Mr. New Orleans Tuxedo
an emotional blackjack player and thoughts about personal agency in life
Happy Sunday -
One of the most enjoyable parts of the Las Vegas experience for me is the ensemble of human beings you meet at the Blackjack table.
I have found nowhere else in this fine country where, in a single sitting, one can strike up conversations with such a varied handful of generally gregarious (and usually tipsy) people. Of course, the thrill of chance, risk, and the quest for (unlikely) financial upside in the gambling games themselves draw one to the tables amidst the wafts of cigarette smoke, cool air, and thick perfume. But equally so, I’ve begun to self-discover in recent years, the prospect of sitting next to colorful, amusing, and peculiar characters is its own siren song.
There’s a neat (and decadent) beauty in the fact that a blackjack table, replete with vice (nicotine, alcohol, risque attire, and low odds of winning) actually facilitates a healthy opportunity that seems to be disappearing from modern life today: the chance to engage with other human beings without using our phones.
Around midnight last weekend, as I unsuccessfully chased an ever-elusive hot streak at the minimum bet tables, a younger guy, about my age and dressed sharply in a well-fitting tux, sat down at our table and spread out $500 worth of chips. Between the tux, his nonchalant introduction of $500 to the game, an inviting smile, and nicely combed hair that would do well in a board room setting, it was easy to give him too much credit. I’d then find out he was from New Orleans, in town for a wedding, and eager to use half an hour at the blackjack table as an antidote from the busyness of the festive weekend activities. A guy who cherishes solo time at a blackjack table on a Saturday night to escape an evening of extroversion? It was hard not to initially like this guy.
We’ll call him Mr. New Orleans Tuxedo.
As he began to play his first few hands to my right, however, his energy markedly shifted. Whenever he lost a few hands in a row, he clenched his fists. When the dealer sprinkled in a (statistically expected) smattering of 19s, 20s & 21s in favor of the house, he hunched his shoulders, looked around in disbelief, and shook his head as if he had just been pickpocketed. With each losing hand, regardless of a win or two in between, his energy progressively devolved into a black hole of negativity. As his body language worsened into this black hole, I began keeping a tally of his win-loss record in an effort to figure out if he was indeed mired in a spell of statistically bad luck. I tallied the next 10 hands: he won three (including a blackjack), lost five, and pushed two. 30% actual win rate (vs 42% expected), 20% actual tie (“push”) rate (vs. 8.5% expected). Below the averages but nothing near a statistical outlier.
Welcome to Vegas, sir. There’s a reason the alcohol is free and the marble is polished.
To my left was a happy-go-lucky woman from Michigan, probably early 40s, who was finishing up the tail end of an insurance conference and nonchalantly shrugged off her losing hands as if someone had put a car wash flier on her windshield window. She and I too were losing as steam continued to billow from the ears of Mr. New Orleans Tuxedo. We each got beat badly on double and triple down hands when the dealer fumbled her way into a 6-card 21. As our losses mounted, a running bit between us snowballed about how our losses within the last 30 mins would have actually afforded us floor seats to Taylor Swift that evening, who was in town and performing that evening.
After New Orleans Tuxedo incurred a few more losses (these too evenly distributed amongst his winning hand) he blurted out how this table was “f*cking bullshit” and at one point suggested to his fellow players that we ask them to change the dealer. He turned my way, looking for validation. I don’t think my placating smile could conceal the fact that I was beginning to think this guy was an emotional train wreck. Despite my losses, I was enjoying hearing about the mid-life considerations of the Michigan insurance woman and the genuine coaching by our dealer—an ever-smiling rotund Asian woman for whom English was definitely not her first language—and the way she educated us on how to think about splitting 8s and hitting versus staying on 12 depending on what the dealer shows. She had an effortless ease in articulating poetic predictions of face cards, blackjacks, and good fortune in our near future, in the next sleeve of cards. She created an environment at the table that felt as if good luck was always just around the corner. Vegas trained her well, and it was easy to revel in the performative aura of the environment. Financial losses aside, the moment was fun, and the energy was interesting. Real life was unfolding organically, via objective, statistical chance, without a digitally curated feed to algorithmicize it.
