Losing Las Vegas

But if you are eating this ribeye at Craftsteak in the MGM, are you really losing?

THERE is no greater monument to losing than the city of Las Vegas and, as such, The Lose likes to make the occasional pilgrimage. It is the ultimate bastion of failure. They don’t pay the power bills for all of those fancy lights on the backs of those who succeed in the casinos. And they are fancy lights, let me tell you – I suspect the amount of wattage used to power the signage outside the Forum Shops of Caesars Palace is greater than that of entire cities in third world nations. The place has a very different feel from when I first ventured there more than 20 years ago, at which point in time most of the hotels were similar, the food was pretty cheap and pretty bad, and everything that took place in Vegas had an air of uncleanliness about it. All of the hustlers and titty bars and burlesques and tawdry sideshows seem decidedly out of place in the modern Vegas, which is now a playground for the opulent and the nouveau riche, none of whom seem to have much interest in that sort of stuff, and all of whom are far more concerned about their club tickets and dinner reservations. The cheap cocktail and the cheap buffet are a thing of the past along The Strip. People who come to Vegas lose more than ever before, in part because they bring so much more with them to lose.

But I love the look of the modern Las Vegas, being a huge fan of architecture and design. It’s gorgeous and I love the triumph of human imagination on display everywhere you turn. And given that I’m a shameless foodie, I consider any trip to Vegas to be, first and foremost, an opportunity to willingly let my weight trend upwards for a few days. (Try the Herbed Bird at Yardbird in the Venetian if you get the chance. It’s phenomenal.) We ducked out of our abode for a long, Thanksgiving weekend, and The Official Spouse of In Play Lose suggested that I play some cards while I was there, but I didn’t want to play cards because that involves doing math, and who wants to do math on your vacation? It’s actually pretty stressful and I didn’t want to make the effort.

Instead, we focused our attention on the Race & Sports Books, shopping around The Strip in search of World Cup Futures on which to wager. I found some prices that I wound up liking, in the end: France at 11/2, Spain at 7/1, Belgium at 9/1. I also felt like taking a flyer, and throwing a little money on Portugal at 20/1 made the most sense on that front, since they’ve actually won something important recently. (Unlike England, who were listed at 12/1 pretty much everywhere in Vegas, and I have no idea why anyone thinks they’re any good at all.)

And playing the sports books invariably turns into something of an experiment for me, and so I chalked up any potential losses as being a necessary bit of research. And what I found, in the end, is that both my wagering wins and losses in Las Vegas seemed to fall in line with a lot of my theories of failure.

For starters, I threw away $20 almost right away by going against a tenet of wagering, and fandom in general, which is to never get your hopes up about the Minnesota Timberwolves. They will disappoint you every time. Whenever I watch this team, I wonder what the hell is wrong with them. And I suppose the Wolves being 13-9, as of this writing, wouldn’t constitute being disappointing on the whole, given how dire things have been with them for a decade, but just like everyone else, I’m easily susceptible to the opiate that is ‘potential’ with this team, and I was okay laying 5½ against a meh Miami Heat team, and the Wolves promptly got whomped at home by the Heat and Karl Anthony Towns apparently went into a witness protection program and took my $20 with him.

But that was the only blip on the radar on the first day. We made up for me stupidly wagering on Minnesota by deciding that betting against Orlando on both ends of a back-to-back trip to Boston and Philadelphia. I’ll have to admit that some of my preconceptions going into wagering came from previously watching teams playing against the Warriors. A part of why I was down on the Heat, for example, is that I watched them lose and Golden State and thought to myself, “you know, that roster sucks. There just isn’t that much talent there.” (Admittedly, this may have been flawed thinking on my part, since The Dion Waiters Experience wasn’t playing in that game.) Orlando, meanwhile, was off to a good start when they came to the Bay, and they are very well coached – well enough, in fact, to masque the fact that there isn’t a whole lot of talent on that team, and generally, once it gets figured out that your team is well-coached but not talented, the losses tend to start piling up. Orlando were up to six on the skid going into this Boston/Philly death march over the weekend – and it was up to eight on the skid by the end of the weekend, because both the Celts and the Sixers ran up 30-point leads and neither had to work that hard in order to do it. Okay, so those were two good bets right there.

The Official Spouse of In Play Lose was hesitant when she saw the opening Vegas line for the Warriors game with the Bulls, which was Warriors -19½. The line then dropped to -15½ almost immediately on word that KD wasn’t going to play, but she was still unsure – after all, the Warriors have a propensity for goofing off and making games closer than they need to be, since none of these games in October and November mean anything to them. All it took was seeing the Chicago Bulls play basketball for two minutes for her to realize that betting against the Bulls in every game is a good idea. The Dubs beat Chicago by 49 and it was hard for them not to run the score up against the Bulls, because the Dubs’ garbage time lineup is better than the Bulls’ starting five. So we’re winning our bets here, we’re doing great and it’s all going great and so we take our winnings and put it back into some more bets.

