A night out in Central City

By Mark Lasser

The weather this summer in Denver has been funny. Not haha funny. OMG-it’s-so-hot-and-when-the-heck-is-the-rain-gonna-stop-funny. One gets to a point where between the heat and the monsoon, one just needs a break. And so it was a recent weekend that my wife and I decided that a night on the town in Central City would be a good idea. Bought a few tickets for Central City Opera. Check. ATM cards. Check. Hunger for crab legs. Check. Off we go.

We started our evening gorging on crab legs at the Ameristar buffet. Yeah, I know that’s not Central City, it’s Black Hawk. (But saying you’re going to have a night out in Central City and Black Hawk seemed for a clunky title for a column.) And so, with a bit of cotton candy to go, we headed up the hill to Central City. We were a little early for the show so we spent a few minutes not getting royal flushes while playing video poker before heading to the Central City Opera House.

It’s a grand old building, and when the doors open the ushers collect in front and sing a welcome to the patrons. Hokey in a cool retro Colorado way. Thumbs up. We saw “Gianni Schicchi,” a famous Puccini opera that is a one-act, hour-long performance with a famous aria “O mio babbino caro”. Google it and you’ll be “Oh yeah, I know that!” This summer the company performed “Carmen,” “Amadigi di Gaula” and a series of three one-act operas that you could attend individually or in combined programs. The one-acts are an absolutely great way to get introduced to opera.

After the opera, we spent a few hours in the Century Casino playing video poker, hoping to win barrel drawings and make a few jackpots. Things started out a little slow. Then I look over and my wife has two aces on her Double Double Bonus Poker. So I tell her nonchalantly, “Just get two more.” She hits the draw button and bang bang. There come the aces! Wahoo! We play for another half hour of bupkiss. Then I made a run to the player’s club to get entries for the half hourly contests. As I’m walking back, I see her smiling from all the way across the casino. Hmmm. What happened? She can barely stay in her seat as she proudly displays her quad jacks.

We decide to cash out the ticket because I basically had bottomed out and needed to bum some cash. There were five credits above some even amount so I say, play one more hand to even it out. And what comes from that last hand? Yeah. Another four-of-a-kind. This time sevens. Sheesh. OK. Cash out so I can play too! Please?

And what am I getting during all of this? Pair of jacks. An occasional three-of-a-kind. Maybe two full houses. And then she makes quad eights. Seriously? I thought I was the self-professed professional gambler in the house. Just goes to show, she is listening when I explain both video poker strategy and the concept of variance. You need to commit to playing for a decent stretch of time to get results. If your bankroll won’t let you play the dollars, play the quarters. If that will only let you play an hour, move down to nickels.

Next up I suggest we go downstairs to the live poker game. It’s low stakes at Century Casino and I figured she might not be so intimidated about her first live game. Nuh-uh. Not yet. We wait for the 11 p.m. drawing and it takes so long to find a winner that by the time someone claims the prize it’s nearly 11:30. And now we started getting the munchies. A plate of nachos before leaving was a good midnight snack and we can hear the next to last drawing of the night before heading back to downtown Denver.

Mark B. Lasser is Denver writer and international poker player. He regularly plays in Colorado, Arizona, California, Missouri and Nevada. You can hear him talk about gambling and casinos every Friday at 5 PM on KEZW AM 1430. Readers can send questions and comments to him at ColoradoPokerMark@comcast.net.