They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

13 Spring 2007 — Looking back

There was something I found deeply seductive about the roulette table and had done since I first started. About the whole casino experience. The way the staff pamper you, bringing you drinks, charming you, making you feel you’re a somebody, that you are important. That you are part of an exclusive family, the fraternity of real players.

This was some difference from the rather bland experience of buying scratch cards in a newsagent’s. Every time I had done that, even when I had that first sizeable win, I felt a little like some kind of closet gambling addict. But here in the casino it was so different. There was a sense of magic in the air.

I loved the rituals and the sounds. The calm of the room; the focus all around us at the poker and blackjack tables; the quiet punctuated by the occasional shout of joy from another group at a roulette table.

I started small, tentatively, gently, testing my maths. And I kept winning, I couldn’t help it. It was like I had the Midas touch, as if I wasn’t following that little ball but it was following me. I walked away just before Easter with over £2,000, and another day with nearly £3,000. And I felt liberated. So powerful!

And said nothing to Roy, not yet. But truly they were happy days.

And even better, the casino was almost exactly halfway between work and home. My commute on foot — which I did when it wasn’t raining — took me almost past the casino’s entrance, luring me inside. And especially since I won a bucket load that very first time: £740 — to me that was big — and I was winning even bigger every day.

I left work at 1 p.m. and Roy was rarely home before 7 p.m. That gave me the whole afternoon at the roulette wheel. And the brilliant thing, I realized, was that this was a pretty dead time for the casino.

Playing the bored croupier strategy served me brilliantly in those weeks. But after my early surge I hit a losing streak and, a few months on, my careful records showed I was now up by a princely £132. Not exactly the jackpot I knew was waiting for me.

There was a Chinese guy of about fifty, whose name I learned from overhearing the croupier addressing him respectfully as Mr Yuchi. He wore a neat suit and smelled of stale cigarette smoke and had taken to joining me at my table, which annoyed me because it meant the croupier was no longer so bored. But Mr Yuchi played the roulette table like no one I’d ever seen.

He literally covered vast areas with stacks of chips — and these were high-value ones; some I could see were £50, others £100, and on some numbers they were six, eight, ten deep.

I watched him discreetly. Then I realized his method. It was simple and crude. He was basically playing the odds. If you tossed a coin and it came up heads, you’d expect it to be tails next time. If it was heads again, you’d expect it even more so to be tails next. Heads for the third time and for sure it had to be tails next. But if it wasn’t, then the fourth time, surely.

It wasn’t any different at the roulette wheel, apart from the risk of that green zero. Every time that little ball landed in a slot it was either red or black. I began counting. Over the next two weeks I never saw either colour come up more than four times consecutively. Yes!

I had a new strategy.

Bet on a colour — red. If black came up, bet on red again, doubling the amount. Then again. Then again.

The first time I tried it, it worked a treat: £5 on red, black came up; £10 on red, black again; £20 on red, black again; £40 on red — red came up! £80 back for a £75 investment. Beats the hell out of the stock market!

The second day I went bolder: £50 on red, black came up; I doubled, £100 on red, black again; £200 on red, black again; £400 on red, black yet again.

And I was out of chips.

In between the next spin of the wheel I ran to the cashier, drew £500 off my credit card — my own one, not our joint account — and returned to the table. Black came up four times in a row, while I waited, then I put the lot on red. Four conspicuous piles of twenty-five-pound chips.

Black again.

Shit, shit, shit.

Mr Yuchi must have seen my disappointed face because he gave me a smile and a don’t worry about it shrug.

So I didn’t worry about it. Just a momentary glitch. I had another hour before I had to leave and head home. I went back to the cashier, who sat in her little booth behind the counter, and asked for another £500 in twenty-five-pound chips.

But moments after I put the card into the reader I saw her frown. She was a rather prim-looking lady in her sixties, with the kind of dyed hair that goes a little orange, in a bun on top of her head. Although she must have recognized me, as I’d been drawing money out or cashing chips in now daily for months, she looked at me like I was a total stranger. ‘Declined,’ she said.

‘Declined?’ I echoed. ‘What do you mean?’

I had to work hard to suppress my anger — I blame my parents, they kindly allowed me to develop a bit of an issue with how I dealt with situations that made my anger spiral out of control. I could feel it really rising now. I had to have a word with myself, it wasn’t her fault that some bank robot with a screwed-up algorithm was denying me credit.

‘Your card’s declined, sweetheart.’

‘How can it be? I’ve got—’

Then I was quiet for some moments. What actually did I have in it? A week ago, when I had last checked my balance, I had nearly £9,000. OK, I’d had a few bad days, but there was no way I’d lost that much.

Was there?

I tried to calm myself down. To think clearly. I was aware there was someone standing behind me. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘let’s try a smaller amount — two hundred?’

Orange Hair asked me to re-enter the card. ‘I’m sorry, it’s still declined.’ This time she looked almost smug about it. There was no way I was letting her win anything over on me. Recklessly — I know — I pulled out the joint HSBC card Roy and I had and handed it to her. With the kind of nonchalant bravado I know Tamzin would have shown, I said, ‘I’ll draw a thousand from this.’

As I turned around, with twenty crisp fifty-pound notes in my hand, I saw it was Mr Yuchi standing behind me, holding an armful of chips to be cashed. He gave me a polite nod.

I exchanged my cash for chips at the table. Determined to make up my loss quickly, I asked the croupier at my table for fifty-pound chips.

And lost the lot in twenty minutes.

It was 6.30 p.m. Roy had messaged me to say he wouldn’t be home until 8 p.m. tonight. I sat at the table debating what to do and cursing my stupidity. It was the middle of the month, and our HSBC credit card statement came through on the twenty-sixth — just over ten days to go. It was still a printed statement, back then. I knew that Roy never checked it too thoroughly, he would just glance through it, looking for anomalies.

If I could just replace that £1,000 before then, he probably wouldn’t notice; even if he did, I could tell him the bank had made an error, which it had corrected.

But the question was: where was that £1,000 going to come from? At that moment, all I could think was that it would come from drawing out more cash and winning it back.

But it turned out there was another solution.

Mr Yuchi.

He came back to the roulette table and sat beside me. Although we’d exchanged glances numerous times over the past weeks, we had never actually spoken. ‘You have cash flow problem?’ he asked, his voice short, clipped, but kind. ‘Need buy more chips?’

‘Just having a bad run, I guess,’ I replied and gave him a smile.

He slid his hand inside the breast of his jacket and pulled out his wallet. For an instant I honestly thought, totally irrationally, he was going to give me some cash. Instead, he pulled out a business card and laid it down on the baize in front of me. ‘You call him, he always help. Not ask too many questions. Very nice man. I have to go to work now, see you tomorrow!’

He slipped off his chair before I could even thank him.

Ha, that seems such a joke now. Such a sick joke. But back then it felt this friendly man with the stained teeth, who reeked of smoke, had thrown me a lifeline. Rather than a death sentence.

I picked up the card. It didn’t have much on it. Just a phone number and a name.

Roel Albazi.