When New Orleans Tuxedo, who was cherry red in the face at this point, suggested the table was bullshit and that the dealer change out, the dealer smiled at him and politely suggested he better control his emotions and consider a more positive approach to gambling. All of us heard her suggestion. Mr. New Orleans Tuxedo seemed taken aback by the suggestion and, for a few more hands after that, he notably worked to muzzle his negative emotions during losing hands. Eventually, as the unfavorable odds of Blackjack and the law of large numbers strengthened their unyielding grip, he lost his chip stack, verbally fumed one final time, threw his hands up as if the universe was conspiring against him, got up, and walked away.
I contemplated his exasperated victim mindset (“why me!?”) as I made my way back to my room that night, and this encounter with his victim mindset stuck me with throughout the week.
There seem to be life experiences in which a victim mindset is wholly understandable and justified and other experiences in which it is puzzling and unjustified. Losses at a blackjack table, in a tuxedo no less, in my estimation squarely belongs in the latter category.
Tragedy is a part of the lived human experience, and tragedy’s victims understandably may ask: why me? Aggressive cancers in otherwise healthy people gone undetected, multi-parent fatal car crashes, hijacking of airplanes, and school shootings--all are unthinkably sad outcomes (and statistical anomalies) that extend a compassionate and patient understanding of the existential “why me” victimhood that can engulf us in tragedy’s aftermath.
But between everyday occurrences and tragic black-swan events is a spectrum of outcomes that, while frustrating, puzzling, sad, unfortunate, etc., don’t justify a victim mindset, nor is a victim mindset productive. The natural ending of relationships with loved ones via death of old age I think well-exemplifies something that can be sad and unfortunate, but where a victim mindset is neither justified nor productive. This example is top of mind for our family as we sadly said goodbye to our paternal grandmother (88 years old) in March.
We love our relationships (friends, family, loved ones) with these people dearly. We invest our hearts and souls into them because they bring us joy, satisfaction, and meaning. We show up for them all our lives, and hopefully they show up for us too. We endlessly (and usually unquestionably) contribute to these relationships while rationally acknowledging the mathematical certainty of their eventual ending. There is a 100% likelihood that our relationship with loved ones will eventually cease. Death is undefeated. When we play the game of life and relationships long enough, the game ends in a loss. Unfortunate? Yes. Sad? Absolutely. Expected? Yes. Surprising? Not necessarily. Unfair? No. Tragic? No.
There are few parallels between losing a grandmother and observing an emotional trainwreck of a blackjack player in a tuxedo on a Saturday night in the modern Western bastion of excess that is Las Vegas, but the two experiences together ask the question:
Where in life do we have a sense of personal agency and where do we not?
Las Vegas is a beacon of cultural excess within a country of excess. To be spreading $500 of chips on one of its velvet tables, in a tuxedo no less, categorically places you in the “extreme good fortune” segment of human existence, even if the house takes your money in less time than a single Taylor Swift song. Sitting down at a blackjack table is a voluntary activity (you may leave at any time) and the odds are notoriously not in the player’s favor. You don’t need to be an expert at the game to know there’s a reason why the casinos will play with you 24/7/365.
As the body language and energy of Mr. New Orleans Tuxedo rapidly worsened at our table, I wanted to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say: “Go do something else. Regain control. Reclaim your headspace. This situation doesn’t seem to be working for you. You’re making a voluntary choice to sit at this table, and you can make a voluntary choice to leave. You have agency in this specific situation. Use it accordingly.”
A few hands after he thankfully called it quits, I too colored up and left. That night, and for a few days after, I found myself taking inventory of the various pockets of my life, specifically all of its arenas in which I have the good fortune personal agency—physical agency, intellectual agency, spiritual agency, geographic agency, economic agency. I imagine many of you reading this have the good fortune of agency in these arenas of your lives too. Even with my mild losses that night at the blackjack table (making the Taylor Swift tickets look cheap by comparison as the woman from Michigan joked), I woke up Sunday morning with both a buoyed sensation of gratitude for the concept of personal agency, wherever it may appear, and a doubled-down (Blackjack pun intended) commitment to stiff-arming any whiff of a victim mindset, however big or small, in my headspace or in that of those close to me, in situations in life where I/we are in control.
Though getting to see Taylor Swift perform live that night would have probably been more enjoyable in the moment than watching Mr. New Orleans Tuxedo throw a fit over face cards, I came away yet again grateful for another engaging human encounter at the blackjack table.
Vegas, you never disappoint.