Casino Queen (Night Hawk Casino Series)
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – California
Wild Rose Press (March 16, 2022)

Synopsis

Caroline Popov, alone, heartbroken, and deeply in debt ends up in glamorous Palm Springs, California where Native casinos have just opened, offering employment to thousands. She lands a job at the Palm Oasis Casino where she is mentored by the charismatic tribal chairman, John Tovar.

Embraced by casino culture, Caroline works her way up to casino manager of the Night Hawk, in the High Desert of Southern California. There, she is responsible for managing multicultural team members, satisfying the demands of often unique guests, and growing revenue while rooting out corruption.

In the process of rediscovering her inner strength, she learns, you have to gamble like your life depends on it. Because it often does.

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Guest Post

The Top Ten Things Behind the Blackjack Table Have Taught Me About Life & Love 

Because Love is the Biggest Gamble of All

For most of my career I have worked at casinos, on land in California and Nevada, and at sea all over the world. Let me say, you learn a lot about the human personality when you watch thousands of people from behind the felt of a blackjack table.

I wrote a novel, Cruise Quarters, about my experiences living and working on a cruise ship. While I was promoting my book, I received a request from a website asking me to provide a quote from my novel. Imagine my surprise a few months later when I Googled my name and I found a list of websites where my quote had been used. The first and most exciting was Goodreads, where it was listed as a top gambling quote. Being a writer, I was thrilled because Goodreads is the world’s largest site for readers. I love to make up quotes, it’s a great way to give advice in a short pithy sentence. I make them up for my chapter titles. Online casinos picked up my quote, people on social media sites, and even Seeking Alpha, a financial website. My words have even been used as part of a legal argument in an Indian lawsuit. 

Working at a casino is hard. You are on your feet for eight hours, with seven demanding faces of players in front of you. Even though it is a challenging job I like it because I know all the rules and procedures I have to follow. The rules are all written down in a very big manual.

The truth behind that one quote was not all I learned by working at a casino. I have decided to share some more of my wisdom with you. These quotes might be about casinos but they really are about life in general. Even though you might not ever visit a casino, hopefully, you will relate to them.   

1. It is hard to walk away from a winning streak, even harder to leave the table when you are on a losing one.

This is the quote that started it all. As a dealer, I have watched this a million times from behind the table. People who are losing will pull out more money than they budgeted, will borrow from their friends, or even open up a line of credit. Because they believe that on the next hand, the next spin, or the next throw of the dice things will turn around. It reminds me that sometimes desperation will lead you to do crazy things. How many times have we driven by an ex-boyfriend’s house or drunk dialed them even though we know, we are never, ever, getting back together.

2. A player in the last stage of her gambling addiction, just wants to lose all her money.

To take it one step further when someone stays at the table so long and loses so much money, they don’t walk away with their last fifty dollars. Instead, they prefer to lose it all. When they leave, I watch them walk away with an empty wallet and a look of relief spread across their face. Like in a bad relationship you have to do all the crazy stuff, to convince yourself that it is really over, and only then can you begin again.

3. Before you sit down at the table make sure the dealer runs an honest game.

All the casinos in America run honest games, licensed by the state and the federal government. But you need to research the rules of each casino, whether you get paid even money or time and a half on a blackjack, or if they stay or hit on soft seventeen because those rules can really change your odds of winning. The same applies to dating, always make sure the person you are dating is sincere. If you are dating a guy with a girlfriend or even worse a wife your odds for success go down. And if you are dating a serial womanizer, just give up.

4. In life, there are gamblers and there are people who gamble. Gamblers have studied the odds.

As I have said the rules at a casino really matter. To a gambler, the difference in the rules at certain casinos can mean the difference between winning and losing. So think like a gambler, research a potential date like a gambler researches the odds at a casino. Serious gamblers follow the rules of basic strategy for blackjack. These rules are designed to increase a gambler’s odds of winning at the table. 

5. Juice might get you in the door, talent keeps you there.

The casino business is like any other industry the people you know, your connections might help get you the job, but you must have the talent to succeed. In love the same rule applies. You might have an initial connection but it will take work to make the relationship work.

