Not to blaspheme the Gods and Goddesses of Las Vegas to whom we pay tribute but one cannot win at the game of 21. Shortly you will understand why. In the meantime does Blackjack refer to the Jack of spades or the Jack of clubs? Why does the Jack have 2 heads? Was the name Jack derived from the name John and how did they get from John to Jack? Poor little John John. His mommy wouldn’t let him marry Darryl Hannah. “I’ll be damned if I have a mermaid for a daughter in law”, said Jackie Kennedy as she sipped Ouzo aboard the Christina, her husband’s 532 foot yacht cruising the pearl blue seas of the Mediterranean one hot July afternoon in 1969. “But she’s not a mermaid mom, that was just a movie.” “Movie Shmoovie”, said Jackie O, “She’s beneath you.”

The road to Hell is paved with bad intentions. John the Baptist was doing fine until he laid 3 to 1 on a young Jewish Prince overthrowing the husband of Herodius, which bet caused his head to roll at the behest of a 14 year old lap dancer named Salome who preferred the Royal Palace to a dirt hole in Iraq. Imagine little George “the drinks are on me” Bush captured in a dirt hole in Nevada by 5 Iranian soldiers. Don’t worry. It’s not going to happen. We have the family guarding Las Vegas, not Fema. Hollywood has hypnotized us with James Bond movies giving us the illusion that our leaders are invincible and will always protect us. That’s why 30,000 men, women and children starved to death like Ethiopians 300 miles from Houston for 5 days. When 100 Megaton Muslim Nuclear suicide bombs start raining down on Las Vegas like hail in a Kansas tornado, be sure to call Fema when 10 square miles of the strip are turned into a radioactive parking lot instantly. “Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry, singin’ this will be the day that I die, singin’ this will be the day that I die.”

Before we get into the reason that the house has you dead to rights at the blackjack table, let me ask you a question. Yes, you, the person staring at your computer monitor’s white light wishing that I would get to the point already. That is the point. There is no point. “The point is 12, come on shooter, we’ve got a hot shooter tonight ladies and gentleman.” Why do the bells go off and the lights flash when someone gets 2 cherries at the slot machine? Instead of heralding the winners, what would happen if every time that someone lost a bet to the one armed bandit, funeral dirges blasted out over the Pioneer speakers? What if instead of naked women serving free screwdrivers at the blackjack tables men dressed as terrorists served Jimmy Jones Kool Aids? The point is we all die sooner or later so why do we spend our lives terrorized that we or our children will die? Anyone with even one quarter of a brain who pays attention to what’s going on in the world today has to be on at least 2 major tranquilizers. And this is an unobvious reason that you cannot win at blackjack. You aren’t there to win; you are there to escape into the drunken frenzy of flashing lights and naked women hoping against hope for the big win, so that for once in your life you can be the big hero.

O.K. Lets get serious for one moment. Here comes the reason that you cannot win at blackjack ever. Imagine this scenario. 7 people are sitting at the blackjack table. The dealer is showing a Queen of Hearts just prior to ripping out your heart and eating it. Players number 1 through 6 all bust. The dealer, the house, the casino, Steve Wynn, he shortened it from Weinberg, or Weinstein, or Weinrib or something so that Sheiks would come to “his” resorts, and the family thought that it would be good marketing for Las Vegas to be named after the word “Win”. So 6 people have now busted, lost lets say $60 to the house, the casino, and the dealer has done absolutely nothing except stand there silently like a guard outside of Buckingham Palace. Player number 7 has 17. The dealer turns over a 5 for 15 then gives himself a 10 for 25. So he pays out $10 to player 7 who cannot believe that he just won with 17, and the casino just won $50 at this one table on this one hand.

How can this be? How can the dealer beat 6 people with 25? “Elementary my dear Watson, the dealer always plays last. The dealer always plays last. The dealer always plays last.”

Imagine the Super Bowl. Dallas is playing New York. The final score is Dallas 21 New York 15 and New York wins. You drew 22, the dealer drew 25, and he won your 10 dollars. He busted out and he beat you because? The dealer always plays last.

Did I mention that the dealer always plays last? This is how the owners of the casinos have managed to build lavish 3,000 room hotels for a hundred years on sand dunes and give away free screwdrivers. If for one night the dealer went first, every hotel in Las Vegas would join General Motors and Ford on the bread lines. China pays its workers 23 cents a day. This fall China is introducing a car into the United States of America called the Gigli. The Gigli looks like a Toyota, sells for $9,000 and gets 218 miles per gallon. It runs on rice. Short GM and Ford with every dime that you had planned on investing in Las Vegas. You will become an overnight zillionaire.

By Karen Fish
Karen Fish is a writer currently living in Los Angeles California.
http://www.thetempleoflove.com