It was January 14th, 1999. around 7:00pm. I was working as a Sr. Network Engineer for a large bank headquarted in Detroit. A critical file server had been down and I had worked 12 hrs straight to build another one and transfer all the data. I was just finished.
My office phone rings and it's my buddy Ed. "Dude!!! Lets go to the casino" he says. Well I was beat and not about to go anywhere but home but he was persistant. I told him that I hadn't eaten anything since lunch the day before. He said he had free food vouchers at the casino in Canada and he and his wife would be by in an hour. "Free food" I said....I'm there. So Ed and his wife drove downtown to pick me up from my office. Since my truck could better accomodate the 3 of us, we decided that I would drive.
We arrived at the casino at about 8:30 and I got $75 in chips and $25 in Slot Tokens. Well the machine that I was sitting at was broken, the last wheel wasn't stopping normally. Meanwhile I had 2 98 yr old women on either side of me who both hit fairly sizable jackpots. I was a little frustrated so I got up to go find someone to look at the machine. Not thinking, I left the rest of the $25 in tokens at the machine, and of course it wasn't there when I came back only 3 minuites later. So after spending $9 at the slot machines, I was already out $25 ...hmmm how did that happen?
I figured I better get something to eat because I was feeling a little lightheaded. But before I found the resturaunt, I stumbled across the blackjack tables. There was a $25 max limit and a $15 minimum. I figured hat the hell, a hand or 2 wont kill me before dinner.
So there I was playing blackjack, and before you know it I had doubled my money, and then quadrupled my money. A crowd started forming behind me, it seemed that I couldn't lose. The waitress comes up to me and asks me what I'd like to drink, and being in Canada, it had to be Labatts. So on I played. I had no idea how much money I had, all I knew was that I had lots of purple chips in my pockets. I kept getting splits and doubling down and I won every time. By this time Ed and Donna had found me and were now part of the crowd behind me. I had security people watching my hands and feet, they wouldn't let anyone close to me for fear that I was cheating. They were sure I was, no one is that lucky.
They kept changing dealers on me, I was tipping $100 a pop. There was a nice old chinese lady playing next to me that was just having horrible luck, so I gave her $500 in chips. She ended up turning it into $900 before she finally quit. She wanted to pay me back but I was feeling so good that I wanted to share the wealth. So I let her buy me a drink....or was it 2? The casino manager came over at one point and asked me if I wanted anything. As a joke I say "Yeah...your best hotel room and a bottle of Dom". A waitress came back 15 minuites later with A hotel room voucher, A $100 Cuban cigar and 1 1985 bottle of Dom Perignon. I tipped her $100 and on I played.
Ed and Donna were tired and ready to leave, but there was no way that I was going to leave that table. So I gave Ed the keys to my truck and they went home. Now by this time I hadn't eaten for almost 36 hrs and I had quite a few beers. It was the strangest feeling that I had ever experienced. I had literally NO energy. I was entirely drained, yet the excitement of the moment fueled me with pure adrenaline. I was winning $1500 a hand and not showing any sort of reaction, the casino staff watching me thought for sure I was a professional. The exitement of the moment was the only thing keeping me vertical.
I played on and on, never getting up from that table, my pockets were so stuffed with $500 chips that I looked like a squirrel. They had to keep bringing out rolls of purple chips because I kept winning them all. It was slowing down and I only had a few people at my table so I started playing 3 hands at a time, and right out of the gate, that changed my luck. In 10 minuites I lost almost $5000, so I packed up my remaing chips and got up from the table.
I had sat down at that table at approxamately 9:00pm with $75 in my pocket, and at 4:57am on January 15th I cashed in $17,501.00 in chips. I went up to my comped hotel suite along with 2 new acquaintences that I had met during the evening and we dined on surf and turf well into the morning, along with several more bottles of Dom of course.
The next afternoon, Ed came back out in my truck to pick me up, we sat down at the same table for 3 or 4 hands of blacjack and in about 5 miniutes, I lost $1200, my luck had run out...so we went home.