A sign from Mark

I wanted to share a story of something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago. It’s a little long, so bear with me.

I was really low one day, and told Mark he needed to give me a sign that he was okay and happy. Now, I can be a little dense when it comes to seeing signs, and I reminded him of this. At first I said, “send me an eagle - there’s no way I could miss that!” Then I thought to myself, maybe that’s a little excessive. Okay, “send me a swallow!” (Swallows remind me of Mark. Sometimes when he was mowing the grass at our house, they would come swooping down and around him because of all of the bugs he would kick up with the mower). But then I thought, how am I going to notice one swallow? Again, changed my mind. “Send me a butterfly – but not one of those stupid little yellow ones, they’re all over the place – it has to be something special!” Of course I’m expecting something to come flying at me right away, but didn’t see anything. I figured after all of this discussion that Mark had probably stopped listening since I couldn’t make up my mind. He HATED that.

Anyway, the following week I was out on the deck with Vaughn. I happened to look up and notice some birds circling and dipping towards the house. It was really weird because, you guessed it, THEY WERE SWALLOWS. There had to have been 15-20 of them up there. I looked around at the neighbors, but it was just our house. They flew around up there for about 5 minutes and then left. Hmmm – thanks for the warm fuzzy Mark. Later that night, I was looking out the window and saw a yellow swallowtail butterfly flying amongst the hostas. Again – thanks baby. A couple of days later I was driving down Yankee Doodle Road and saw an eagle flying about 20 feet up. Of course I burst into tears, but what an awesome sight!

Now, those of you who know Mark, realize that to him, doing anything small is a waste of time. You do things BIG or you don’t do them at all. So instead of sending me one sign, he sent them all. He was just like that. He’d do anything in his power to make you happy, and he’s still doing it, Mark style. You just gotta love him!

Erin Jensen

The Movie 21, Mark and the ADD of a 5 year old boy!

You know, there's a movie out, now on DVD called 21. It's a story about some students from MIT who figured out a way to count cards in blackjack and took casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City for around $5,000,000. 

At about the same time this "crew" was working casinos, I learned to count cards. There was a man named Uston who developed this theory in the 70's. Not just any count but an even more sophisticated count than what the crew used at MIT. To give you an idea, the count went like this. Any 2's and 8's were given a value of +1. 3's, 4's, 6's and 7's were given a value of +2. 5's were given a value of +3. 9's were a minus 1 and 10's and face cards were a minus 3. At the end of each hand, you would then divide your total by the number of half decks remaining. What about the aces? Well, you would keep a separate count of aces by placing your feet in different directions on the bar at the table! HUH??

OK, , Mark and I loved to play blackjack. I found that counting cards was one of the most relaxing things I could do. I estimated that I counted in excess of 3,000 cards in a 5 hour session. Who's got time to think about problems when you're doing that. 

I told Mark about this idea of the BP (card counter) and the Gorilla Player (Mark). The card counter(s) would work on tables playing 10-25 dollars per hand. When the count would be in the players favor, I would use a hand or a hat signal Mark to come over to the table to play. Mark could play on the table as long as the count was in our favor. He wouldn't have to count cards. We had worked out a signal so he knew when the count went minus again. He'd get up and leave until the cards got good again.

Our best odds were maybe 2-3% per hand and Mark would play 100-500 per hand. With 6 players at the table that's 65 hands per hour.

So Mark would be playing around $20,000 per hour, and at 2% that's $400 per hour, or $2,000 for a 5 hour session, which is really a minimum amount of time to work that small advantage. 

If you're still reading this, here's the hook to the story. 

Mark had his own case of ADD. I don't know what it really was, but I knew I was in trouble when he got that little sparkle in the eye. 

See, while I was counting cards, Mark's only job was to keep the dealer and the pit boss busy so they wouldn't catch onto me counting. He could drink, make jokes with the other players, make fun of the dealer and just play basic strategy, I would take care of the rest. 

Well, you can't keep Mark on task for 5 hours, so about 3 hours in, he'd get bored! Oh no. He'd start making jokes about me. He'd start making me lose my place. We always had this running joke about Mpls and St. Paul. You can guess which side Mark was on, so he'd somehow get it out that I was from St. Paul and he was from Mpls. When he reversed our favorites, it allowed him to start slamming St. Paul in all kinds of disgusting ways, then I'd have to defend it. 

He didn't care anymore about making some money, he had to play around like the kid that he was. I know it's a long story, but I smiled most of the time I wrote this. 

I went back to Vegas for a lot of Rapport functions, but I really haven't played blackjack at all since Mark stopped going with me, it just never seemed the same. 

I'll be thinking of Mark A LOT this fall while out in the deer stands. So will a lot of other people.