INTRODUCTION
Greek Mythology will spend HK$5 million a month to provide free entertainment performances, including Moulin Rouge, for the enjoyment of visitors. In 2005, Macau's casinos are projected to generate an aggregate income of US$5 billion, taking over Las Vegas as the world's largest gaming market. Video games based on ancient mythology like the Greeks or Romans tend to have a more serious tone. Games like God of War and Assassin's Creed come to mind, but Ubisoft's Immortals Fenyx Rising. Complete list of greek mythology anime, and watch online. These anime reference Greek mythology: a collection of myths involving famous Greek Gods, such as Zeus, Hades and Athena; or stories of mythological Greek figures such as Hercules, Odysseus, or Achilles.
Well I'm pretty sure I've found it. New Century is, without a doubt, the worst hotel in Macau. It's old, run-down, and with travel groups and junket players taking up the bulk of their business, they seemed to have lost all interest in providing any type of acceptable hotel experience. The prevailing attitude around the property seems to be: We don't have to care, and it shows.
The most impressive part of New Century, and some may say its only impressive part, is its lobby. A feast for the eyes, it's a magnificent mix of murals, pillars and fountains, highlighted by a grand marble staircase that leads upwards to a statue of the man himself — Zeus, who sits knowing he's the all powerful seer he is, holding three lightning bolts in hand.
As for the casino, the SJM run Greek Mythology, it's predominantly VIP gaming.
Image gallery
LOCATION
Part of the reason for my low opinion of this hotel stems from its location. Situated on the Northeast part of Taipa island, there just isn't much around it. The charming little Kun Iam Monastary is just down the road, while the beautiful Altira is right beside it. The most direct way to get there is via the Macau Taipa Bridge, located beside the Wynn and MGM. Turn left off the bridge and the road will wind around to New Century very quickly.
CASINO
Like its neighbour, Altira, Greek Mythology is easy to review because it's just a lot of VIP gaming. VIP gaming is not something that has to be explained in Macau. Think Baccarat tables and table minimums in the thousands, most commonly somewhere between $1000 and $20000. Greek Mythology's 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors all fit this description, and high rollers actually have a reason to go up there. The numerous junket companies that occupy these levels all give returns somewhere between 1% to 1.25%, as well as offer rooms at New Century at discounted rates, at numbers I will describe later. The decoration on these three floors is very similar to the VIP area at the Lisboa, which isn't a good thing. It's like going back to 1980, and really, in terms of style and fashion (and music), does anyone really want to do that?
Mass gamers in comparison are even worse off, if that's possible. Given its location on Taipa island, and really, in the middle of nowhere on Taipa island, I wasn't expecting much, but the ground floor mass gaming casino still managed to disappoint me. There's ragged brown carpet on the floor, ugly brown chairs, an overwhelming feeling of space, and no real ambience at all. It looks more like a renovated warehouse with a bunch of tables thrown in than it does a proper casino. Before there used to be a stage and Russian dancing performances and the place could move pretty well, but those days have long since been cosigned to the dead, delivered cruelly and aptly by the realities of multi concessionaire competition and the Cotai Strip.
All told, Greek Mythology's ground floor holds 22 tables, 92 slots, and 56 Live Game Baccarat machines. Minumums are expectedly low, with most tables $100 to $300, slots .05 to .20 cents and Live Baccarat $20. Electronic versions of Baccarat ($10), Roulette ($5) and Sic Bo ($10) are also available for play among the slots, which no longer include the long since removed 9/6 Video Poker Machines. Table games consist of Macau's standard 3 - Baccarat ($100-$3000), Sic Bo ($100), and Blackjack ($100), while 3 card Baccarat ($100) makes an appearance as well.
No part of the casino is smoke free, and while the drink service is surprisingly good, everything's served in styrofoam cups. Maybe that's another reason why the place reminds me of a warehouse.
GAMES
Greek Mythology offers a very standard assortment of games.
- 3 Card Baccarat
- Baccarat — Also available in Live Game Machine form.
- Blackjack
- Sic Bo — 5 different bets are available.
