101 Things #65 - Going for Broke

As you may know, if you've glanced over this column in recent months, I have been building up a register of activities, aspirations and achievements [Nice alliteration: Ed], all of which I utterly refuse to attempt or even to contemplate undertaking. I shall stop when I have reached 101 of them and for this reason it is named 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die.

Usually I link the topic to a single website that is promoting it but there is a bonus today because I have cunningly merged suggestions from two bucket-list proponents - Aussie on the Road and Life Listed. One thinks that playing the casino in Las Vegas is a good idea, the other plumps for Monaco. It doesn't matter. I am not going to

Gamble in a casino (no matter how glamorous the setting).

First a true story. Many years ago, young and fairly strapped for cash, I crossed America on a camping trip with a small group. Our route took us through Reno in Nevada; like Las Vegas, a town dominated by gambling. We visited a casino. I decided to risk $1 on a likely looking machine. It took dimes so I exchanged my note for coins and placed one in and pulled the lever. The dials spun and I lost. I tried again. And again. And repeated until the whole lot, my entire stash of dimes, had gone.

 I know how, in popular literature, a gentleman behaves having incurred financial ruin at a casino. He smiles, orders drinks all round, gives the croupier a tip and saunters out, hat at a jaunty angle, to contemplate the waves crashing on the rocks below. But I am not that sort of gentleman. I knew in my aching heart that I would never see that dollar again. Aware of the cameras, I did not commit any acts of violence or make obscene gestures. My face a mask, I determined that I would henceforth never gamble in a casino again and I never have.

There is no reason not to enjoy visiting the great hotel complexes of Vegas or the elegant surroundings of Monte Carlo. What rankles is the idea that gambling in a casino is worthwhile. The machines are exactly the same wherever you are so, if you like losing cash, why not go to your local pub and play the slot machine there? You will lose wherever you play but you will spend a lot less on the journey and the accommodation. Should you have some skill at card games, particularly poker, your trip may be more profitable but, if that is the case, you don't need this one on your bucket-list because you will already be doing it. As for roulette and all the "systems" that are supposed to help you beat the house, consider that if any of them really worked, then the casinos would cease to be in business.

Forget about the glamour of the casinos. They are designed for one purpose and it is not a pleasant one. Watching ranks of dead-eyed gamblers mechanically jabbing at buttons while lights flash and sound effects blare out is only of interest to social psychologists. You may deal me out.