Family and Blackjack

**ZenKinG** · 02-09-2015, 02:05 PM

This is a question for the Blackjack APs or any AP for that matter that have a family and/or wife. How do you balance family life and blackjack? How is it viewed by your wives? Im at the notion that girls/women don't look at blackjack or professional gambling all that greatly and could cause a divorce or break up with a current girlfriend or wife. I want to eventually play this game close to full time but I also don't want to end up single forever LOL

**ohbehave** · 02-09-2015, 02:23 PM

Most likely they will always see it as a gambling problem. If you are winning and playing a lot you have a gambling problem. If you happen to be losing (even though playing a winning game) you really have a gambling problem. They just don't get it.

I have my own business, I spend several hours a day there, I'm supposed to bring home more money than it costs to run the business, but its possible to lose money. I don't have a business problem.

I go to the casinos with a plan to win money and computer software to back it up. I have a gambling problem.

Edit: And I am fortunate, my wife is tolerant.

**Blitzkrieg** · 02-09-2015, 02:29 PM

My family is deeply concerned and terribly worried about the person I am becoming, or the person I have become.

ZK you just need to tell a significant other if they cannot handle it, the door is right there (point to it), and you can leave whenever you want.

**muffdiver** · 02-09-2015, 02:38 PM

Be careful how much information is given to others about your play. In can come back to haunt you in less than amicable partings.

**MJGolf** · 02-09-2015, 05:55 PM

Originally Posted by muffdiver

Be careful how much information is given to others about your play. In can come back to haunt you in less than amicable partings.

I got a kick out of this one, Muff..........I remember when I was married a long time ago. When I won and sprinkled 100's on her, she was happy. When we got comped and traveled to Vegas on the casino nickel, she was happy. Happy to party and have fun in Vegas. As soon as we went to divorce court however, I had a "gambling problem" and the judge I had did NOT understand the theory of comps v. hours played v. basic strategy and statistics. AMAZING how their viewpoint can change.

**hitthat16** · 02-09-2015, 05:59 PM

Originally Posted by MJGolf

I got a kick out of this one, Muff..........I remember when I was married a long time ago. When I won and sprinkled 100's on her, she was happy. When we got comped and traveled to Vegas on the casino nickel, she was happy. Happy to party and have fun in Vegas. As soon as we went to divorce court however, I had a "gambling problem" and the judge I had did NOT understand the theory of comps v. hours played v. basic strategy and statistics. AMAZING how their viewpoint can change.

I highly doubt she ACTUALLY thought you had a problem...

**MJGolf** · 02-09-2015, 06:06 PM

Originally Posted by hitthat16

I highly doubt she ACTUALLY thought you had a problem...

Naaaahhhh.....she didn't. She was the spendthrift in the family. But it played well to the judge. He prohibited me from further trips to Vegas until the divorce was final. He had NO understanding of gambling theory or the low house edge in BJ. I tried to explain how comps worked to the judge and that the trips didn't really cost me any money. But he said no one would pay your way to play cards. And you can't explain it to some folks. It was just a way for her to get back at me. LOL Long past and no one I'm involved with now has any issue (nor would I be involved with anyone that didn't understand BJ was an avocation for me).

**mjbballar23** · 02-09-2015, 09:39 PM

Originally Posted by muffdiver

Be careful how much information is given to others about your play. In can come back to haunt you in less than amicable partings.

sounds like your speaking from experience muff. I will second it, though i have no first hand experience (but lots of second hand experience).

**Exoter175** · 02-10-2015, 03:12 AM

Originally Posted by KJ

I live in a house with 3 other APs/gaming people. Isn't that how everyone does it?

Someone on another site recently referred to it as my 'kooky' Las Vegas family. I wanted to retort, but in all honesty, that's a fair reference.

Our household consists of myself, my business partner & significant other (same person) who I married last fall, my brother who has lived with us since he graduated college last spring and whom I am currently teaching the 'family business' to and our poker playing housemate/friend. It is stretch to call him an AP, but he has incorporated some AP play into his poker playing...um..."career" in the last year.

Now I do know that my situation and household is a bit a-typical. The famous saying is something about not mixing business with pleasure, but it works for me and frankly is the only way I would choose to do it. Blackjack & blackjack AP isn't just my job or career....It is my life...It is who I am. I couldn't be with anyone (relationship-wise) or even live with people that didn't 'get' and weren't supportive of what I do.

My mother is a gambler, all her boyfriends were gamblers, her new husband is a gambler, and of course I started off as a gambler. A big "mainstay" on that side of my family is gambling. Ironically, my father hated gambling and divorced my mother because of it, and a few other things like her inability to quit smoking, to which he detested.

My Ex LOVED gambling, but didn't understand what I was trying to accomplish, the two ex's before her hated gambling and thought it was a waste of money, but would run up a 200 dollar bar tab on a Saturday night. The "current" girl I'm seeing, is employed by one of my "regular" places, and we're keeping our relationship a little "off books" right now, and since I'm leery of her relation to the place I'm milking my income from, she knows nothing about my love for blackjack

Originally Posted by Dieter

If she wants to change who you are, why do you want to be with her?

My ex-wife wouldn't have understood. (I got into this after she left.) My ex-girlfriend didn't understand it. (She thought it was supposed to be about fun, not about profit.)

My current girlfriend understands it, supports it, and enjoys the comped dinners. She doesn't like it when I'm out all night once in a while, since I often forget to check in every few hours like she likes - but her objection is to my failure to communicate (and assuage her paranoid fear of my demise), not about me going out and playing cards as a part-time side job.

That is one of my biggest annoyances while in a relationship with a girl who doesn't gamble or doesn't "get it", when they sit there and blow up my phone because I haven't checked in. I don't know how many times I've uttered the phrase "I'm sorry babe, but I can't check my phone at the table, and I wasn't about to stop playing just to call you back that instant. You know I'm fine and I'll call you back the second I am free".

**Dieter** · 02-10-2015, 04:00 AM

Originally Posted by Exoter175

The "current" girl I'm seeing, is employed by one of my "regular" places, and we're keeping our relationship a little "off books" right now

Please say she's a non-gaming employee, so there's no risk of being accused of collusion.

**muffdiver** · 02-10-2015, 05:55 AM

Originally Posted by mjbballar23

sounds like your speaking from experience muff. I will second it, though i have no first hand experience (but lots of second hand experience).

No, I'm really not speaking from experience. It's just another illustration of my ever present cynicism. I've never been married. My two current girlfriends both know that I play a lot of BJ and video poker but neither one knows that I play both at an advantage. Most of my drinking buddies don't know either and I plan to keep it that way.
We do everything we can to conceal our AP from the casinos and the least amount of people that could possibly rat us out the better, in my way of thinking.

**hitthat16** · 02-09-2015, 02:51 PM

At first, my then fiancé and now wife thought I had a serious gambling problem and that I would lose everything. Se has since become tolerant of it and understands that it is possible to win. The rest of my family doesn't really know. They know I like to play blackjack, but they don't know of the kind of stakes I play. My parents would probably throw up at the thought of me betting chunky black.

Like ohbehave said, it's funny the social stigma that comes with gambling. If I invest in a stock and it loses value, it's not like I have a stock problem. I usually tell people that I am way more comfortable with blackjack than I am with the market, and that it has paid me dividends (in terms of annual bankroll percentage increase) that would make Warren Buffett drool.

But nope. I'm still mostly seen as a gambler with a problem to society. Someday I'll tell my family of the stakes I play, but not yet. Only my wife and I know.