- Slot Machines — 92 machines. Minimums 0.05 to 0.20.
PROMOTIONS
Greek Mythology does not offer a player card for table games, nor does it run any standard casino promotions. They have a newly introduced slot card that I wanted to sign up for, but the desk was unmanned at the time. When I went a second time three months later, there was nobody there again.
Vip Gaming
As I mentioned before, the VIP floors have a number of VIP companies returning cash back of 1% to 1.25%, with most buy ins that start at $100,000. Most of the VIP counters have New Century rooms listed at the following rates:
New Century VIP Room Rates | ||
---|---|---|
Room Type | Sun-Thu | Fri-Sat |
Standard Room (7,8,9 F) | $800 | $1000 |
Standard Room (10,11 F) | $1200 | $1500 |
Standard Room (12F) | $1500 | $2000 |
Standard Room (13F) | $2400 | $3000 |
Executive Suite | $10000 | $10000 |
Presidential Suite | $16000 | $16000 |
It seems pretty ridiculous to me that a standard room on the 13 F is three times more expensive than the same room four floors down. $800 or $1000 is a great deal, whereas $2400 and $3000 are egregious overpays. Never in this lifetime should anyone pay that much to stay at New Century.
HOTEL
I don't actually stay at these hotels so I often search the online reviews to get a feel for what actual guests have said. Most of the time the feedback for Macau hotels tends to be very positive, with just a few negative reviews thrown in here and there. I tend to let the occasional griping slide and won't let it influence my opinion about what I'm going to write. I've been in enough hotels to know that people sometimes like grinding axes where there are no axes to grind. With New Century, however, the overwhemingly negative reviews can't make me look the other way.
A lot of former guests speak of cockroaches, cigarette stained rooms, thin walls, indifferent staff and just a lot of general dirtiness and discontent. And from what I saw when walking around the hotel, I tend to believe it. There's a lot of ripped carpet in the hallways, and many areas on the lower floors are roped off and just being used for storage, like they're in the middle of a renovation, but nothing is getting fixed. When I was checking things out on the 14th F stairwell it looked like something out of a crack tenement, minus the drug paraphenelia of course, but you get the point. It seems pretty obvious to me that they've turned the place over to tour groups and junket operators and said to hell with it. Why put in an effort if you don't have to?
It's really too bad because New Century, at one time, was probably very good. The rooftop used to have a tennis court and the area next to the gym a games room (which is now an office). A KTV accessible via the lobby is similarly closed down. The question, of course, becomes: how do I even know these places once existed? It's because the signs are still up! I mean, no one in the last year, or five, or ten, has bothered to take any of them down. Meanwhile, outside the gym, posters of a prime Micheal Jordan, a sizzling Steffi Graf and another of Michael Chang still hang, probably giving an indication of the last time anyone at New Century still gave a damn. I'd peg that time to be around 1989, and it's been all downhill since then.
Check in time at the former five-star hotel is 3 pm, and 3 pm sharp (never before!), which leads to long lines and a lot of bored people waiting in the lobby from around 2 pm. The second floor buffet restaurant caters to groups only so don't bother going there if you're travelling on your own. The 554 guestrooms are found on floors 4 to 13, with some of them recently redone and others still waiting their turn. Rates courtesy of the front desk (since I couldn't find them online) are as follows:
New Century Room Rates | |||
---|---|---|---|
Room Type | Sun-Thu | Fri | Sat |
Standard room | $1180 | $1580 | $1780 |
Suite | $2400 | $3400 | $3400 |
POOL
I used to think that New Century has two excellent facilities that outdo what is found in many newly built four-star hotels, with the first one being the large outdoor pool. For a four-star hotel it's absolutely huge and the large deck can no doubt hold up to the demand of a 554 room hotel. Pools in other four-star hotels usually don't exist or are half the size.
And then of course with this being New Century they can't even get that right. Even though the pool looks great and ready to go, the truth is that it's been shut for over five years now! That explains why I never saw anyone in it, even in the summer, and also why there are a lot of 'No Trespassing' signs posted around it. For some reason they're deciding not to use it.