And then the losing begins.

And it starts out with the annoying sorts of losses that can drive you crazy. I’ve got +130 on Liverpool to win against Chelsea, they’re up a goal and in control of the game and then, out of nowhere, Willian tries this impossible chip which Liverpool’s bad Belgian goalkeeper plays poorly and the game is suddenly even – which also doesn’t make me feel great about my 9/1 Belgian odds, except for the fact that the good Belgian goalkeeper, Courtois, is playing for Chelsea on the other end. And we’ve gone and foolishly wagered on Washington at -4½ against Portland, which is a terrible idea because D.C. sports are the worst, but Portland is on a back-to-back after a 2-point win over the Swamp Dragons the night before in Brooklyn, and even though John Wall is out, we’re still feeling confident in the Buzzards … who then proceed to blow a 17-point lead in the 4th Quarter and a 7-point lead in the last 90 seconds, as Portland goes on a 10-0 run and wins.

And then I let foolish homer pride get the better of me, as I then throw money on The Good Guys at +10 against the Huskies in the Apple Cup, and take it even a step further and wager at +300 on the Cougars to win outright. This is a completely terrible bet, because every time W.S.U. plays Washington, they look as if they’ve never played the game of football before. But I’m thinking, “hey, the Huskies have been a colossal disappointment this season – LOL Husky scum – and W.S.U. has it all to play for here, and if they win this game I’ll be down at The Pants in Santa Clara next weekend watching them playing USC in the Pac-10 Pac-12 title game.” (That still sounds strange to me.) I was trying to show my Cougar pride here and show my support.

Spouse: Your football team isn’t any good.
Lose: No, no, it’s still early.
Spouse: It’s the third quarter and it’s 31-0.
Lose: I think I need another drink.
Spouse: My bets are better than yours.

So, as per usual, W.S.U. lost in confoundingly bad fashion. I can’t figure out how time and again Luke Falk, a QB who set the Pac-12 record for yards and TDs, comes out and looks, against Washington, as if he’s never played football before. What was truly ridiculous was the fact that Washington rushed three guys and dropped eight the entire game, and somehow five guys blocking on three couldn’t keep the Huskies from battering Falk like a piñata. W.S.U. was 9-2 going into this game, for godsake, and in 1st place in the Pac-12, and then they went out and played like New Mexico State. (Although I shouldn’t bash the Aggies, who are definitely Friends of the Lose and who, if they win this weekend against South Alabama, will go to a bowl game for the first time in 57 years.) I think the Huskies were up 34-0  when we gave up and decided that going to dinner at Jaleo in the Cosmopolitan was preferable to watching this mess.

Jaleo lamb chops > Apple Cup, to the nth degree

Now, the Official Spouse of In Play Lose, to her credit, gave zero fucks whatsoever about sentimentality when it came time to wager on her favorite soccer team, which is Swansea City. Swans are in 19th place in the EPL and going nowhere, but a visit by a lackluster AFC Bournemouth to the Liberty Stadium provided at least the possibility of a good result. Then again, Swansea can’t score. They can’t score at all. They’ve score seven goals the entire fricking season. So we’re at the window at The Mirage, and the spouse turns to me and says, “what do you think is the most likely outcome of this game? I’m thinking draw myself.” It’s figuring out the draws where you can really make your money betting on soccer, since they happen often enough but not predictably often enough. I look at the situation – the Swans can’t score, the Cherries would be perfectly happy with a point on the road but otherwise don’t care – and I agree that the game has 0:0 written all over it. So we bet draw at +220, and it ends Swansea 0:0 Bournemouth, and at +220 we win enough to more than cover all of what we’ve lost thanks to positionally poor Belgian keepers and bumbling W.S.U. quarterbacks.

But in the moment, I hate to lose all of these individual bets. And there are so many choices up on the boards that my first inclination is to start running through all of the bets that I wanted to make but didn’t make. For example, I really liked Auburn over Alabama. I don’t know why I thought that at all, since I scarcely follow college football, but I felt really, really strongly about Auburn winning this game, and I was sitting there watching Auburn go all War Eagle on Alabama’s ass while looking at the TV over my wife’s shoulder at the burger joint on Saturday afternoon, caring far more about the fact that I didn’t trust my instincts than the fabulous burger in front of me:

There is a burger in there, I swear

I don’t really follow the NFL any more, either, but betting on the NFL is the go-to, bread-and-butter in Las Vegas, and on a week where the favorites were 12-3-1, just looking at the board and saying “that team there, with the minus sign next to them, give me $20 on them” would have been a winning strategy. Nope, didn’t do that either, except to take the Steelers at -14½ against a battered Green Bay team, to which the Steelers responded by showing little interest in tackling while making the Pack’s backup QB look like a worldbeater. The Dubs at -15½ vs. the Bulls was a no-brainer, but we didn’t feel as confident the next day, with KD still out of the lineup and an opponent who actually knows what they are doing – words I’d never thought I’d ever say about the New Orleans Pelicans – so we laid off the Dubs at -11½ and, of course, Golden State covered.

