COSMOS Day 20 - Viva los COSMOS

The COSMOS Casino Night was a nice environment for us underage people to pretend to be gamblers trying to win some money, facilitated by our kind RAs who agreed to dress up as casino dealers. Upon being greeted at the casino entrance, we cosmonauts/gamblers helped ourselves to some punch made from sherbet and soda. I'll assume that's the substitute for cocktails. We then received a cup with $40 worth of COSMOS UCI money. I have no clue how long it must have taken the RAs to photoshop a picture of an anteater and words saying "COSMOS legal tender" onto the various bills.

Inside the study room casino, there were four tables for blackjack, two tables for Texas Hold'em, one table for roulette (done with playing cards rather than a roulette wheel), bingo, war and this Vietnamese game of which I do not know its name. I watched a game of Blackjack, in which Anish was the dealer. Since I have never tried counting cards before, I attempted to while watching. In general, the cards are shuffled too often for card counting to work properly. After playing for six rounds, I managed to win $5, in which the minimum bet is $5.

I left, and went to watch the Texas Hold'em game. There were several people crowed at the table, and I watched for about 15 to 20 rounds before I got to join. For my third hand, I believe I had a three of a kind of 6s, and my opponent raised me $30. Since I had about $27 from winning a few blind bets and call bets, I decided to go all-in. I was thinking that I wouldn't be able to win much money in this casino anyway, and I still had $25 in "cash." It turns out my opponent was bluffing, really badly. And I got all of his raise. I found that rediculously amusing, and that gave me a head start in the game. I had two other winning hands, I believe, and that was my two pair and pair of Aces. By the end of the game, I won approximately $80.

I later went to a quiet area to count up my money, and I had $126. I turned in $20 to the cashier to exchange the money for raffle tickets for a real prize. The rest of the money was in chips, so I had to go to a poker dealer to turn in that money. I was treated like a professional gambler, and received a $100 bill and a $5 bill. I then went to Jennifer to report my winnings, and she saw the money I had. She was nice enough to give me another $5 bill, so I could buy another raffle ticket.

In the end, I had 13 raffle tickets in a pool of xyz amount of tickets. I was drawn during the prize calling, and I received a UC Irvine folder.