RESTAURANTS
The restaurants at New Century actually aren't that bad.
New Century Chinese Restaurant — Very dodgy insides here, with not much really inspiring you to take a seat. The menu consists of Cantonese fare ($48 to $100), Ningbo cuisine ($48 to $90) and standard rice and noodle staples ($58 to $68). Vegetarian fare is a reasonable $50 while live seafood is subject to daily rates. The restaurant is located on the ground floor and is accessible via the lobby.
Caesar Terrace — Caesar Terrace looks a whole lot better than the New Century Chinese Restaurant. Located on the 2nd floor, it has a wide and divergent menu featuring Western eats for under $100, Northeastern ($48 to $88), Sichuan ($48 to $88), Hunan ($68 to $108) and Ningbo ($48 to $198). Most of the selection though is Cantonese fare ($68 to $98) including the very pricy abalone, birds nest and sharks fin ($288 to $3288).
New Century Club — Just found this place the fourth time I went to New Century. Located on the 3rd floor, the staff was none too happy I was writing these prices down and not ordering. That's the secret advantage of being a foreigner when doing this work. Most of the time no one pays any attention to you, and when they do, you can just pretend that don't understand. Sometimes I also like to speak a lot of bad and broken Chinese, just to drive the point home. When it gets to that point, staff invariably tends to just give up.
New Century Club serves a lot of Cantonese delicacies, with abalone, birds nest and sharks fin $380 to $4680 while featured meat selection is $98 to $680. Sashami runs either $1180 or $2680, while cheaper fare runs $38 to $68 for salad, $28 or $48 for dumplings, and $100 to $188 for seafood.
HEALTH CLUB/SPA
Yes, we've finally come to what I thought was the second highlight of New Century, but is in fact their only highlight — the fitness centre. I talked before about the posters outside the gym being from 1989 and I doubt the equipment has changed since then, but who cares? I don't think there have been extraordinary breakthroughs in the area of dumbbell design or bench configuration since then. New Century's gym is loaded with all of the equipment you'll need for a full workout and best of all, 9 times out of 10 you'll have the place to yourself. The gym is located on the 14th floor and keeps hours daily from 9 am to 10 pm.
As for the New Century spa, it's the shoddiest place I've seen yet with prices to match. Full service runs a mere $1000, while companions of the European variety are $1500. (The latter only show up for work after 8 pm though.) If you don't want any extracurricular fun, the door pass is $230, and is good for 12 hours.
The New Century spa is located in the basement and is open 24 hours.
ENTERTAINMENT
There were Russian dancers before, but that show's been discontinued. Maybe you can still find a few of them in the bar?
BARS
I doubt New Century's Russian Bar ever has more than five people in it at a time. It's a bit of a shame though because the inside actually looks very hip, just as cool as anything you'd find in the City of Dreams or MGM. If the Russian Bar were there instead, I'm sure it could draw, but at New Century, it's just going to go to waste. I did see one hot Russian blonde when I was in there though, and I'd almost wager a guess that customers who go there don't spend a lot of time at the bar anyway, if you know what I mean. Drink prices are all around standard, $40 to $55 for beers while cocktails and harder shots are $55. For more premium fare, it still tends to stay under $100. A small selection of wine is also available. Hours at the Russian Bar are from 8 pm to 5 am.
SHOPPING
The lobby is actually pretty large, large enough to fit a convenience store, one ginseng shop and two watch and jewellery stores. If the jewellery stores are anywhere near as overpriced as the convenience store is, then watch out!
SUMMARY
Would it be unnecessarily mean to the people who work at New Century to say that everytime I leave the place I want to go home and take a shower? Yeah it probably would be so I'll take that back. Maybe all I need to say is New Century is yet another SJM property that was hurt badly by the influx of foreign investment post 2002. It's clearly the worst hotel out of all the ones with casinos in Macau, so in a word, don't stay there. Just don't do it.
