By way of an introduction, a former colleague and friend who I call John, told us this story over a Bacardi and Coke quite a few decades ago.
John is still is a bundle of fun, a dynamic, free-spirited soul who turned out to be a brilliant strategist and team leader.
We were trying to encourage him to join us in the casino at the time, but he was unusually reluctant. To support his decision to decline the invitation, he chose to share the following story with us.
He said that as a younger man he was a professional gambler, albeit part-time. In fact, he was a member of the High Rollers Club at Sun City at a time when Sun International’s Casino resorts existed only within the tribal homelands designated by the Nationalist Government.
The story had its beginnings after John had fallen head over heels in love. He and his partner had decided to buy their first home together. They had found the house of their dreams and had amassed just enough savings for a deposit.
One of the many expensive perks of membership of the High Rollers Club was that you could travel on Sun City’s own jet to and from the resort for free. So, for reasons he was unable to properly explain, John decided to take the flight to Sun City from Johannesburg and visit the exclusive club.
They didn’t call the exclusive Privé ‘the High Rollers Club’ for nothing. This was a smallish but lavish gaming room where patrons, selected for their high net worth and/or expensive gambling habits, could enjoy a few hours or days placing big stakes for big wins, while being pampered with exotic foods, copious amounts of world-renown liquors plus a whole lot of personal care and attention, all with the compliments of the resort.
Here the wealthy would dabble with anything from a hundred to one-million rand and more, per pot. In those days, the odds were more in favour of the punters, so you stood a reasonable chance of winning big, although you would need to have reserves on hand that could absorb equally as big a loss without wanting to commit suicide if you had a bad day at the office.
Into this familiar world, our friend entered boldly and with confidence, and proceeded to play the blackjack table with his thirty thousand rands savings intended for the house deposit (the equivalent of about a quarter of a million rand today). But on this day, and contrary to his usual run of luck, John lost it all in a matter of hours.
He was distraught. But he was way more frightened of what would happen when he told his bride to be that he had lost the deposit on the house of her dreams, than he was with the actual loss itself!
He took the shuttle bus to Sun City’s airfield, which lay across the way from the resort complex, and sat alone in the empty waiting room until five o’clock that afternoon contemplating his miserable plight. It was a terrible and scary time and there was no one with whom he could share his troubles. He sat and considered his next moves and only once he was airborne on his way back to the city, did he finally decide on a plan.
But so risky was this plan, that John resorted to serious prayer, which in itself had been, until then, quite alien to him. He asked the Great Provider for forgiveness. He explained his plan to win back his house deposit and asked for divine intervention to protect him from failure. In return, he committed faithfully and on his unborn children’s lives, that he would never ever gamble again!
Still shaken and worried, John had a restless night, tossing and turning. During the night he also sought the Lord’s council and asked for some kind of sign that the risk he contemplated would be covered. The sign did not come. Notwithstanding, his complete commitment to his Heavenly undertakings filled him with courage that all would be right on the night!
The very next morning John presented himself at his bank and secured a loan for thirty thousand rand with the usual unfavourable terms.
Unperturbed and filled with self-inspired determination, John boarded the Sun City jet to head for the casino for the second time, with cash in hand.
He returned to the blackjack table and commenced the task of trying to win back the deposit for his house. To his excitement and amazement, he found himself on a roll of good luck and in no time had won back the thirty thousand rand he had lost the day before.
By midday John was sitting with sixty thousand rand cash in his hand. Committed to his undertakings of the day before and despite the fact that he was still very much on a roll, he immediately stopped playing as soon as his goal was reached.
He then caught the shuttle bus back to the Sun City airport terminal and sat out the afternoon entirely alone, waiting for the 5pm flight back to the city.
Again, John had plenty of time to contemplate the smooth road ahead to his upcoming wedding and the dream house purchase. Life was back on track once again. It was quite a tale with a very happy ending, and we bade him good night.
The following night I decided to wander down to the casino floor to see if I could drop lucky and there, to my surprise, there was John well and truly playing a game of chance.
What are you doing? I asked, having bought the story he had told us just a day earlier hook, line, and sinker.
Shush, he replied with a twinkle in his eye. Don’t believe everything you see, nor some of the things you hear. And if anyone asks, you didn’t see me here! And with that he cashed in his chips and bade me good night.