When you live in a fiery neighborhood, violent murder and mayhem are daily events and you get sort of used to it – as long as you are not intimately involved. In this city at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, we have regular hits on our rich and famous. The after-effects on the law-abiding population are instant and dramatic and we have discovered that the best way to wait these things out is to stay inside, lock the doors and do something that will pass the hours profitably. My regular choice of entertainment is gambling online. I don’t have to speak to anyone, I can eat whenever I feel hungry and I am totally disconnected from the madness raging outside on the street.

My major immediate decision is what game to play inside the online casino. I close the shutters, draw the curtains and put on a Beethoven concerto turning up the volume enough to drown out any noise from the street below. I pour myself a row of drinks to see me through the day and settle down to a session of blackjack. I start off playing with $20 chips and am dealt a blackjack on the first deal. A win on the first hand always gives one a warm feeling, an omen that the session will be positive. On the second deal I receive a pair of 5’s. I split, trying to remember the blackjack strategy and not succeeding. I am a gambler, not a money maker. I cannot win consistently like those men in the MIT blackjack team. I get a 10 on one 5 and take a hit and bust. I get an 8 on the other take a hit and get a 7, giving me 20. I stay and watch the dealer bust himself. I pick up a pair of 10’s on the next hand, split again and get a jack giving me another blackjack.

This online gambling is going really well, I think. Just then the music reaches it’s finale with a resounding crash and in the silence that follows I hear a machine gun chattering in the street below. I slip in another disk, turn the sound to maximum and hit the ‘deal’ button.

Posted on: February 23, 2008

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