Dear readers,

Today is Tuesday, July 14, 2015. Tomorrow, July 15, 2015, I will be travelling to Atlantic City, “New Jersey’s Crumbling Diamond,” for a night of gambling. With you, the faithful readers of Janice, as my witnesses, I hereby guarantee that I will leave Atlantic City with no less than $10,000 in winnings.

Exactly one year ago, I went to the Borgata Casino and sat down at a blackjack table at 10:00 PM. When I got up from that same table at 4:00 AM, I was $4500 richer and had stretched the walls of my bladder to a point that a doctor would later call “irreversibly damaged.”

When I tell friends and family about the magical night when I became “High Roller,” they’re often quick to call it “beginner's luck” or “not a good enough reason to pull off of the highway at this exit to play a couple hands.” Some tell me that I’ll never have a night like that again. I want to win $10,000 so I can tell all those people to go straight to hell. I swear, it’s really not about the money and to prove it, I’ll quickly take everything that I win and use it to buy lots of very nice and expensive things.

What’s my secret? What makes me a “High Roller?” Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell ya. Sure, I know how to play blackjack, but you could teach a dog how to play blackjack. Like, you could train him to tap his paw on the table to “hit” and to shake his head to “stay” and stuff like that. I’m not saying he would win, I’m just saying that he could play. He’d probably lose pretty quick, but that’s still playing.

I’m definitely better than a trained dog, but I don’t know for certain what gives me that extra edge. Here are my best guesses:

I have a “high roller” mentality. After, I pulled the Borgata’s pants down and spanked it’s tiny little bottom red to the tune of four and half thousand bones, I tipped my dealer a cool one hundred bones. I spread the wealth, but more importantly I realized that I had started calling money “bones,” which the true mark of a High Roller. 

I will not be influenced by all the “glitz.” The flashing lights and shiny polished surfaces will not knock me off my game. In fact, I find it all a bit tacky. My design sense is much more refined. If I had it my way, we’d be playing cards on minimalist teak tables and all of the dealers and waitresses would be wearing plain black smocks. Call me simple, but I don’t want anything distracting me from the horrible jolts of adrenaline coursing through my body while I risk giving away all of my earned money, thank you very much.

Nor will I be distracted by the pleasures of the opposite sex. If you’ve ever seen an advertisement on television for a casino, you know that they’re always filled with young, beautiful women looking for love, but it won’t be a factor for me. I am currently in a healthy, committed relationship with a woman that I love and a night of sex, no matter how wild or anonymous, is not worth breaking the trust that we’ve built together is the lie that I’ve made up and plan to tell any woman that approaches me so that I can focus on winning $10,000.

I do not subscribe to silly gambling superstitions. I don’t care where I sit at the table and I don’t care what kind of animal blood I bathe myself in before I play. My only “superstition” is the belief that God himself fashioned me in his image and put me on His earth to make big, fat stacks and that my cards being closer to twenty-one than the dealer’s cards is His divine will.

Honestly, I can only envision one scenario where I don’t drive out of Atlantic City with sacks full of iceberg, baby. It goes like this...

I am gambling so well that the casino believes that I must be cheating. After a brief verbal exchange wherein the pit boss asks me to leave the property and I insist on exercising my God-given right to stay and take them to the cleaners, things will turn physical when I then punch the pit boss in the chest and kick him the back of the knee all while pretending to sneeze. (I’m not exactly sure what that choreography will look like, but I’m confident that I will “find it on my feet.”) I will be forcibly removed from the casino by two very large bald men in suits. I expect these two to recognize me for the “high roller” that I am and to be extremely apologetic while breaking my nose and ribs. I will understand. They are doing their job, just like I am doing mine. My job, in case you forgot, is to rob sucker casinos blind.

After a purchasing a disguise and/or turning my clothes inside out and backwards, I will return to the casino and resume milking those bozos dry. The pit boss will be very upset to discover that the bearded and bespectacled and/or dressed-in-the-european-style gentleman who is gambling so well that he must be cheating is me again. After a brief verbal exchange wherein he tells me to “get the fuck out” and I tell him to “suck my dick” things will turn physical when I bite him in the neck while faking a heart attack. (Again, a movement piece to be “discovered in the moment.”) Because my seemingly perpetual hot streak is driving his employer into bankruptcy and because I continue to find sneaky ways to physically assault him, the pit boss will begin to see me as threat to his very livelihood. He will call upon the two large men in suits to “take care of me” and they will take me out back and very remorsefully shoot my brains out with guns.

For the record, I will consider my brains being shot out of my head to be a fulfilment of my “Big Money High Roller Cash Money Ten Thousand Dollar Atlantic City Guarantee.”

So there you have it, dear readers. I guarantee that I’m coming back with 10,000 bones or I’m coming back dead!

Let 'er ride!

Ryan "High Roller" Haney