Ending the night on your terms

Before we start: it is 22:30, the plan ends at 23:00, and $30 of your $120 is left. Play the last half hour, stop now, or raise the bet to get back some of what the evening has taken? Nothing here is scored — the answer comes at the end.

The question above, drawn. The bar named Time used is the part of the 3 hours that has gone, and the bar named Money spent is the part of the money the evening was given that has gone. Neither bar is full yet, and neither bar is a target to fill.

The four steps, in the order they have to happen. Take the wrong thing to the wrong window and the route sends you back onto the floor, which is the one place the evening was supposed to stop.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

The hard part of a first visit is not the start. It is the twenty minutes when the plan says one thing and the evening says another — and it is the five minutes after those twenty, when you are standing up with chips in your hand and no idea which window takes them.

Maya works the last hour out

The plan from the lesson on deciding the money: $120 and $10 a spin on red or black at a double-zero wheel are an example, not an amount we suggest.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Three hours of red or black at this wheel cost about $60 on average, and $120 lasts all 3 hours in 6 of 10 evenings. In the other evenings the money runs out before the alarm does, and the evening ends earlier than the card said it could.

Whichever limit comes first

A plan has two numbers written on it, the money and the time, and the two of them do not run out together. Which one runs out first is not something you get to choose: which one it is depends on how the spins fall, and you find that out only once the evening is over.

Walking out at 23:00 with money still in your pocket is the plan working, not an evening left half finished. The money and the time together are your limit (the money and the time you decide on before you go: a ceiling, not a target). There is also a shorter rule that covers the money and the time at once and needs no arithmetic at all: if you are no longer having fun, stop playing.

Every row is the same evening: the same money, the same three hours, the same bet on red or black at a double-zero wheel. The first row falls short of the full three hours’ worth of spins because in some of those evenings the money runs out before the alarm does. And not one of the three rows is a forecast of a single evening — each one says how a long run of evenings like this comes out, and the spread in the last row is the reason nobody can tell you in advance which of your two limits will end yours.

Two habits make the time limit hold, and both of them are set before you leave home rather than at the table.

• Set an alarm on your phone for the hour on the card. A casino in Ontario has to give players a way to track the passage of time, but an alarm in your own pocket goes off whether you are looking for a clock or not, and it goes off at the hour you chose rather than at some hour the building chose.
• Arrange something for after the casino, with another person in it. Coffee with a friend, a lift from someone, dinner at home — anything that has somebody else waiting. The evening then ends against a person who is expecting you, which holds when your own willpower is tired and has stopped holding anything.

What is in your hands, and where it becomes money

When the plan ends you are not holding money yet. You are holding things that turn into money, and this evening there are four of them: roulette colour chips, value chips, a machine’s printed ticket, and credits still sitting on a machine’s screen. Each of the four has a window of its own. Take the wrong thing to the wrong window and you walk back onto the floor to fix it, and the floor is where the evening was supposed to stop.

Four things, four answers — and the column that costs the most to get wrong is the one headed When. Roulette colour chips and credits on a screen have a moment attached to them as well as a place: walk away from the table or out of the seat without dealing with them, and the place that would have turned them into money is behind you.

Roulette colour chips are the one thing in your hands that the cashier will not take at all. No amount is printed on a roulette colour chip: what one is worth is what you agreed with the dealer at that table, and it is worth that at that table and nowhere else in the building. So you tell the dealer you are done at the end of a round, and the dealer changes your roulette colour chips into value chips right there. Stand up with roulette colour chips still in your pocket and the value you agreed can go with the table: later the croupier may not be able to recall what you set your chips at.

What a roulette colour chip is worth is an agreement with one table, not a number printed on the chip. The $28 under the picture is what 14 chips come to at the value this player set — at that wheel, and at no other.

The moment for changing roulette colour chips is the gap between one spin and the next. The ball drops, the losing chips are swept off the cloth, the winners are paid — and in that pause the dealer settles with the players who are leaving. In B.C. all four conditions the rules set for a cash out fall inside that same pause. The pause is short, but it comes round again on every spin, so there is no hurry and no reason to reach across a layout that is still live.

Everything else in your chip rack is value chips (ordinary chips with an amount printed on them, good anywhere in the casino). The window for value chips is the cashier (the cage) (the window where chips and slot tickets become money). That window both sells value chips and buys them back, which is why value chips need no stop at a table on the way out: the amount is printed on the chip, so the person at the window can read it without asking you or the dealer. Counting the stack before you join the queue belongs to the lesson on chips and cash rather than to this one.

The same player’s other pocket, worth $110: every value chip carries its amount on its face.

A machine’s printed ticket has windows of its own. Press Cash Out and the machine prints a slot ticket (the printed slip a machine gives you instead of coins, cashed at the cage or a kiosk). A printed ticket has one more option than a value chip does: it can go straight into the next machine you sit at, as well as to the cashier or to a kiosk (a machine on the casino floor that turns a slot ticket into cash). What a table will not take is a machine’s printed ticket, and what a machine will not take is a value chip — that single pairing is most of what there is to remember here.

Never walk away from a machine whose screen still shows credits (what a machine counts your money in on screen, which is not the same as dollars until you cash out). Credits left on a screen do not follow you to the door: one casino writes that credits left at a machine nobody is sitting at are cashed out by floor staff, and that is a machine being tidied rather than your money reaching you. That same casino will hold a seat for ten minutes with a reserved sign, and it asks you to cash the credits out before you use the sign at all. Pressing Cash Out takes about four seconds, and pressing it removes the whole question.

