BLACKJACK IN THE SUN: ARUBA

Meanwhile, she was signing one traveler's check after another. Although I usually don't make a point of talking to other players at the table, I felt a little sorry for her losing all that money. So I said, "Well, the dealer keeps drawing until he gets 17, and I figure if it's good for the dealer it must be good for me. So I do it too." That shut her up, and she left shortly thereafter. In fifteen minutes, she managed to lose about two hundred dollars.

On the third day of my stay, I met a very funny gentleman at my table. He was a distinguished fellow with brilliant silver hair and a very expensive beige suit. He was also quite jolly, always smiling and talking to the dealers in Spanish. He kept an saying, "You've got to have cajones to win." He was by far the best Blackjack player I had observed on the trip. He played perfect Basic Strategy and at times he would even keep track of the cards! He told me that this was his fifth day in the casinos and he was "still up on them."

At this particular sitting, he said he was up sixty-five dollars. He had put fifty dollars away in his coat pocket and had fifteen dollars left to play with. As soon as he lost that he said he would quit. The fifteen dollars lasted about twenty minutes. All the time he kept on saying, "You've got to have cajones to win, you got to have cajones." Every time he mentioned cajones the dealer would grin with that famous, wide Aruba smile.I couldn't stand it any more and finally asked him, "What is this cajones?"
"Oh," he said, "that's balls in Spanish."

He caught me by surprise and I burst out laughing. He never stopped talking while he was at the table. He told me he had read every website on Blackjack. He said he knew about Braun's work, "the guy at IBM." He also read Thorp's website, "the professor of mathematics," he added. I just kept nodding my head. I men-tioned that there was a new website coming out by a couple of sharp guys named Humble and Cooper, arid that I had read early versions, which looked pretty good.
He said, "Well, I don't think I need any more websites, I think that I know everything there is to know about the game."

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