The mathematics of love

What does it mean to be rich? What does it mean to be thriving? Well, if it isn't killing it at karaoke at Ellis Island in Las Vegas, I don't know what it means.

I probably had my best Vegas trip ever last week, although, officially, I place it tied with my bachelor party 25 years earlier. This time around, I rendezvoused with Sophie, who had turned 21 two days previously. It was just Dad and Daughter vs. Vegas. 

We had a ridiculously fun time, and we gambled in eight casinos. We had a slight money loss with the gambling, but it wasn't too bad for all the time we spent at the tables. Plus, we won in our final two casinos, so it felt like we won.

(By the way, the eight casinos we played were Caesar's, Bellagio, Horseshoe, Linq, Park MGM, New York/New York, Casino Royale and Ellis Island. Also, we went to others, too, including Aria and Cosmopolitan, but didn't gamble there.)

Two days after turning 21, Sophie drank a cosmopolitan and played roulette. She didn't like the cosmo and had just one other drink (red wine) during our three nights there. She is not a fan of the drink, and Dad is very, very happy to see that.

In stark contrast to her disdain for alcohol, Sophie (who actually goes by Irene now to the rest of the world) is a big fan of probability and figuring out odds. So we played roulette — A LOT. She is a math major at Berkeley, and at one time, she wrote equations in a napkin to test gambling ideas we had. Earlier on, I played a little video poker, but realized she didn't like it. So, OK, we focused on roulette.

We are lowball specialists. We normally would play the lowest stakes possible, which was a $3 bet for each spin. Plus, we learned to take off spins and spread out six bets each time while always giving ourselves a long-shot chance. That made it pretty darn fun, and it felt like we won the Super Bowl when our long shots hit.

When we would win 18 whole dollars on a 50-cent long-shot bet, we typically would celebrate, cash out and leave the casino. Victorious!

We also explored shops and casinos and had some incredible food. Angry Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen delivered as did Wicked Spoon. The Bellagio buffet and vegan dim sum were solid, too, but those other two places were superior, bordering on spectacular.

When Sophie was growing up, her grandma had a vacation place in North Vegas, and she has memories of being being a youngster and often visiting the Bellagio garden and parts of the strip. So a lot of our trip unlocked memories of her youth, and we ran into landmarks in which she has pictures.

"Your Chippewa Lake is the Las Vegas Strip," I said in reference to my family's cottage where I have tons of child memories. 

Sophie and I pretty much spent three full days straight together and had a blast. We also had a great time at the Pinball Museum, which should be named the Pinball Warehouse, by the way. Yet I can only place this awesome trip in a tie with my bachelor party. 

In that trip, I thought I was meeting my brother and two cousins for four nights (that's a lot of nights). In addition, my dad (the XMan), uncle and two friends, Dave and Jeff, came as a surprise to me. No way! Mathematically speaking, my dad was 53 at the time, and I'm 52 now.

The highlights of that trip were playing three rounds of golf with my dad in various foursomes and battling in fun poker games with our group. The gambling and the glitz lingered in the background; it was more about hanging out with my crew. Even though Sophie and I threw a brick through Vegas' windshield, took it out and chopped it up, it was much more about spending time with her.

Maybe our love language is math 'n' fun. She says that if we played her roulette system infinitely that we would actually net a slight monetary profit. Hmm. She says she has the math to prove it.

I figured out that our relationship netted a major profit. I beheld the sophisticated young woman she has become and saw that she has a great sense of humor and is kind, fun and chill. As we said goodbye, it all added up to me being overwhelmed with emotion as I said between sobs, "I love you. It's impossible to have a trip this incredible."

Odds are, my dad let out sobs and said the exact same thing to me when we departed Vegas 25 years earlier.

Jay Stor spirals into gambling madness

The adage goes: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."

However, my buddy Jay had such an extraordinary time there recently that I fear the experience may have changed him — for the worse.  He had too good of a time.

Jay used to be a pretty boring guy, focused on his job doing academic research. Turns out, I love that guy! Of late, all he does is talk about his Vegas trip, and he's hanging out at the Commerce Casino, the Bike and even the Hawaiian Garbage Casino every single night.

"I don't see any problem with winning at gambling," Jay told me. "With all my research, I figured out how to win at craps, Blackjack and baccarat. Why is that wrong?"

Well, I'll tell you what's wrong. He's neglecting his database, JSTOR, and he's devoting his life to tomfoolery as opposed to compiling peer-reviewed Tier 1 academic sources.

Honestly, I blame myself and my Cal State University Long Beach student teacher. We thought it would be cool if we loosened Jay up a bit and took him to Vegas. But when we showed up at his place, he looked like this:

We were like, "Whoa, whoa, Jay, we're going to Vegas. You got to loosen up, buddy. Can you wear anything fun? Y'know, Vegas style?"

He went to a dressing room and returned looking like this:

So I vaguely feel culpable for Jay's decline into casino madness. However, honestly, I didn't see it coming. He was always such a staid, play-it-by-the-book type of guy. When he was winning at craps, Jay really looked as if he were having the time of his life.

I cannot even count the number of times I've told him, "No, Jay, I will not be meeting you at the Commerce Casino tonight. And, no, I won't be at the Bike either!"

I keep urging him to return to his normal Jay Stor self. What would the New England Journal of Medicine or Harvard Law Review think of this behavior? I am not liking his new methods one bit.

"Do you know what it's like to be me?" Jay once asked me. "Do you what all of the academic pressure is to have such an extensive database? Let me live, man. Let me live."

OK, I'll concede. I don't fully understand what it's like to be Jay Stor. It's hard for me to abstract what that's like; I haven't walked a mile in his database shoes. But for the sake of his wife, Julia Read, he needs to check himself before he wrecks himself. Please, Jay, please, stop going to the casinos!