It's All In The Cards

It’s All in the Cards

Jenny disconnected the I.V. and Alby was finally free. “Okay Mr. Rich, you’re all done. I know you’re scheduled to return in three weeks for another infusion but if you have any questions or problems before that, contact your physician. Here are your prescriptions that you can fill as needed. This one is for nausea, this one for pain, this one for shortness of breath, this one for cramping, this one for diarrhea and this one for anxiety. This one is for headaches, this one for fever, this one for dry mouth, this one for mouth sores, and this last one is to help you sleep.” Alby watched as Jenny placed the prescriptions, one at a time on the counter, splayed like a poker hand. With Alby’s luck at poker, it was difficult to say if this was a winner.
Alby scooped them up and said, “Dealing those out makes me think you know your way around a deck of cards!”
“Are you kidding? I’m probably the worst card player on the planet,” Jenny laughed.
“Not if my father taught you,” I interjected. “Dad, we should tell her about Vegas. . .”

Alby loved to play cards; any game was fine. He knew at least fifteen versions of solitaire, just about every type of poker, was unbeatable in gin and bridge, and a master at blackjack. So it was no surprise that he vacationed often in Las Vegas long before the Atlantic City casinos were even imagined. Alby’s appreciation for a great hand of cards had traveled through the gene pool and splash-landed in my pond. He and I would play all different games for hours at a time and I’d lose pretty consistently.
“I don’t do you any favors if I let you win,” he’d say when I would become frustrated. “It’s important that you learn how to play the game. Learn the rules and find out which ones you can bend and which ones you can’t. Learn how it feels to lose. Learn how it feels to win. Learn that you can’t win by cheating and you can’t lose by playing honestly, fairly and to the best of your ability. Learn that the hands you’re dealt might be really crappy sometimes and you’ve got to be able to work with them. Learn that your partners might not play the game the way you do. Learn that you have no control over what you get, only what you do with it.” Contrived? Sure. But I learned a lot when we played.
When Alby was teaching me how to play blackjack in particular, it was a testament to his vast reserves of patience. I was very weak in math and when I saw numbers, my brain would go into convulsions. Only much later in my life would I learn I have something called Discalculia, and mathematics were my educational bane.
He’d add my cards up in a nanosecond while I often didn’t have enough fingers with which to calculate. He would wait no matter how long it took for me to figure out what I had, and then painstakingly explain to me how to optimize the odds in my favor. It took hours. Days. Weeks. Once he knew I’d “gotten” how to play wisely, he then taught me how to bet wisely.
“Remember my one rule of thumb. Never, and I mean NEVER, gamble more than you can afford to lose,” he’d repeat.
When I turned twenty-one Alby took me, together with Mom, to Las Vegas, fulfilling a promise he’d made to me years earlier. “You’re ready to play with the Big Boys,” he assured me as I entered the Dunes Hotel and Casino lobby in awe. The lights and the noises were exciting. It was all as he’d promised it would be – there were no windows in the casino so players had no thought of day or night; there were no clocks anywhere because time in Las Vegas exists about as much as a slot machine that pays out. I felt as much excitement as if I were locked in overnight at Bloomingdales with an unlimited spending account. I couldn’t wait to sit at the table.
“Here,” Alby said as he handed me five-hundred dollars. “You can keep whatever you win and if you lose, well, then you lose.” What a deal! If I lose it’s his money, if I win it’s mine. That was the first of many times Alby and I would have that arrangement.
Under normal circumstances Alby and I were lovers of hot, desert temperatures and would have been out by the pool just as soon as we arrived. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Alby took a seat next to mine at a two-dollar table (about as common today as finding a dinosaur bone in your backyard) and whispered to me, “I’m right here. Start playing and remember what I’ve taught you.”
After a week in Vegas I knew the names of all the Blackjack dealers and Pit Bosses at The Dunes and they knew me. “Al Rich’s daughter,” I’d hear them whisper to one another. I knew which slot machines had better odds and I could tell at a glance whether or not the couple next to me was married or if it was just a dalliance. I learned who the high rollers were and who kept a better poker face. I learned how to hide chips in my socks. It was a week of winning, losing, winning, and losing and by the end, I gave Alby back his $500.00 and was able to keep $2,000.00 of my own.
He interrupted my excited yammering on the flight home by asking me, “Susie Q, what did you learn on this trip?”
What had I learned? “If an unattractive, grey-haired man with a beer belly is kissing a blonde with large breasts, she’s probably a hooker and he probably left his wife at home.” Alby taught me all I ever needed to know. . .
After a chuckle Alby said, “Well, let me pose it to you this way. When you were losing, how did you feel?”
“Like crap.”
“Why?”
“Because I was doing everything just the way you taught me, playing right and betting right, and I was still losing.”
“And how did you feel when you were winning?”
“Great!”
“Why?”
“Because I was doing everything just the way you taught me, playing right and betting right, and I was winning.”
He looked at me with his crooked smile and twinkling eyes. “Interesting. You did what you were taught and you played right; sometimes you won and sometimes you lost. But in the end, you stayed the course and came out ahead. Remember that, Susie Q. There’s a lot to be learned from a deck of cards. Now, how about a loan for your Old Man?” he joked, and as I watched the clouds float past my window on the plane, I thought about how lucky I was to have my father teaching me how to play my life’s deck of cards.

Jenny helped Alby on with his jacket and gave him a hug. “I’m pretty sure I love you, Mr. Rich,” she said.
“Well then, I’m pretty sure you’ve got good taste,” Alby answered and returned her embrace. “I guess I’ll see you in three weeks.”
“I’ll be here. When I see your name on the schedule I’ll request to be your nurse. And I’ll bet you’ll have more stories.”
“Sounds like a good bet to me.” Alby linked arms with Mom and we all left Room Number Seven, anxious to get a breath of fresh air.