Speaking of the Dubs, I wasn’t remotely as impressed with the Zombies of OKC as they were with themselves after beating the Warriors the day before Thanksgiving. OKC has been generally lousy this season in spite of having “a big three” of Russ, Melo, and PG13, but one win over the Warriors and suddenly they’d “turned the corner.” I was all over Detroit on Friday night – but I didn’t bet on Detroit. Damn it, why didn’t I bet on Detroit? And then the Zombies were laying 6½ the next night in Dallas and I loved Dallas, because OKC had just endured yet another dispiriting late game meltdown against the Pistons the night before, one which called into question everything good they’d accomplished two days earlier in beating the Dubs, but the Mavericks are still a shit team and so I thought the better of it … and that shit team, of course, went out and promptly beat the tar out of OKC. WHY AM I NOT FOLLOWING MY INSTINCTS? Oh, right, because my instincts made me think that betting on the Wolves and the Buzzards and Washington State were all good ideas.

And when you lose, of course, everything you didn’t bet on seems like a good idea. And I care too much. I care way too much. I care way more than I probably should. But see, the whole point of this experiment is that it’s one of ownership. We may take losses hard as fans, but the fact of the matter is that fans are always on the side. We invest our money to buy tickets to games, or maybe buy a jersey or a hat or whatnot, but the outcome of any one particular game isn’t something we’re truly being rewarded for. I mean, we may get some sort of thrill if our team wins, and feel disgust when they lose, but when you wager on it, you are actually being paid for your performance. You have a personal financial stake in the result. For the duration of the game, you’ve become an owner.

I spoke about this when writing about my last trip to Vegas, which was during the weekend of Super Bowl 50. I normally couldn’t have cared less about either the Carolina Panthers nor the Denver Broncos, but if I plunk down some cash on the Panthers, then by God, I am all-in on the Panthers. I am instantly transformed into this massive Panthers fan for the duration of the game. And so here we are once again in Vegas, and we’re checking our phones over and over again when we’re at dinner, checking to see if the Milwaukee Bucks have magically made a run against the Utah Jazz since we bet on the former. We care when we otherwise wouldn’t give a rip. It’s complete madness, but Vegas allows you the opportunity to go mad again and again and again. We were at the Sports Book at the Aria on Saturday night watching W.S.U. throw up all over themselves yet again in the Apple Cup, and there are 20 televisions or so in the place, with a few of them showing the NBA but most of them showing college football, and one of the games that’s being shown is Texas-San Antonio against Louisiana Tech, the latter of whom is responsible for the worst play of the year in contriving to lose 87 yards on a single snap of the football:

Who would want to watch Texas-San Antonio against Louisiana Tech? (Judging from the crowd shots, no one in Ruston, Louisiana, was much interested.) But I guarantee that there is someone – there is someone – in Vegas who actually bet on this game and were hoping that the Techsters had developed a better sense of direction over the course of the season.

And if I’m at the card table, I can at least delude myself into thinking that if I do the math, everything will be okay. This is probably folly, but it’s based on some sense that I have a control of the outcome. But when you bet on a game, you have to just sit there and watch as Luke Falk throws the ball again to a guy wearing purple or Karl Antony Towns goes missing in action. You have zero control. You really don’t know what’s going to happen. Leicester City winning the EPL a couple of seasons ago certainly proved that. (And had we stayed past Monday, I would’ve put some dollars on Leicester at +260 to beat Tottenham Hotspur. I should have done it, anyway. Woulda coulda shoulda.)

In the end, the winnings from Swansea’s goalless draw were enough for Team Lose to be able to withstand a pretty bad run of bets for the rest of the weekend and we managed to wind up +$22 for the weekend – and the last wager we made, on Memphis to cover against a beat-up Brooklyn team missing its three best players, turned out so shockingly bad that the Grizzlies went into complete meltdown mode afterwards, having gotten whipped at home by the meager Swamp Dragons for their 8th loss in a row, to which they responded by firing head coach David “Take That for Data” Fizdale after the game. His weekend was decidedly worse than ours.

In the larger context, of course, coming home having won any money at all makes the weekend a success, even if it’s not even enough to pay for the whiskey flite at Craftsteak later that evening. Gambling is fun, even if I’m not very good at it. I supposed I could try to get better at it, but what does that even mean? I mean, we wagered mostly on NBA games while we were in Las Vegas, and I feel as if I have a pretty good handle on the NBA at the moment, and yet I still got a tonne of stuff wrong. Obviously, I should bet with my head and not my heart – curse you WSU! – yet betting with my head didn’t work that often, either. Doing this sort of thing in a small, controlled burst like this keeps it a fun form of recreation, which was the whole point. If I ever get to the point where I’m swearing at the TV because I bet $1000 on some Sun Belt game, send me straight back to the psych ward.