Vegas...and Newly Acquired Gambling Skills

Since I'm a little behind with everything that happened over the Holiday break, I've missed writing about a few important things. Namely, that I have now mastered Blackjack. 
Golf, Surfing, Graphs - is there anything I can't do? Technically have not done surfing yet but I can't see that being difficult at all so just calling it "nailed" now.

Played a lot of skittle blackjack while I was in Vegas, prepping myself to go out and hit the high roller tables. By the end of the week, it was time so I swaggered on over to the $5 table - go big or go home...

Playing for Skittles is harder than money but more delicious.  And for the record, the dealer will smack your hand hard if you try and eat his Skittles.  He will also penalize you by taking Skittles away if you're seen to not be paying attention or color-sorting your Skittles.  I learned gambling in the school of hard knocks, the real world is a lot easier.

Got dealt my first card. Got my hand smacked for picking it up without waiting for the second one. Looked at my cards. Turned 'em over. Got yelled at for turning them over. Asked for a hit with a subtle hand movement. Got schooled on the correct hand movement (pretty keen on making my own special hand movement at this point). At this stage, the dealer had made me nervous and my usual lightning quick mathematical calculations weren't working as well as normal. 
So my first few hands were a bit suspect. In general, if you have just 4, you should probably ask for another card. Also, if you have asked for another card when you had 20, you might be considered an idiot.

Made myself a friend who gave me a few tips.  I gave him a tip in return to just to be friendly.  "Get some teeth.  Yours are all missing."

Finally got into the swing of things - turns out different tables have different hand signals and ways of doing things but the dealer's will let you know pretty quickly. And they don't always use their words.  I apparently misinterpreted the look that I thought meant I was a beautiful, smart and canny blackjack player...

After a while, I'd broken even and decided it was time to move forward with my plan to make a billion before leaving to catch my flight in an hour.  At a $5 table, betting $5 at a time, I calculated the number of minutes remaining and odds of me winning all the hands and it came out to a sure thing which is how gambling works..