As for the casino, some of the independant operators return 1.25%, which is an excellent deal. Jump all over that if high stakes Baccarat is your game. For everyone else, the mass gaming casino is every bit as battered and decrepit as the ruins in Athens. While I understand Greek Mythology is the name of the place, SJM didn't have to take things that far.
QUICK FACTS
- New Century Hotel
- Av. Padre Tomas Pereira No.889, Taipa, Macau.
- Tel: (853) 2883-1111
- Fax: (853) 2883-2222
- Email: www.newcenturyhotel-macau.com
- No of Rooms and Suites: 554
- No of Tables: 22 (mass gaming only)
- No of Slots: 92
- No of Live Game Machines: 56
Please login or register in order to leave a comment
Streaks Recognition for Casino Slots/ Streaks Method & Slots Thermometer |
HOME | Craps Home | Slots Home | Cards | Gambling History | Monte Carlo |
Roulette History | Roulette Rules | Roulette Systems | Baccarat History | Baccarat Rules | Baccarat Systems |
Keno History | Keno Rules | Keno Play | Blackjack History | Blackjack Rules | Basic Strategy |
Expectations | Card Counting | Efficiency | Betting Spread | Shoe Penetration | New Blackjack |
Bingo History | Bingo Basics | Bingo Rules | Bingo Games | Bingo Odds | Lottery History |
Horse Racing History | Horse Racing Types | Horse Races | Horse Racing Betting | Handicapping | Horse Racing Glossary |
Horse Racing Rules | Greyhound History | Greyhound Betting | Greyhound Program | Dog Handicapping | Greyhound Grading |
Greyhound Rules | Greyhound Glossary | Jai Alai History | Jai Alai Rules | Jai Alai Betting | Jai Alai Glossary |
Football History | Football Point Spread | Football Handicapping | Football Betting | Football Rules | Football Glossary |
Poker History | Poker Betting | Poker Outs | Poker Pot Odds | Poker Position | Poker Free Card Strategy |
Holdem Poker Glossary | Hole Card | ORDER | Links |
Streaks Method Slots Thermometer
Excerpt from Chapter 42
Gambling (and Life) Lessons from Greek Mythology
align='center'>Two Eyes see things, One Eye - ideas.
Greek Mythology Gambling Meaning
*******************************************************************
In This Chapter
ØOld Masters and Gambling in Antiquity
Ø Philosophical interpretations of Greek Myths
ØGambler’s interpretations of Greek Myths
Ø Philosophical and Gambling Analyses of 10 Myths:
Flight of Icarus
Death of Achilles
Trojan Horse
Polyphemus and Odysseus
Scylla and Charybdis
Hercules versus Hydra
Atalanta and Hyppomenes
Memnon and Achilles
Hera and Zeus
Perseus versus Medusa
*******************************************************************
Sometimes I think about our gambling predecessors from the good ol’ days when Olympic games had no rules, Beauty was measured and male and female gamblers wore the same sandals. Let’s “unchain our minds” and “let our imagination go” to have a glimpse of the views the ancient gamblers probably held on the general principles of gambling.
What the Old Masters could teach us – “modern” men and women about gambling? Since Gambling is, probably, older than the oldest profession, their accumulated wisdom should be deeper than the eyes of a philosopher and more precious than a last drop in a desert.
In the times when the ideals of Antiquity were taken literally, the gamblers were busy people. We know they played dice games and many others we’ve never heard of. They, of course, had their own “sport and race” gambling and made bets on who would win Olympic competitions and be the first at the finish line in the races. As a matter of fact, as the representatives of the developed culture, they bet on everything that was a part of their everyday life. From predictions and associated bets on how big will be the next year’s olive harvest to whose amphora is more beautiful on the basis of the proportions required by the Golden Ratio. Instead of a notebook and slacks, local bookies, probably, used marks on the ground, small pebbles and fingers (not the way we use them) to help with the calculations and dressed themselves in tunica.
All available information about that romantic era reached us in the form of the Myths presented by Homer (10th Century B.C) and Hesiod (9th or 8th Century B.C.) in a poetic form. Let’s take a closer look at Greek Mythology and poetry and try to “read between the lines” looking at the classical plots through the clear Vegas dice to get a gambling perspective on a probable Hellenistic wisdom, which can be used in our gambling.
