The Company You’re Keeping

The Atlantis, somewhat inexplicably, operates mostly in US dollars. That means Europeans come with what amounts to confederate scrip. If they aren’t chucking the greenback around like the filth it's become, it’s a bad sign.

My expectations were low for traffic levels. It’s the off-season in the Bahamas. One-quarter Europeans, roped off tables, and empty restaurants were worse than my downside estimates.

I bought casino stocks in April because onsite visits made it clear that the companies didn’t deserve to be priced as though zero was an option. As a group, the casinos rolled over as it became obvious that staying alive wasn’t an option, but meaningful time spent in the single digits was (for most of them). They don’t have growth; they don’t have a bullish outlook that makes sense (not with 10% unemployment), and they're deep in debt as a matter of habit.

I did okay at the tables, but emerged more negative on the stocks for the experience. This is going to be a horrible summer for American travel. However much you think Americans will be spending, the number will be less.

A final story to illustrate my point: I dropped a few blackjack rounds to a statistically improbable series of 20-or-above hands by the dealer. (One thing you simply need to know about blackjack: If you have 14, and your dealer is showing a king; you’re about 90% to lose the hand). Having shaken off the negativity, I came back to the same table. The cast was largely the same, save for the addition of a rather verbal guy in the third-base position.

We’d played all of one hand (which I won) when he castigated me for not “taking a hit for the team.” He did so in a tone that people don’t often use with me.

I glanced at him with the level of affection you have for a stranger’s dog humping your leg, then asked a few Socratic questions. “Is Blackjack really a team game? I thought that type of thinking died with your Vanilla Ice CDs. If it is a team sport, did you draft me? Am I now playing for you? Because, I’ll level with you, I’ve been playing from a strictly selfish point of view all week.”

“We’re all playing against the dealer, pin-head!” he all but shouted. “That’s the goal! To beat the house! To do that we need to play as a group.”

I sighed, started gathering my chips, and said:

“Just to be clear, what you’re suggesting is that we count cards as a team. And you’re making this suggestion aloud, literally at the table, in front of the dealer and the pit boss who is standing behind you. Now obviously, you're a blackjack expert nonpareil, but it’s my understanding that what you’re proposing is frowned upon by gambling operations. In fact, it’ll get you banned in Las Vegas.

"We happen to be in the Bahamas where, rather than banning us, they’ll cut off our pinky fingers or some other painful appendage. Dumbing it down: What you’re proposing ensures that we lose. Either or we win at the tables, then get frog-walked downstairs for a thorough ass-kicking, after which we have all our chips taken away.”

A punk like that would already have been bounced, had the casino been doing well. Most casinos don't take the manner in which he was brazenly driving away players who refused to cheat with him lightly. Rather than tattle or pummel him verbally any further, I simply pocketed my chips and hit the exits.