6. A winning streak can only last for so long.

No matter how great your life is going, one day you will hit a roadblock. I consider myself a realistic optimist. I hope for the best but prepare for the worst. In life, this means saving for unexpected emergencies. I think in life we also need an emergency fund for our relationships, a backup plan if things don’t work out.   

7. You’ve got to gamble big to win big.

You have to gamble big, but only if you have studied the odds, considered all the obstacles along the way, and have a backup plan. I think in affairs of the heart you have to love with all your heart. I took a huge chance when I married my Scottish husband Ray, after only knowing him for three months. On top of that, we moved from a cruise ship to Palm Springs. It was a huge gamble but many years later, I am happy to report both the move and the marriage have paid off.

8. The best part of playing one-on-one with the dealer is there are no other players to piss you off.

I guarantee if you sit down at a blackjack table it won’t be long before one of the other players will be happy to offer you some unsolicited advice. Players don’t sit there in silence, they are happy to let you know how you or the other players screwed up the hand. Somebody took the bust card, someone didn’t hit when they should have, the list goes on and on. 

I love dealing at a table with only one player, especially if it is a person who understands that if they follow the rules of basic strategy they greatly increase their odds of winning. In life there is always someone giving you advice you never asked for, telling you why your relationship is doomed. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong. The best advice my father ever gave me was, you have to make your own mistakes, no one else can make them for you.  

9. When people work in the money store, they begin to believe the money is theirs.

In a casino, the dealers and the players are surrounded by money. The dealer stands in front of a tray filled with chips and sometimes the temptation to throw a few of those chips into their tip box is too tempting. Even though they know that if they get caught it will end their career, they do it because they feel like the money will never be missed.

I watched a documentary on Netflix, The Tinder Swindler. It is the story of a guy who travels around the world scamming hopeful women, looking for love, out of their money. So, people be careful, guard your money and your heart, because sometimes when you date people they begin to believe your money is theirs. The same goes for lending money. A wise lawyer once told me, once you lend someone money, they begin to believe it is theirs.

10. You can’t replay the last hand, that is in the past. You have to play the cards in front of you.

Regret is what holds most people back. So many times, at the blackjack table people are in their head replaying the last hand, which means they can’t concentrate on the cards in front of them. 

No matter what cards life has dealt you, good or bad, I know one thing for sure, you can’t relive the past. Most of us can’t get over our failed relationship or lost job. But when you keep playing the same script in your head you spend so much time regretting the past that you miss the present. If you keep pining for the guy or girl who hurt you in the past, you will never see the person standing in front of you now.  

Isn’t that what being in the present is all about?

About the Author

Growing up in a strait-laced Southern family, I was always fascinated with casinos. In my twenties on a summer hiatus from teaching in North Carolina, I drove to California and became a dealer at Caesars in Lake Tahoe. Well, I can tell you that after teaching high school, handling an unruly gambler was a piece of cake. My mother highly disapproved of my working in a casino, “a place so bad it has ‘sin’ in the middle.”

Eventually, I succumbed to pressure from the family and returned east to take a high-tech job in Boston. I also began working on my MFA in writing at Emerson. I wanted to write the first realistic novel about casino life from the perspective of an experienced table games dealer. I am always amazed that normal and sometimes quite intelligent players become absolutely clueless in the casino. They repeat superstitious nonsense and no amount of logic can change their position, maybe my novel will.

While in Boston I was offered the opportunity to join Princess Cruises as a croupier. Jumping at the chance, I spent the next five years circling the globe. Sometimes life exceeds your dreams. I was awed by the wonders of Venice, the fjords of Norway, and the Northern Lights in Leningrad.

I returned from ships with a very special souvenir, my Scottish husband Ray. We went to work at the Spa Casino in Palm Springs. We now live in Hollywood, Florida, where I write about my casino years while wistfully gazing out at the ocean.

I love to see any of you out there reading Casino Queen. Send me a picture to carabertoia@yahoo.com and I will post it on social media. 

Thank you, Cara B

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