Everything I Learned About Managing Covid-19 I Learned from Gamblers

I come from a family of gamblers. My father’s favorite cousin, and lifelong best friend (they died a couple of months apart, both in their late 90s) was a real Vegas high roller. The casinos used to put him up in their fanciest suites and wine and dine him and his wife for free. They used to comp her expensive clothes. You know he probably dropped more on a losing night at their casinos than the room, food, and clothing costs. Yeah, he won a few over the years, but he told me he knew the house never really loses. That’s because very few gamblers really know when to fold or walk away.

When they’re on a winning streak, they just plow it all right back, whether it’s riding on the turn of a roulette wheel or the flip of a card at the blackjack tables. And if they’re losing, some won’t walk away until they’ve cleaned out the last of their accounts. Even Cousin Hy admits they never should’ve allowed casinos to install ATMs.

Not that Hy couldn’t afford to lose. He was rich. He owned a chain of cleaning stores in Westchester, NY. And as he explained, “What I drop in Vegas is no more than I’d pay if I went to a New York City hotel for a week and took in a bunch of Broadway plays, or if I went on a cruise or a tour of Europe. Truth is I like gambling. It’s my entertainment. And when I lose the amount I’ve allocated for it, I’m done.”

While my parents weren’t high rollers in his category, like most members of our family, they were gamblers too. They used to spend their summers in the Catskill Mountains near Monticello Racetrack. My dad once had a restaurant in Long Island near Roosevelt Racetrack and he got to know the jockeys and horse owners. He once was a part owner of a race horse.

Once when Dan and I were visiting my parents at their bungalow in Monticello, we were out at a Chinese restaurant and over wonton soup and egg rolls, my mother was complaining bitterly about a movie at the local theater costing seven dollars. It wasn’t a first run film. Probably not even a second run once warmed over feature film. The theater just jacked up the prices for the summer season.

“Gougers and cheaters!” she said loudly. She continued her rant at the price gouging and overpriced films and cheating the summer people. My father in his mild voice interrupted her and asked, “So, Marion what did you do instead?”

She ignored him. She kept venting.

“So Marion, what did you do instead.” More ranting. Ignored him. Third time.

“So Marion…”

“Okay, so I lost a hundred dollars at the track. At least they weren’t price gouging and cheating me!” 

It’s my favorite story of how a gambler thinks

I’m not a gambler. In fact, once Dan and I took a train trip with some friends from DC to Atlantic City. It was one of those gambling junkets where you take the train from Union Station to Atlantic City and the casino gives you fifteen dollars’ worth of chips. Well, you can lose that fifteen dollars pretty quick on slots. The truth is slots can be mind-numbingly boring. Or at least I think so. Other than the migraine inducing flashing of lights and dinging of bells and the general cacophony of this blue-grey smoke tinged room, playing slots consists of the same repetitive motion made every two seconds. If you were on an assembly line forced to make that motion to put together a widget, you’d probably hate your factory job. It’s the promise of the big payoff that keeps it exciting for some. I’m not patient enough, nor do I have the attention span for repetitive activities. It’s why I also don’t like most sports. It’s watching people throw balls the same way for hours. You have to care about the outcome for it to be interesting. And I get bored too easily.

Anyway, I got down to the last chip I was willing to spend. Seven dollars out of the fifteen I was given free. Back then, that left me with enough money to buy a good paperback book. So, I fed my designated last chip in the slot machine, pulled the handle (this was back in the days when they were still “one arm bandits,” not push button, which makes them even more boring).

Lights flashed, bells pealed The numbers lined up. I hit the jackpot. It was fifty big ones. Most slots won’t make you rich. Pro tip: the house is never that generous. They just give you a big enough payoff to keep you hooked. It’s called intermittent reinforcement in psychology.

Now this is where a real gambler would plow it all back into the machine for an even bigger return. This is even where an amateur would keep playing. Here’s how it works. Almost everybody thinks the fifteen dollars of chips was the house’s money, not theirs. If they lose all that money – or even if they win a little – none of this money came out of their pocket. It’s still all the house’s. So, if they play it all and lose, they think they’ve lost nothing of their own yet, right?

WRONG!

If you give me money, for whatever reason, it’s mine now. Maybe I’ll give you back a little. After all, I don’t consider myself a hopeless loser. I’m in Atlantic City. The deal is I’m there to gamble and somebody gave me a plastic cup full of free chips. So, okay, I’ll play a little. But it’s my money now. I’m gonna spend some of it on things I like more than gambling. And if I win an extra fifty dollars, that’s mine too. Yup, I cashed out.

In fairness, I never thought I was there to gamble. I was there because my friends went. And we really mostly went because we like riding trains and it sounded like a fun day.

Dan told that story to my parents when we got together. My mother leaned forward, glanced at me and said quietly to Dan, “See, this is why we think she’s not really ours. Aliens brought her.”

Anyway, I do know something about gambling and the psychology of gamblers. I’ve watched it all my life as a detached observer. And the one thing I’ve learned is there are some risks even a gambler won’t take. Some odds too long, some stakes far too high.

And the way some states, mostly in the South, have chosen to deal with the Covid-19 virus falls in that category of longshot odds and stakes that are far too high, including greater death rates, more suffering, and the very real risks of overwhelming fragile healthcare systems in rural areas unable to cope with spiking numbers of new cases. Places like Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee, particularly, are turning themselves into a real time laboratory for the rest of the nation and may go down in history as the base analysis that taught us all what not to do. 

They are striking a deal with a devil at a crossroads: we’ll let thousands die to get our economy going. And they could lose both their citizens and their businesses in the end anyway, just like gamblers who tap out their bank accounts at those ATM machines at the Vegas and Atlantic City casinos. Lots of gamblers aren’t like my family’s Cousin Hy or my parents who know when to stop. Or even like the professional gamblers who make a living out of it by playing the odds and knowing when to fold.

Flying in the face of good medical advice, ignoring public health experts, opening up businesses without adequate testing capacity or enough contact tracers, making what would be a sure to fail attempt to return to normality amid still rising new infection rates and still climbing death tolls is that kind of high stakes gamble most real gamblers wouldn’t take. That’s when even the high stakes high rollers would know to fold.

Let me tell you who does lose their shirt. It’s the down and outers. The ones who are more than just gamblers, they are the gambling addicts. The people who can’t stop until they’ve lost everything they brought, cleaned out their bank accounts at the ATMs, and given their legs as collateral to the loan sharks. They are people like a friend of mine who just lost his job right before we all went on that gambling jaunt in Atlantic City. While others in our group cheerfully lost their freebie fifteen dollars’ worth of chips and then a few extra bucks of their own and quit, this friend kept playing and playing long after his complimentary chips were gone. He kept playing until he dropped a hundred dollars he couldn’t afford. He played and played with grim determination. Just when it was so psychologically important for him to win, to get some glimmer that his luck would turn around, that he in fact wasn’t a loser, he played on, And on. And on. Until he dropped more than any of us. He was a loser.  Not because he had a run of bad luck at the tables. But because he didn’t know when to fold. When to walk away. That’s the most important skill a successful gambler has.

People who want to reopen their states while all the odds are running against them? They’re like my friend who lost his job and ignored the streak of bad luck and kept playing. They don’t know when to hold. When to fold. Don’t be like Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. This virus isn’t bluffing.