Greek Myths are not only simply the best fairy tales to stir a young mind and imagination in the direction of heroic, noble and beautiful. According to opinion of many, they are, also, philosophical allegories expressing an ancient wisdom and, as such, they are an inexhaustible source for a mature reflection of an adult mind. Mythology is like a magic well – every time you drop a bucket down there, it comes back full of Light and Gold and amazingly deep thoughts about a nature of a man, relationships between humans and an interaction of a man and a world around him.
Often, Myths are the representations of bizarre events filled with unusual characters and creatures, unexpected twists and turns in the plots and surprising endings. Sometimes they look so grotesque on the surface, they become too complex and confusing to allow one simple interpretation. Every myth usually warrants few more or less acceptable explanations. Below, I’ll give you, first, few possible philosophical meanings of every myth and then offer a gambler’s version of it the way it can be perceived by a modern gambler.
The Flight of Icarus
The story of that Myth is well known. The King of Crete Minos held Daedalus – the greatest mechanic, sculptor and artist of Greece – against his will. Daedalus found the way for him and his son Icarus to leave the island using artificial wings. The wings would work under the condition of not flying too close to the sun or to the sea. The heat from the sun would melt a wax keeping feathers together and the water would make them wet and useless. During the flight Icarus went too high too close to the sun and fell down to his death.
Philosophical meaning of that Myth is the idea of a preference for a middle way instead of the extremes. That reflects our common everyday life experience showing that a moderate life style is a lot healthier than the one full of excesses. Speaking philosophically, we would express the same idea saying that a Virtue always walks the middle line and avoids the extremes of Pleasure and Self-denial. This way we would relate the meaning of the Myth to the area of Morale. My personal interpretation is: setting your goals too high or too low is setting yourself for a failure in life. If you’ll set your goals too high beyond your capabilities, you’ll break yourself trying to reach them. If you’ll set them too low, you won’t live up to your full potential. In both cases your life will not be fulfilled.
What I see in that Myth when I look at it as a gambler?
The father in the Myth is the wise gambler. He “lived the life”, he “knows the score”, and “he’s got stories to tell”. He devised the good workable strategy – to flop his way out of Crete. The correct way to use that strategy was to fly somewhere between two elements. The kid in the Myth is the young aspiring gambler. He is young, he has a whole life in front of him, but, like many gamblers, he is too impatient and wants to win one million olives or worthless drachms in a few hours of play. He breaks the big rule of gambling – play your strategy and nothing else and play it good. Flying too close to the sun was playing something else, but not his learned and initially adopted strategy. Result – the kid paid ultimate price, dropped all his bankroll and lost his gambling life and career. His father, a pro, stuck to the strategy to the end and finished the whole session successfully. According to the Myth, he landed safely in Sicily where the ancient King-Mafioso hid him in his palace away from the long hands of King Minos.
The main gambling lesson of that Myth is a paramount importance of 1) Discipline. On top of a poor discipline, the kid probably got greedy and over betted to get fast results. Any gambling pro, regardless of a particular nature of the game he plays, will tell you that a regular day is a slow grind of a small profit. Magnificent gambling coups are rare and they come on their own schedule. Since you can’t hurry them up, don’t go to your next session with a goal to get a “big one” no matter what. Instead, be realistic and make your main goal to stay in the game long-term, to win few bucks and have your bankroll in one piece.
Peripheral gambling implications of that Myth are: 2) Greed is the enemy; 3) to over bet is to ask for a disaster; 4) be realistic about your wins in your next session; 5) Patience is the Virtue.
Icarus broke Discipline and did not follow the strategy. What would be a good strategy in the minds of the Old Masters?
