The Poker Problem

It all started November First 2012 Nevada, Las Vegas in the El Cortez casino when I was caught cheating at poker. That started the chain reaction that ruined my life.
It was a cold November evening when I went to the El Cortez casino to see if I could win some money, but when I got there it was almost empty it was me and about ten other guys. I decided to sit down and play poker. One by one the other guys came over and sat down around the table, we started to play. After the first game I was losing pretty badly. I decided that I would play one more game. That was the biggest mistake I ever made. After that game I won a little bit of money but not as much as I lost. I thought to myself that I should go back to the hotel and ask my brother Pedro if he would help me come up with an idea of how to win back my money. He came up with the idea that we should go back to the El Cortez and count the cards so we could win. It sounded like a good idea but there was only one problem with that idea I had no clue how to count cards and neither did Pedro. Fortunately for us Pedro new a guy who we could go to and he could teach us how to count cards. Pedro said his name was Roberto and that he had known him for years now, but I didn’t know if he was reliable or not. So I decided to trust my brother and go see Roberto. Pedro said Roberto always moved around and that he never stayed in the same area for too long. He said the last time he saw Roberto was a week ago, so we left right away hoping we could catch him before he moved again. Pedro didn’t know what Roberto’s house looked like. All he had was an address. When we arrived at Roberto’s house we didn’t think it was his house because it was a mansion and there was no one that we could see. I said to Pedro “maybe we should come back another time” but he went up to the gate and rang the bell. As soon as the bell rang the gate opened and the lights lit up all the way to the front door. We walked up the path. I made Pedro go first because I thought it was a little creepy that the gate and the lights went on as soon as he rang the bell. When we got to the top of the path we were looking at his front door. I was a little scared to knock but I wanted to make a lot of money so I knocked. I only had to knock once because as soon as I did someone answered the door. The man that was standing at the door looked a little strange but Pedro recognized him it was Roberto. He must have recognized Pedro to because he invited us in. Roberto’s house was rather small on the inside despite how big it was on the outside. Roberto didn’t say anything until we got to the living room. Or what I thought was the living room I couldn’t really tell because almost every room had a television and a couch. Roberto sat down in a chair and then motioned for us to sit down also. After I sat down Roberto asked Pedro what we were doing here and who I was. I spoke up and told him that I lost a lot of money playing poker and that I needed a way to get it back. Then I told him about how Pedro had the idea that we should count the cards, but neither of us knew how to count cards. Before I could finish Roberto said “and you were hoping I could teach you how to count the cards”. I thought to myself that he must get a lot of people ask him for his help. Then I said “so will you teach us”? He said yes that he would teach me and Pedro how to count cards. I asked him when he could start teaching us and he said now. So Pedro and I stayed at Roberto’s house until we learned how to count cards.
Finally after hours and hours of Roberto teaching us we finally got the hang of counting cards and it turns out that it isn’t that hard to do, but I’m not going to explain it because even though it’s not hard to do it does take a long time to explain the process. Anyway, after Pedro and I thanked Roberto for his help it was about four o’clock in the morning so we decided to go to the hotel. When we got back to the hotel I fell asleep and woke up the next day feeling great. Pedro was still sleeping when I woke up though so we couldn’t get started on the plan to count cards at the El Cortez casino. So I just watched the television until Pedro woke up. After he woke up we went out and got some breakfast. After Pedro and I were done eating we went back to the hotel and started working on what our plan was going to be when we got to the El Cortez casino. We spent just about all morning figuring out the perfect plan and we made sure there were no flaws at all, Or at least at the time we couldn’t see any flaws in our plan, Pedro kept saying to me “Carlos, are plan is perfect, let’s go” and I kept saying to him “Pedro are plan still has flaws in it we need to take are time on this or we could get into a lot of trouble”. Then he would just look at me and say “ok, you’re right let’s take are time”. The first part of our plan was to go to the El Cortez casino and find a place to play poker. The second part of our plan was to play as many games as we felt necessary without cheating. The third part of our plan was to start counting the cards after however many games that we went without cheating. Our goal was to play like ten games of poker in all. The fourth part of plan was to leave with the money we made from cheating and make it back to the hotel. The last part of our plan (and probably the most important part) was not to get caught. After we got our plan done we rested for a couple of hours then we went to the El Cortez casino and found a place to play poker. Step one was complete. Pedro and I didn’t cheat for the first couple of games. Step two complete. It wasn’t until our fourth game that we started to count the cards. Step three complete. The beginning of the fourth game was going really well Pedro and I were cheating and nobody even knew I was starting to think that we were actually going to get away with this. Then towards the middle of the game things started to get really good, Pedro and I were making a lot of money. Then things started going downhill at the end of the game. Somebody was staring at Pedro and me for twenty minutes straight and I was getting worried. I whispered to Pedro “that guy has been staring at us for the past twenty minute’s maybe we should wrap things up” then Pedro said “let’s keep playing”. I shouldn’t have followed Pedro’s advice but I did and now I regret it. Before we could finish the game though the guy that was staring at us came over and started to talk to us, he said he was a security guard for the El Cortez casino and that we were reported for cheating. All Pedro and I had to do was keep calm and lie, but the next thing I knew Pedro was running out the door with all the money he could grab and I had no choice but to follow him. So I grabbed as much money as I could carry and started running. By the time I got to the door there were five security guards behind me and by the time I got to sidewalk there were about ten security guards behind me. Pedro was about twenty feet in front of me and we just kept running. Eventually we lost them and we went back to the hotel. As soon as we got inside we started packing up all of our things and put the money into five bags. By the time we were finished there were cops starting to surround the hotel, so Pedro and I ran down the fire escape and somehow we managed to escape the building without anyone seeing us. We knew we couldn’t go back to the hotel so we decided to go to Roberto’s house to see if we could hide there until the police lost interest in us. When we got to Roberto’s house we rang the bell and the gates opened immediately and we ran up the path up to the front door. We didn’t even have to knock because he was standing there waiting for us already. When he saw us he said that are names were all over the television. And I guess he knew we would be coming here for his help. So he invited us inside and we spent the next seven days there. While we were there we discussed what Pedro and I would do. Roberto suggested that we both should change our identity and flee the state, but Pedro didn’t really like that idea. I thought it was better than Pedro’s idea which was to turn ourselves in to the police. I thought that was a really dumb suggestion. Personally I liked Roberto’s plan so I went with it and I guess Pedro thought he had no choice but to follow me, I don’t know. Fortunately for us Roberto could get us both new identities. So that’s what he did and Pedro and I left the state with new identities.
Pedro and I are currently living in New Mexico (five years later) with our families. We still have all the money from poker and we are the richest people in New Mexico. And the downfall is we can never go back to Las Vegas.