Because I used to play a lot of poker both online and live, I’ve spent way too much time in these glorified hellholes and grown accustomed to every type of person you regularly see in the devil’s asshole that is a casino. Here’s some of the worst people you encounter:
8) People who ignore personal hygiene
The only thing worse than sitting next to a complete stranger at a cramped table for hours on end is sitting next to a complete stranger at a cramped table for hours on end who smells like Osama Bin Laden’s hideout. Any time you see a commercial for a casino, everyone is dressed like this…
In real life, no, they're fucking not. I’m not saying you have to wear something nice or even put on cologne, but do me a favor and at least throw on some deodorant under your Chinese-food-stained 1991 Montreal Expos tee-shirt.
7) People who buy in for the minimum at the poker table
At a $1/$2 no-limit hold’em poker table, the maximum buy-in is usually somewhere from $200-$300, while the minimum is usually around $20. If you buy in for $20 when everyone around you has at least $100 in front of them, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose your money. Yet these are the people who agonize over every single decision and fold and fold their way down to $3 like it’s the last $20 the U.S. Treasury will ever issue. Sack up and lose $300 like a man.
6) People who tell you stories about getting unlucky
This can probably be broadened to any casino stranger who tells you any type of story, but bad beat stories in particular are excruciating. I don’t care about the time you split 8’s 4 times, made 20 on every hand and the dealer made 21 off a 4. Every time someone finds it absolutely necessary to tell me about the time their pocket aces lost to 2-4 offsuit in a “huge” pot, the only response I can think of is, “Good. I’m glad.”
5) The guy who knows everyone
Every casino has at least a few of these guys. This guy knows all the dealers’ names. He calls every waitress “sweetheart.” He asks for a comp'ed hotel room loud enough so everyone can hear how important he is. He’s got 36 trillion points on his Casino Rewards card—and only two real friends.
{pagebreak}
4) Super serious poker players
If you’re playing at the final table of the World Series of Poker for $10M, go ahead and wear whatever you want at the table. If you’re playing in a $40 sit-and-go in your local shithole Mississippi casino, don’t you fucking dare wear ultraviolet Ray-Bans and hide under a zip-up Pokerstars hoodie while shuffling your chips in between every decision like 50 ESPN cameras are filming you. There’s nothing more annoying than the guy who yells “What?” after everything the dealer says because he refuses to take off his Beats by Dre.
3) “This is so easy” guy
Everyone has a friend who at one time or another was the “this is so easy” guy. This is the guy who goes to the casino for the first time and wins $78 playing roulette and starts saying things like “How could anyone lose at this?” or “Man I should be doing this for a living!” This is especially annoying if you’re sitting next to him and you're down a rent check on the night. These are the people you hope develop gambling addictions and never win again.
2) People under 50 who only play slots
If you’re a 27-year-old dude and you play slots, you’re a loser. Slot machines are there to keep your wife busy while you play table games, or for octogenarians. That's it. Pulling a lever a penny at a time for five straight hours is one of the most pathetic activities that exist.
1) People who complain about how other people play
These people take the cake. They’re the guys who think they wrote the book on how to play every casino game. They bitch to anyone that will listen about people hitting in blackjack and “ruining your hand” or the guy who plays shitty cards in poker and gets lucky all the time. Newsflash, bro… IT’S THEIR FUCKING MONEY. When you’re putting your own money on the line, you can play however the hell you want.
If I’ve got 17 in blackjack and the dealer has a 10 showing, and I hit “when I’m not supposed to” and make 21, and you lose your life savings because my hit changed what cards you got, I literally couldn’t give less of a shit. My girlfriend is gonna be bitching at me if I lose money, not you. I get that, technically, we’re all playing against the house, but we are not on the same fucking team. I’m on my own team and you’re on yours.
(PS: The two best people in casinos are the black dude in his mid-30's wearing a throwback NFL jersey who throws down ungodly sums of cash at the craps table, making it more fun for everyone, and hot girls who insist on wearing slutty dresses to casinos. Everyone else sucks.)
[People sitting at roulette table image via Shutterstock]
“