Death of Achilles
The famous Myth depicts the episode from the Trojan War. Where there is a war, there is a strategy. The war divided mortals and Gods in two opposite camps – one for Greeks and one for Trojans. Achilles was the greatest Greek hero. He was the son of the great hero Peleus and the lesser sea goddess Thetis and the grand - grand son of the one who walked softly but carried a big thunderbolt everywhere he went – Zeus himself.With that lineage Achilles had enough genetics to grow up to be a physical specimen. Eating bears’ brains for a breakfast and lions’ livers for dinner all his childhood also helped to beef him up. Unfortunately, during the war, he had a lot of “beef” with Apollo, the God of Light. Apollo saved many Trojans from Achilles’ sword in the battles that took place under the walls of Troy over 10 years of war. In result, “who the heck are you” was going back and forth between them for quite a while and the hulk directly threatened the God of Light more than once. Finally, the “moment of Truth” came and Apollo used Paris’ arrow to strike the hero down through his only vulnerable place – the Achilles’ heel.
Possible philosophical interpretations are many. Balance of things in the world – good is balanced by evil, beauty by ugliness, strength by weakness etc. Overall Achilles’ strength was counterbalanced by the weakness in the form of the vulnerable heel. Other possibility is the impossibility of Perfection, which is related to the previous interpretation. Another one is the coexistence of inseparable opposites in Nature and Man etc.
That’s how I see that Myth in gambling terms. Apollo was Zeus’ son and, as such, he was a God of a major ranking. Achilles was a third generation from Zeus and could not be Apollo’s match in principle. Vegas would give a 100 to 1 in favor of Apollo getting rid of Achilles in a straight muscle fight with few bladed weapons included – the one that Achilles, probably, had in mind. Look what Apollo does. Instead of a straightforward facedown, he refuses to play as he’s expected and uses the most effective strategy that saves him from all the hassle, risk and guarantees an easy victory. What a gambler, what a pro!
The Myth explains for me what is the only correct gambling strategy is. It is the strategy that first: 1) determines where a vulnerability of the game is and, second: 2) proceeds to exploit it. Apollo finds the vulnerability in Achilles’ heel and exploits it by introducing a poison from the arrow’s tip into a bloodstream of the man. The heel was the part of the Greek’s body. That tells us where we should look for vulnerability in every game we play - that vulnerability is an intrinsic (making it what it is) part of the game.
What is intrinsic to the games we play? The structure of the game in the form of the odds and payoffs attached to the offered to us bets and the conditions, which the game is played under. All bets in our games carry a disadvantage against us – we won’t find vulnerability in a structure of the current casino games. That leaves us only a second option – to find it in the conditions of the game or in the way it’s played.
The type of vulnerability Apollo used in that Myth was, obviously, literally and figuratively a structural one. The heel was the only weak part of Achilles’ body structure. Also, for Apollo to hit it was to make a bet with the greatest advantage for him. On the other hand, Thorp, Braun and few others found the vulnerability in the Blackjack of the Rat Pack days in the conditions of the game. The vulnerability stemmed from a very small size of a single deck of cards being shuffled for many rounds to the point of randomness in their appearance and being played to the end providing a 100% penetration into the deck. That made possible to use a simple count to get information about the value of upcoming cards and play accordingly. The long-term odds were changed in favor of a player. A player played a different game – it was still called Blackjack, but not the one casino expected the players to play. Casinos, however, were able to save the game by changing the way it was offered for a play. Instead of a single deck, the players have to fight now against 6 and 8-deck monsters. They make a count a lot more difficult to implement especially if you use a so-called True count for a better accuracy. They are not dealt out to the end and often give a 50% or less penetration making counting methods of the good ol’ days extremely inaccurate and unreliable. The decks are shuffled in a preferential way, and a dealer picks up the cards from the table in a specific way – all that promotes clumping of the cards of the same value and kills almost a pure random space, which the game enjoyed for the few years in the 1960s and early 1970s. Now, it’s a new game – it’s still called Blackjack, but not the one Thorp found the golden key for. To beat that game a new vulnerability should be found. The strategy to beat the game, obviously, should evolve parallel to and in step with the evolution of the game.
