I'm the One Born Every Minute

Yes, I downloaded one of those "win real money" games. Yes I won money. No, I have no idea how it's legal.

It’s morning. You lay in bed, unwilling to get up and face the horrors of a day of adult responsibility. You spend 45 minutes or so scrolling through videos of cats, pictures of friends out having a good time, and ads. You skip the ads, because you are attempting to maintain at least one habit that is within the realm of sane and healthy.

I have probably watched every single ad for a phone game. There are about a million of them, and they star about a dozen different actors, each of whom has become more familiar to me than my family or friends. The premise of each ad is simple, and takes place in a Randian hellscape:

Money and abundance are a thing you either have because you have the strong will to acquire it in so much abundance that you don’t notice when thousands of dollars go missing, or you’re a piece of shit worthy of being publicly ridiculed.

A fast food worker offers a starving homeless woman a French fry from the garbage. Men drag their pregnant wives out of what is presumed to be the hospital delivery ward to the grocery store to pay for food, and when she is ten dollars short she is ruthlessly mocked by the clerk. Although I haven’t seen it, I have no doubt there is an orphanage full of children sprayed with sewage every morning because they’re too poor to afford to live on their own.

The world of these ads is Ronald Reagan’s America as contained in Toon Town. It is Charles Dickens on methamphetamines. And like Dickens’ heroes, these characters’ Jobian existences are saved by the intervention of a wealthy patron in the form of a phone call from a customer service rep of the game company, reminding the person that they have a thousand dollars in winnings they’ve forgotten about. Or they install the phone game, and immediately win a sum of money like $58 that should not be lifechanging, but in this sad universe is.

Or on special rare occasions, through the intervention of the CEO of the game company him or herself. (Like any deity, their earthly form is malleable to fit the circumstances. In fact, I’m surprised they don’t appear in the form of a Golden Calf.)

This fellow stars in an ad where he steals money from a woman’s purse, hands it to her, and then asks how she got so rich.

In any case, I decided to try downloading this game myself this morning. And I did it for the same reason I’m writing about the experience now - I have some comedy writing due tomorrow that I’m going to get paid for, and so I’m doing anything but that.

First of all, the game itself is solitaire. More specifically, Tournament Solitaire which should be an oxymoron, but you are pitted against other players. Now, I live in Los Angeles, where sadly any form of gambling is illegal, so I don’t know exactly why I’m allowed to put money on cards. Allegedly, it’s because solitaire is technically a game of skill. I’m not convinced, but since I’m not the U.S. Department of the Treasury, I don’t think I’m supposed to be.

I’ve never been big on card games of chance where money is on the line unless it’s with friends. there’s something relaxed and pleasant about knowing you’ve wrecked the evening of a friend, and you just don’t get that with strangers.

I was in Las Vegas with my friend Joe a few years ago, and I tried my hand for the first time at casino poker against a table of strangers. I picked up some things pretty quickly, the most important of which is I’m not great at counting chips quickly. But I was having fun until I suddenly found mysel with not only a good hand but a great hand - Full House with 8s.

Las Vegas is exactly like this except instead of suits everyone dresses like it’s laundry day and also the dealer looks like they haven’t slept in a week.

Soon it was down to me and a woman at the other end of the table who was such a sucker she was going to try to bluff me with my Full House with 8s. I went all in with the full amount of money I’d allocated myself for an evening of fun - $200. We showed. She had a Full House with Jacks. I was so stunned I just stared at the dealer until he explained it to me.

I was so mad I took a long walk through the entirety of the Bellaggio to cool off. Fun fact: even if a corridor of the Bellaggio is technically closed, nobody will stop you walking through if you’re mad enough. They must see guys like me all the time who’ve lost their mortgages or their kids’ college funds.

So I played the solitaire tournament game. As I said, it’s legal because it’s theoretically a game of skill, much in the same way the carnival games are technically not gambling. There’s no chance you’re ever going to win the big prize. You go in knowing you’re never going to win the big prize. The law can’t protect you, ultimately, from being suckered by the man who runs the crooked game when playing the crooked game is the point.

Robert DeNiro plays casino manager Ace Rothstein in the 1995 movie Casino. Based on a real guy. The Ace Rothsteins have been replaced in Vegas casinos, which are now run by hedge fund managers who are somehow more ruthless and heartless.

And like carnies, the game oozes an insincere enthusiasm for you as it lulls you into a state where you are willingly handing it money. After my first game where I won three dollars - Oh my God three dollars! - a pop up cmae up with three dollar amounts - $10, $20, $30. I didn’t even read the text. I picked thirty dollars because my choice is always going to be the highest dollar amount.

Luckily I was using an app where I only had deposited ten dollars, as that was the most I was comfortably losing to a solitaire game. So I pressed the thirty dollar option, and then I read the text next to it asking me how much I wanted to deposit into the game, and then it sadly informed me I didn’t have enough money.

And here’s the kicker. After an hour, I found I was up two dollars. A terrible wage, but I remembered that if you find yourself up you gotta know when to walk away, know when to run.

A carny will eventually cut you off when you’ve lost enough money because they don’t want to get murdered by ten of your drunken buddies. A phone app will drain you of every last cent.

The worst thing that can happen to a novice gambler is to win the first time out. And luckily I didn’t win big. And to be honest, I don’t like games of chance, even if they are also games of skill. I prefer sports gambling, or the racetrack, where you don’t make decisions in the heat of the moment while watching everyone else’s face, while trying to remember how many dollars a black chip is versus a blue or red.

I like it when you can do research on a horse’s winning record in dry dirt versus mud, or see how a certain pitcher does against a lineup featuring three left-handed bats in a row. And then losing it all because it turns out the night before the guy had found out his wife was pregnant and spent the entire night out celebrating.

So I don’t have plans to play again. In fact, I downloaded my $12 immediately. But I haven’t deleted it from my phone yet, either.