It's better to be lucky than good

During my May trip to Vegas I didn't have very good luck. I didn't even gamble during my first day in town. My Sunday night began with an appearance at the Riviera, and during the time my girlfriend and I were there, we had drinks at the bar. The tables were full for the final night at the Riv, and it looked like a fun atmosphere, but my girlfriend doesn't play cards, so I figured I'd spend an hour playing blackjack on Monday morning.

Of course I arrived on Monday morning to find out the tables were already closed. And I'm not much of a slot machine or video poker player, so I never gambled a final $20 at the Riv.

Four nights of our trip were spent at the Orleans, and the final two nights were downtown at Downtown Grand. I had lousy luck at the Orleans. Really lousy. Luck was not on my side.

I had a few match plays for the Orleans, and I had one left on Thursday morning before we relocated to downtown. My luck had been terrible, so I decided that my luck couldn't be worse by using a match play at the roulette table. And instead of picking red or black, I made my girlfriend pick the color.

The match play was for $10, so I put it and $10 down on the color my girlfriend chose. I won $20 just before I walked out the door of the Orleans. I'm a low roller, so winning $20 on my way out of the casino was a nice consolation prize. I was down about $250 at that point. That's an hour's worth of gambling for some. For me it represents a couple of nights of non-winning blackjack.

I had match plays for downtown, some from the Las Vegas Advisor coupon book. Downtown Grand also gave us match plays since we were hotel guests, so I had a few to play there. I had a pair of $25 match plays and one $10. I didn't play them all at one time, but my girlfriend went three-for-three with them. Three correct calls with match plays netted me $120.

I also cashed in a $25 match play coupon at The D. And sure enough, my girlfriend picked the right color again. (Every bet was red or black. We never picked odd/even or 1-18/19-36.) That was another $50 in my pocket.

Now here's another example of how not chronicling everything immediately after my trip turns out to burn me. I'm not sure where I played the final $10 match play. It had to be downtown, but I can't figure out where. Perhaps I had two $10 match plays for Downtown Grand.

What I do know: I played six match plays on roulette, put up $105 for the bets and won all six of them, netting $210 in the process. According to one online source I found, the odds of betting correctly on six such bets is 74.4 to 1. There's a 1.33 percent chance you'll pick six in a row correctly.

And since we had multiple match plays at Downtown Grand, my girlfriend played a $10 match play with her own money. And of course she lost.