The way home is part of the plan

The way home is the only line of the plan you use when you are tired, and tired is the state in which nobody works anything out. So it gets settled at the kitchen table along with the money and the time: how you are getting back, and, if that is a bus or a train, what time the last one leaves.

The money and the leaving time on this card are the lesson on deciding the money. The third line, the way home, is blank here because it is the line this lesson adds to those two — and it is the only line of the three you ever have to read at one in the morning.

The route home and the hour the last bus or train leaves are two separate answers, and they are not always written down in the same place. Both of them belong on the card before the evening starts, because an hour looked up on the night is an hour looked up while tired.

And if there is a drink in the evening, settle the way home before the first drink rather than after it. Nobody should be working out a route at the moment they have to walk it, and nobody should be driving.

If the night went further than planned

It happens. An evening that ran past both of its numbers is not a character failure and it is not rare. What matters is the next hour, and three things are worth knowing by name before you ever need them.

The two rows about hours count published sentences rather than open doors. A helpline with no hours in this table is one whose hours you do not know before you dial: it may answer at one in the morning and it may not. The helplines in the row above it are the ones with a published sentence that says they answer at any hour.

• The gambling helpline for your province. The helpline belongs to the province and not to the casino, so the casino does not have to be open, or told, or involved in any way. Nothing has to be explained before you call and nothing has to be decided on the call; Helplines by province lists who answers where, and in what language.
• The desk inside the casino, in the provinces that have one. That desk has a name of its own: a help centre (the desk inside the casino where trained staff answer questions about gambling and about stopping). Talking to a person face to face is worth a great deal, and a desk on the floor is the place to do it in daylight. Whether the desk nearest you is open at one in the morning is a real question, and the helpline for your province is the number to try at that hour instead.
• The one door you can close yourself, which is self-exclusion (a provincial programme you sign yourself into, which closes the casino door to you for the term you choose). Signing is a decision for a calm morning rather than for one in the morning, and the self-exclusion guide sets out what a term covers and how enrolment works, so that the reading is done before the night that would need it.

The one thing in that hour that does not help is going back later today to get the money back. Going back to get a loss back is itself a warning sign, and it is the sign that looks most like an ordinary plan, which is why it is the one worth knowing by name. Gambling becomes a problem when you have trouble stopping. One sign on its own is not a diagnosis, and lesson 10.3 is the lesson that takes getting a loss back apart properly.

Practice: the last hour

Three levels, and only level 2 is scored. Level 1 is five decisions of the last hour, with the figure behind each decision; level 1 is not graded, because a decision about your own money has no right answer the way a rule of the floor does — it has only agreement or disagreement with the plan you made. Level 2 is the way out: what is in your hands, and where each thing becomes money. Level 3 is the card for one in the morning in your own province, and level 3 is not scored either.

The lesson is one run: every square on the strip below is one of its moments. They are all there from the start, and when a level’s squares are full the next one begins by itself.

Check yourself

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Five quick ones. Pick an answer, then check it. No timer, no points: just whether it stuck.

And the question this lesson opened with: playing the last half hour and stopping now are the same answer, because both of them are inside the plan — the plan set a ceiling and a leaving time, and neither of the two has moved. Raising the bet is the third answer, and it is the only answer of the three that changes a number nobody decided at the kitchen table: the size of the bet. At $30 a spin that same half hour costs about $30 on average instead of about $10, and the odds on red are the odds on red either way.

Where this leads

And where the course goes next. That is the whole of a first visit, door to door, and nothing in it was about how a game is played. The tracks after this one take the games themselves, one at a time, and one of those lessons is open already: when to hit or stand on a hard total. The academy page lists every track and shows which of its lessons are written.

Further reading

• Safer gambling tips · Responsible Gambling CouncilThe short list this lesson leans on: breaks, borrowed money, and not trying to get a loss back.
• When is gambling a problem · Responsible Gambling CouncilThe warning signs, in the Council’s own words, including the one this lesson is built around.
• Roulette — how to play · OLG PlaySmart (Ontario)Where the rule about colour chips at the wheel comes from, and why it has to happen before you walk away.
• Casino Regulations (Gaming Control Act) · Province of Nova ScotiaA province writing down, in law, what a chip is and what the machine on the floor that takes tickets does.

Money and time on a first visit

This is the end of the first-visit track, so here is the whole of it in one list — the part that is about money and time rather than about games.

• Before you leave home. Two numbers and a way back: how much, how long, and how you get home. Game plan writes them down and works out the leaving time and the halfway mark; the lesson on deciding the money is where the arithmetic behind them is.
• Cash for the limit, and the cards stay at home. Leaving your credit and debit cards at home is a line of advice on its own, and it is the step that still holds when the other steps slip, because a pocket with nothing in it cannot be talked round at the cashier.
• A break at the halfway mark. Away from the table rather than standing beside the table — and worth taking whether the evening is up or down.
• Only money you have. Never borrowed money, and never money that rent or food is waiting on.

Three signs worth knowing by name. The Responsible Gambling Council publishes a list of warning signs; these three are the ones that live closest to an ordinary evening. None of them is a diagnosis, and this page does not hand out any.

• Going back to get a loss back.
• Finding it hard to stop, or feeling irritable when you try.
• Borrowing money to gamble with.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Decide all three of them before you sit down: how long, how much, and how you get home. When either the money or the time runs out the evening is over — and what the evening cost is the price of the evening, not a debt the evening owes you. Game plan writes all three down in a couple of minutes.

And if a night has already gone further than the plan did, a gambling helpline is for exactly that night. The lines answer at one in the morning, they cost nothing, and you do not have to have decided anything before you call one.

If gambling has turned into debt. Credit Canada: 1-800-267-2272 — credit counselling at no charge, and in confidence.

How it’s worked out