented them. When you are too far gone, you neglect your loved ones, yourself, your responsibilities, all sacrificed at the altar. It is like the event horizon of a black hole – Once you get too close, you will NEVER escape.
I wonder if that’s how Felix Foley feels. He can walk around like a free man, but there is this clawing at the back of his mind, this knowledge that someone else has laid claim to his soul and it is only a matter of time before they collect. Until then, not just he but all around him will suffer, as he continues this dream of a way out, an escape from you, Tombstone. I hope to Zeus he finds it.
So today I enter those golden doors, where to play is to lose, to remain an extra moment is to remain an eternity, where even the air is conspiring against you… And I will not lose. You know why? Because I won’t play. No spinning the wheel, no playing the cards, no yanking on the one-armed bandit. I’m having a mojito, raising a middle finger and getting the fuck out of here. No man nor house is taking my soul tonight.