Gamblers lure fortune with amulets and lucky figurines, dances, secret gestures and rituals. We have compiled a selection of the craziest and funniest rituals that gamblers use to attract good luck in the casino.
Macau, baccarat and Chinese players
In the East, there is a special attitude towards luck and a happy occasion, and therefore local players in Chinese Macau can be calculated by special rituals. The Chinese like to bend the cards so that they cannot be used in the next hand under any circumstances. The new deck increases the players' chances of success, since the cards do not carry information about previous games. The Chinese also believe that a successful player can share his luck with others. If the visitor wins at baccarat, the rest make side bets on him, if he loses, on the dealer.
The Chinese have a special relationship with baccarat, because in this game you need to score 9 points to win, and nine is one of the luckiest numbers in Chinese culture. She symbolizes immortality. During the distribution, the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire hold the received cards between their fingers and slowly lift them up. Seeing the meaning of the card, the players quickly return it to a horizontal position, face down. Gamblers believe that such handling of cards makes it easier to collect a winning combination.
Doyle Brunson and his Casper
Poker star Doyle Brunson has never considered himself superstitious. The poker author Super/System: A Course in Power Poker remained a skeptic until Casper, the diminutive card protector, came into his life. So he named the ghost from the Ghostbusters logo on his lighter. One day, Doyle decided to talk to his pet ghost and ask him for some luck. Mr. Brunson took it as a joke, but Casper actually fulfilled all the wishes of his owner.
The beautiful legend and Brunson's achievements in poker did their job - the player began to rent out a friendly ghost to superstitious tournament participants for $ 500 per 30 minutes. So Casper brought even more money to the resourceful American. And then he completely sold the lucky talisman to Howard Lederer. According to the agreement, the magical card keeper remains with Mr. Brunson until his death, and then passes under the will of Lederer.
Many poker players have their own lucky charms. Miniature chip keepers travel around the world with their owners and are always on the gaming table, bringing good luck.
Free spins and crickets
Gamblers who prefer video slots to card games are no less superstitious. Bill Barton, author of the online magazine Thought Co., spoke in his article about players who like to talk to slot machines. He also talked to visitors who, after each loss, removed the credit card from the one-armed bandit and inserted it back into the slot machine. They believed that this action would make the machine perceive them as a new player, which would increase the chances of hitting the jackpot.
In one of the casinos in Las Vegas, Bill Burton met a man with a large teddy bear. The toy, the size of a four-year-old child, sat on the player's lap and most likely told the visitor how to play slot machines, because the gambler was animatedly communicating with his talisman. The man even pressed the "one-armed bandit" button with a plush paw from time to time.
A no less crazy picture was observed by the user Easton from the TripAdvisor website. In the Rituals of Slots thread, he shared a story about a guy from Sands Casino, Pennsylvania. An unusual visitor brought a live cricket in a small glass bottle to the casino. Every time the player got free spins, he put his talisman on the slot machine and left it until the free spins ended.
John Grochowski and the Winner's Dance
John Grochowski, a journalist and author of books about online gambling, spoke in one of his works about the strange ritual of his brother. Every time Jay Grochowski came to play in the casino, he didn't sit down at the table until he did the winner's dance. A gambling gambler performed a ritual "for good luck" just in the middle of the hall. Of course, some visitors and casino workers were perplexed, but this did not stop Jay.
An equally strange habit was noticed by Bill Burton in a guy aboard the Midwest Riverboat. The visitor before each spin prayed loudly in the style of evangelists and promised an invisible interlocutor that he would quit smoking in exchange for a big win in the video slot. Most likely, the one to whom the prayer was intended did not want to conclude an agreement, so the gambler was forced to repeat his requests and continue the game.
Cigarette and orange
Sammy Farh, another famous poker player, has an unlit cigarette as his lucky charm. The holder of several WSOP titles has never been a heavy smoker, but the taste of tobacco in his mouth and "magic smoke" calm him down at crucial moments, and also bring good luck.
Johnny Chen, a poker player from China, also has a talisman. The role of a magic amulet went to an ordinary orange. Chen's custom ritual came from the days when players were allowed to smoke at poker tournaments. One day, when the smoke got too thick, Johnny held an orange to his nose to
clean your sinuses from the smell of cigarettes and cheer up. The orange citrus not only helped with concentration, but also brought Chen victory in 1998. Since then, he appears at all tournaments either in the company of an orange, or in orange-colored clothing, symbolizing citrus.
Folk omens
The list of gambling rituals is almost endless. Someone, in the hope of hitting a big jackpot, checks with the stars, someone makes conspiracies. Common beliefs among gamblers are usually divided into two parts - what needs to be done before visiting the casino and directly while playing roulette, poker or slot machines.