Lake Tahoe

Just a quick recap of my meetings up in Tahoe this week:

• The meetings were on the north shore of Tahoe which I have never spent time before. What a beautiful place. This really might be the best place for a vacation for me. Lots of outdoors stuff to do, with the added bonus of having casinos. We stayed at the Hyatt, and they had a very small but nice casino. Two craps tables, 8 BJ, one roulette, and then about 4 other tables for 3 card poker and such. Dealers were lacking but the pit bosses were very cool.
• Finally had a long sustained session on the craps table. First night was OK. Made about $60 on a 5 dollar table. They only allow double odds which sucked. Is there anything better than having about 10 people watch you play craps? And is there anything worse than a guy that doesn't know how to play craps? Or is too scared to try?
• Second night we had a long dinner cruise on the lake and didn't get back until 9:00pm. I went to cash in my winning A's ticket for $100 and then had to meet up with the guy I was doing a presentation with the next night. After this, I ended up strolling back into the casino and saw that my VP was at the craps table. My VP is the typical Harvard nerd. He loves hearing my gambling stories and such. He is like a little kid when we travel to a casino and always wants to play craps with me. So I was wandering around the craps table seeing what was going on and one of the other managers who I rolled with the previous night was about to roll and wanted me to get on the table. I found a spot 3 people down from him. Almost 90 minutes later, I finally got to roll. This was the weirdest craps session ever. The only thing that compares to it was when Jay and I had a midnight run at New York New York, where a girl rolled nothing but 2s, 3s, and 12s.
• The first guy, Jason, rolled for at least 25 minutes and only hit one point. I made a little off of him and I was going to pick up since the next guy about to roll was an ass.
• The next guy was one of those slow bettors who doesn't understand the game and annoys everyone. He kept on dropping $5 to place the 8, when it was a $10 table. Double whammy. This happened at least 10 times during the 90 minutes. So when it was his turn, I just put a bet on the pass line and watched him for a second. He took at least 30 seconds each time to roll the dice. He went into some sort of trance. After setting the point of 5, I didn't put any money on 6 or 8 or the come. I was actually thinking about placing a don't come bet, but for some reason I didn't and decided to try the Field Progressive betting system. Start with $10 and when you hit you increase it by $5 and when you lose, you drop $5. After 12 rolls I was up to $70 a bet on the Field. This guy was amazingly hot. He was hitting 2s and 12s none stop. I ended up putting $5 on the horn several times and he would hit it. It was out of control. And while the table was going nuts, this guy was dead silent and didn't look happy. Once again this guy only made 2 points during his 30 minute roll. Very strange.
• The funny thing about betting the field and the horn is that when you hit, it seems like you are the only one celebrating. Thank god the guy next to me was piggybacking on my bets on the field and the horn so at least I wasn't alone with my celebration.
• The third guy steps up and proceeds to do this..4,4,10,10,8,8. Three points right in a row. He hit the hard 8 twice which I had $10 on. He continued with hitting another 3 points. Crazy shit. Very impressive. At this point we were all going nutz. First time in a long time where both ends of the table were talking to each other and cheering everyone on. Tips were flying to this guy from the other end of the table. My VP, who had picked up just before this guy was now pissed and wanted to get back on, but there was no room.
• My turn!!!! Finally. My roll, 6,7 out. Ugh. Probably lost $100 on this roll. Got a little too cocky. I then got up and walked away. Thank God.
• The next morning, our president comes up to me at breakfast and says that he gets a 10% cut on my winnings. I reach into my pocket and flipped out a $100 bill and said, "Go buy yourself something nice" which killed!!! Killed I tell you!!!