If a discovered vulnerability of the game will be so deep that casinos will not be able to shake it off by changing the conditions of the game, then, providing that enough players will wise up to the strategy exploiting that vulnerability, casinos will lose the game.
Greek Mythology Bingo
To put it shortly, that Myth for a gambler’s mind is nothing short of a condensed theoretical treatise on the basics of a correct strategy and vulnerability of the game. The gambler’s interpretation of that Myth is closer to its literal reading than possible philosophical interpretations mentioned above. We know that Homer and Hesiod delivered the Myths to us in a poetic form. Gambling analysis of that Myth and others makes you wonder: “who were those guys?” who created those myths. Were the real creators of them wise men, or were they wise and gambling men?
Thus, the lesson of that particular Myth is about the nature of a correct gambling strategy. The Myth also has a peripheral gambling advice. According to the Myth, before he sent an arrow, Apollo covered himself with a dark cloud – the pro used a camouflage.
A camouflage is the main lesson of the next Myth also related to the Trojan War.
Trojan Horse
The Myth tells about the last days of Troy. After 10 years of war, Greeks, finally, came up with the correct strategy to use the only vulnerable place of the city – the main gates – to get inside and finish the prolonged warfare on the streets of the city. Trojans had no desire to make it easy for the Greeks and to open the gates by themselves. Odysseus’s invention – a huge wooden horse – was supposed to do the trick. Greeks pretended that they left and the wooden horse was the only one standing in a clear sight in front of the city gates.Inside the horse, Odysseus and few other warriors were sitting in hiding. One Greek by the name Sinon showed up and sold Trojans the story that he left Greeks for “personal reasons”. He explained that the horse was the gift from the Greeks to the Goddess of the Battle Athena. The story was supported by the Ruler of the SeaPoseidon, who was on the side of the Greeks as was Athena. When Trojan priest Laocoon advised Trojans to destroy the horse, Poseidon sent two huge sea snakes to shut him up which they did. Trojans believed that, if they opened the gate and brought the horse in, they would please Athena. Motivated by their beliefs, Trojans dragged the lumber in. Odysseus and partners got out in the middle of the night and opened the gate for all the Greeks to get in and make an easy bloodbath out of the still sleepy Trojans.
Greek God Gambling
Among many possible philosophical interpretations, one of the most obvious is: since Trojans opened the gates themselves following their own beliefs, we can say that the prejudices and beliefs of the people often become the reason for the demise of theirown creators.
Let’s look at that Myth sitting in the king suite somewhere on Las Vegas strip. Odysseus, like the whole Odyssey proves it, talked, walked and played like a pro. He and his brothers-in-arms had the good strategy. He understood better than anybody that they would be allowed to play according to the strategy only if they would use a camouflage – they used the big horse and a thick cover of the night to disguise their real play and intent. Odysseus, obviously, is not the kind of a player who goes to theBlackjack or Craps tables sporting a T-shirt with big red letters across the chest or back screaming: “Counter for Life” or “Diagonal Grip for President”. Our hero, as well as all his team players, kept a low profile during the last winning session in casino of Troy when they finally took it down.
The gambling lesson of the importance of a camouflage is my favorite in that Myth. There are also other important lessons: 2) Trojans played their last game like 100% amateurs breaking the basic rules of gambling survival. Instead of being cautious, they were wishful thinking and ignored all signs of danger. Laocoon warnings fell on the deaf Trojan ears and they continued to play. 3) On top of everything, they were in a hurry to believe in Sinon’s Athena story and, like many players do in the cards games, they read into the game what was not there in the first place.
Great Myth – great gambling lessons. Odysseus was, probably, the greatest gambling champion among mortals in the whole Antiquity era. Next Myth is one of many proofs of that.
Odysseus and Polyphemus.
After the destruction of Troy Odysseus and his friends were on the way back home to Ithaca – his homeland – where his loyal and gorgeous wife Penelope waited for him like a wife for a sailor. During his dangerous voyage through many seas, his ship had to seek a safety from a storm in a small bay of the beautiful island. The island had a lush vegetation and as many goats as there were tourists in Vegas in a summertime…………………………………..