OK, let me add this to this thread....
A Tale of Two Rich Folk....
These are both true stories from when I worked in casinos.
We had a player who had been a farmer in Colorado for years. Unknown to him, there was a very precious ore under his land. This made him extremely wealthy.
One night he made a really good score on our table (dice pit) and shortly before the shift ended our pit boss pulled our crew aside and said, "Mr. T has invited this crew to meet him at such and such a place for a party after work."
So we all went there, ordered drinks, and bear in mind I'm talking Vegas waitresses here, when we went to pay they tole us that our money was no good, Mr. T had raken care of everything. For the next four hours or so we drank, ate wings, talked football, talked shop, talked with him. He told us a story about after finidng the ore, he and his wife were driving from Nevada back to Colorado and she mentioned how scenic this one lake was - so when they got home, he had one built for her on his land.
That was one guy, one of the rare classic acts you see in Vegas. He was a pleasure do tell to, didn't get into arguments about payoffs, and never "stroked" the dealers (getting the dealers to do the most work you could make them do for the littlest money).
Now here's another story. We had a guy on our table, had the table to himself, was betting blacks ($100 chips) and being obnoxious, and a real pain. Rookie dealers like to deal to players betting blacks, but experienced dealers know that for the most part they are just bring heat on the game (bosses always watch black action) and are notroiously stiffs (never tip).
A young guy ran past the game, reached inot his rack, and took two of his chips. The dealer on that side of the game was called into security as a witness (they had caught the guy), and told them what he saw. When he came back on the game, the player akded for drinks, and when the waitress came he tipped her $300, not because he was a "George" (generous tipper), but as an in your face to the kid they had caught. (The casino decide not to arrest the kid after hearing his story, security had him back on the game to apologize to the player).
The game went dead and the dealer who talked to security told us the whole story- the kid who stole the two black chips had blown his money two days ago, ws stuck in town, and hadn't eaten in that time. When security asked him if he knew how much he took or was after black chips he said he didn't know anything other than he wanted to eat.
OK, you can't condone stealing, of course, but after all this for the same player to tip a waitres $300 for a drink (and the waitresses knew he had a reputation as a stiff) just as an in your face is pretty sad.
The dealer who had to talk to security said never again, next time he sees something like that, well call him Sgt Schultz.
So yes, there's classy rich people and there are obnoxious rich people. Sad thing is the obnoxious rich people think they own eveyone else.
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Sidenote- Just my opinion here, but I think this touches upon our war with terrorists- we being a capitalist society, don't know how to handle people who truly do not have a price and are willing to be martyrs for a cause.
Not to condone Bin Laden, but at one time he was worth $600,000,000. I don't see any Bill Gates or ted Turners or Rockerfellers hiding in a cave somewhere for a cause.