Casino Life

Walking through the doors of a casino can feel like entering a portal into another dimension. A cacophony of electronic and human sounds assaults the ears as you watch people transacting large amounts of money. But this is no ordinary purchasing of goods or services where you quietly wave a card or hand out notes from a purse. Instead, money is swapped for colourful plastic chips that are placed, pushed, and thrown onto gaming tables with seemingly reckless abandon by a wide array of people, young, old, cultured, relaxed, happy, and grim. Phil Watts, as an experienced forensic psychologist, knew a lot about human nature before he walked into his first casino at 40 years of age. He had treated clients with a wide range of difficulties including gambling, yet was still struck by the casino environment — an exciting world with its own culture, pace, rules, social etiquette, and shared expectations. This other world intrigued and surprised him. So, he wrote a book about it. Casino Life will be of interest to those who seeking to know more about casinos and their psychological effects, those who seek to find out why others gamble, and those who do gamble — not as a treatment, but as a window to see what you are doing and how that has an impact upon you. Along the way you will read about why people gamble, why gambling can become addictive and the treatments used to help problem gamblers, as well as the beliefs around gambling and some of the elaborate theories people use to explain why they try to defy mathematical odds. You will also learn about the fascinating cultural and behavioural patterns of everyday casino life.

This book is an ultimate guide for understanding life on itself and to show that a door requires a key to open unless a person decides to do a different plan to open it, but a different plan will result in a procrastination of time. Although there are many keys in the shop, they differ with strongest and with numbers. Actually some of them are imitation, which means they get broken easily, so to be free in mind, read this book with care and giving all your heart.

I am not a writer or an author of novels or essays. It always discourages me to see so many authors or writers, some established, others just attempting to make a name for themselves every time I enter a bookstore and see thousands and thousands of titles of novels or books or whatever the writer thinks it is worth writing about. Some are new editions, others neatly arranged in that heap called bargain purchases. It immediately put a stop to my idea of putting what I think is a subject that must be indelible, of everyday events that people talk about after seeing it on TV or coming across it on a page of a local or national newspaper. Something like Charles Krauthammer’s seminal essays in Things That Matter, Andy Rooney’s astute observations in Common Sense, or the provocative articles in humorist Dave Barry’s I Am Not Making This Up. But growing older in age and with the remaining future not so distant anymore, the impulse and the courage to tell anyone who is interested in what you have to say becomes compulsive as magma wanting to erupt from the bowels of the earth’s core. That is why these essays compiled and culled from the files of what I have kept these years writing editorials in magazines, from applications to a graduate school I never finished and received a diploma, and from other sources the names I can’t recall, from recent and contemporaneous events onerously repeated by pundits and so-called experts, became bound in a form you are holding today. The ideas may be past but still relevant. They might be current and dissecting them with the pros and cons of opinions providing the diversity we strive for. I do not claim originality in the subjects I write about. They might not be original, but I have burnished them with a different patina the reader never thought of colorizing. The research of some of the data was done via websites, different articles read, speeches made, my notes and recollections, and some older versions of articles I have written in some newsmagazines. For privacy reasons, I have changed the names in one essay in particular, as I was not successful in communicating with the persons despite attempts at doing so. I have also, to the best of my ability, adhered to the fair use doctrine using some data or quotations in some of my essays. In any case, I hope it is while your time, effort, and your trip to the bookstore to come up and peruse what is in your hands.

Caroline Popov, alone, heartbroken, and deeply in debt ends up in glamorous Palm Springs, California where Native casinos have just opened, offering employment to thousands. She lands a job at the Palm Oasis Casino where she is mentored by the charismatic tribal chairman, John Tovar. Embraced by casino culture, Caroline works her way up to casino manager of the Night Hawk, in the High Desert town of Joshua Tree. There, she is responsible for managing multicultural team members, satisfying the demands of often unique guests, and growing revenue while rooting out corruption. In the process of rediscovering her inner strength, she learns, you have to gamble like your life depends on it. Because it often does.

Features numerous job profiles in the casino and gaming industry and includes appendixes covering professional organizations, schools, associations, unions, and casinos. Career profiles include blackjack dealer, casino host, concierge, and hotel publicist.

Solid Advice From A Casino Industry Insider In this outstanding, fully updated guide to winning at blackjack, gambling columnist and consultant Victor H. Royer provides a wealth of tips and step-by-step techniques for enhancing the casino gaming experience and becoming a more knowledgeable and more successful player. With methods proven on casino floors around the world, he guides you through the basics of blackjack, from knowing when to split cards and when to stand pat to the finer points of betting for maximum success. Powerful Profits from Blackjack can increase your odds of winning and getting more enjoyment from every trip to the casino. Here are just a few of the valuable tips you'll learn: The truth behind Shuffling Machines—which are OK, and which to avoid, and why Includes a Modified Basic Strategy for your best advantage! Also includes a card-size Modified Basic Strategy that you can copy (print) and carry with you Why you should never split 10s—except in some Blackjack Tournaments The importance of "soft hands," and why casinos hate them How the number "17" can make or break your hand Why all blackjack games are NOT the same How to find a casino that offers you the best chance of winning And much more! Can This Book Give You An Edge? Bet On It! 134,500 Words