Teach
03-07-2008, 10:16 AM
"Dad, low numbers," my son Bruce said. "Low numbers," he repeated.
It was right out of a scene from "The Rain Man." You know the movie with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in which Hoffman plays the idiot savant brother with a computer-like mathematical mind.
I was in Aruba. It was over a dozen years ago. My son, then about to graduate from high school, was accompanying his father to the casino; it was to be my son's first visit to an emporium of iniquity.
We were gambling at a hotel/casino called The Aruban Palm. I remember that the casino itself looked like someone's rec room. The Grand Pequot at Foxwoods -- it ain't.
Well, I had initially given my son a roll of quarters and told him to try his luck at the slot machines. I, on the other hand, was going to try my luck at one of the table games. The operative word here was one. Yes, there was one craps table and one roulette table. I decided on roulette.
After about a half-hour, I'm down close to "a C-Note." I just couldn't do anything. I'd play "streets," "quads," and even "straight up," but the damn ball wouldn't land where I wanted it to.
Just then my son walks over to where I'm sitting. "How ya doing, Dad?" he asks. "Not well, son," I replied.
Well, the croupier's about to spin the wheel when my son says, "Dad, low numbers...low numbers." I quickly grab a handful of white chips and cover every number between 1 and 9. Wouldn't you know it, the next thing I hear is: "It's red, it's 3." "Yippee!" I think to myself. The dealer proceeds to place the glass cylinder on my white chip. He then slides me over 35 more whites.
As I think back, Was It Luck? Did My Son Have A Gift? I'm not sure. Could we call it ESP? You know: Extrasensory Perception.
Call it what you will: Clairvoyance, Precognition, Telepathy, Telekinesis, or any name you want. It's the belief -- call it an art or skill -- of determining something that is occurring, will occur or has already occurred without actually seeing it (the telekinesis part is more the idea of bending something like a key -- a la Uri Geller -- without actually touching it).
Yes (you may chuckle at this), I sometimes try to imagine the number of a horse or even the horse's name. I'll then look at the entries to see if any of my ponderings matched a name and/or number. I don't use this often in my handicapping approach; yet, frankly, I sometimes do.
Have I had success? On rare occasions. I nailed a pick-4 at Aqueduct by playing a horse in the final leg whose name matched a thought I had (I had used other horses, as well, in the final leg).
As for that night in Aruba, yes, I made a come back. My son kept saying, "Dad, black...black. Black is coming up." And, yes, black did come up. Throughout my play at that roulette table, my son was right more often than he was wrong. Now, if I only knew that I could call him up this morning and say, "Bruce, give me the winner in the fifth race at Aqueduct."
It was right out of a scene from "The Rain Man." You know the movie with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in which Hoffman plays the idiot savant brother with a computer-like mathematical mind.
I was in Aruba. It was over a dozen years ago. My son, then about to graduate from high school, was accompanying his father to the casino; it was to be my son's first visit to an emporium of iniquity.
We were gambling at a hotel/casino called The Aruban Palm. I remember that the casino itself looked like someone's rec room. The Grand Pequot at Foxwoods -- it ain't.
Well, I had initially given my son a roll of quarters and told him to try his luck at the slot machines. I, on the other hand, was going to try my luck at one of the table games. The operative word here was one. Yes, there was one craps table and one roulette table. I decided on roulette.
After about a half-hour, I'm down close to "a C-Note." I just couldn't do anything. I'd play "streets," "quads," and even "straight up," but the damn ball wouldn't land where I wanted it to.
Just then my son walks over to where I'm sitting. "How ya doing, Dad?" he asks. "Not well, son," I replied.
Well, the croupier's about to spin the wheel when my son says, "Dad, low numbers...low numbers." I quickly grab a handful of white chips and cover every number between 1 and 9. Wouldn't you know it, the next thing I hear is: "It's red, it's 3." "Yippee!" I think to myself. The dealer proceeds to place the glass cylinder on my white chip. He then slides me over 35 more whites.
As I think back, Was It Luck? Did My Son Have A Gift? I'm not sure. Could we call it ESP? You know: Extrasensory Perception.
Call it what you will: Clairvoyance, Precognition, Telepathy, Telekinesis, or any name you want. It's the belief -- call it an art or skill -- of determining something that is occurring, will occur or has already occurred without actually seeing it (the telekinesis part is more the idea of bending something like a key -- a la Uri Geller -- without actually touching it).
Yes (you may chuckle at this), I sometimes try to imagine the number of a horse or even the horse's name. I'll then look at the entries to see if any of my ponderings matched a name and/or number. I don't use this often in my handicapping approach; yet, frankly, I sometimes do.
Have I had success? On rare occasions. I nailed a pick-4 at Aqueduct by playing a horse in the final leg whose name matched a thought I had (I had used other horses, as well, in the final leg).
As for that night in Aruba, yes, I made a come back. My son kept saying, "Dad, black...black. Black is coming up." And, yes, black did come up. Throughout my play at that roulette table, my son was right more often than he was wrong. Now, if I only knew that I could call him up this morning and say, "Bruce, give me the winner in the fifth race at Aqueduct."