Strike!
Going Full Time Playing Blackjack onLine
Every two years our union contract comes up for renewal with our employer.
It expires on the 31st of December and they begin bargaining sometime in
February. The union pulled the plug and started the countdown for a strike.
That deadline passed last night, and the union is ready to walkout. They
continue to try and work out a deal, but we could be walking on the 2nd
of July.
For many of my fellow employees, a strike can be a big deal. You have to show up and picket for four hours over two weeks to qualify to get a strike pay of $200. Last time around I was a picket captain. I organized my group of people and we walked for just over two weeks. This time I will be striking from home. Striking down one onLine casino after another!
First thing I had to do was get my ducks in order. I have a few sites on the go that need some action to pull the cash out of. I also have sites with winnings that need to be withdrawn. The time off provided by a strike is what I need to catch up with all my onLine banking.
My goal is rather simple: to make as much money playing blackjack onLine as I do at work. My take home pay is $130 a day. This would equal around $80US a day in onLine bonus winnings. With so many casinos offering $100 sign up bonuses this should be a breeze.
Just before we crossed the strike deadline, I got a 50% bonus offer from my old buddies at the Fortune Lounge group of casinos. For a $200 deposit before July 1st they will give me a $100 bonus. The required play is 5 x D & B, or $1500 in action. 750 hands of $2 blackjack sounds like a lot more fun that walking in circles chanting strike slogans and using your body to block vehicles driven by road raging homicidal maniacs.
I loged into 7 Sultans casino to deposit $200. The $100 is added on July 1st, a day before I figure we will be on strike. My old MC was still registered but I know MC does not allow onLine casino deposits so I registered my CIBC US VISA card. I was shocked that it was refused. I gave the MC a shot and as expected it too was rejected. Oh boy.
Next stop, PayPal. All of the Microgaming casinos now have the software to take you to the PayPal site and make deposits. The problem is my PayPal account has run dry. All of the money is already on deposit at a number of sports books and casinos. It can take up to three days for me to top up my PaPal account. I needed to get my money out there to take advantage of these offers before the July 1st deadline.
A few months ago when I was switching computers, all of my onLine casinos software was lost due to my son "Mr. Happy Fingers" playing with the computer when it was copying files over. Fortune Lounge casinos has recently put all of their casinos on one disk and I had requested a copy of it. I decided to give Fortune Room a try hoping that it may have had something to do with their older 16 bit software that 7 Sultans is still using. I was happily surprised to see $90 still sitting in my account here. My records show that I had left the bonus and winnings in the account after requesting the return of my deposit.
I went into the banking area and saw the one card that was being accepted after MC started refusing deposits about a year ago. I pressed the buttons and requested a $200 deposit. Bingo! My good old Royal Bank VISA card was still working! And why shouldn't it be? If I remember correctly, they were skimming about 3% between the deposit and refund to get their piece of the cake. That is the reason I switched to the CIBC US VISA card with a $35US fee. I could limit the skim to $35 in one year. The Royal Bank card was taking almost $35 Canadian from each $1000 of action put over on it. The Canadian dollar is swimming around 66 cents, so I began to hope it would dip to 63 to cover the cost of doing business with Royal Bank.
I went back to 7 Sultans and registed the Royal Bank VISA and deposited $200 to the $108 I had sitting there. Vegas Villa had $45 which I added $200 to, and Vegas Palms was bone dry until I deposited $200 there. I played a few hands at each casino and then went to bed knowing my "Strike Contingency Plan" was now in full swing.
Time to call CIBC and tell them to scrap the US VISA card. There is no reason to keep it if they are not going to let me use it to deposit at these onLine casinos. I will save myself the $35 per annum fee which was a nice way to cap my onLine blackjack expenses. They were never making any money doing business with me, and that is why banks offer these services. I kept my expenses to $35 for one year, and that was good enough for me.
Monday 1 July 2002
Still no word on the impending strike. Never the less, my "Strike Contingency Plan" is in full effect. Looking to make at least $80US per day, I have $400 in bonuses ready to be taken down, and a further $800US in onLine deposits. That should cover the first five days of the strike (5x80 = $400).
Happy 135th Birthday Canada! The people at Blackjack Ballroom casinos are recognizing Canada by offering a $100 100% bonus for all Canadian players. Some of their casinos have added blackjack to its exclusion list of craps and roulette, so I verified that blackjack qualified for the bonus and it does. I am required to play it through three times, which makes this deal so much sweeter than the 50% $100 5 x Fortune Lounge bonuses. I wonder what these places will be offering for July the 4th?
So now I have $500 lined up and ready to go. Now I don't want to spend my entire day behind
this screen either. I will be home with my kids and will want to get them outside to play and
enjoy the summer. I remember my summer holidays when I was their age, so the #1 plan for the
strike is a trip to Wasaga Beach. That evening I will begin to pound out a living, hand by hand,
$2 at a time, and enjoy the summer days outside of the city.
Tuesday 2 July 2002
Back to work. Management and the union are still talking, so I didn't get any extra time off. And those darn terms and conditions! You have to really read them over before you make your deposits. "Purchase and play your deposit and get a 50% bonus." It was the PLAY part that I missed. I ended up getting bonuses of $1 $2 and $8. I called them up and explained what had happened and suggested they let me play the money instead of pulling it all back out again. It worked! They said to call them back an hour after I had played the $200 and they would give me the full $100. I decided to do that all last night and didn't get to bed until 2:30AM. It was rather hot last night so it was easy to stay awake and play $800 of blackjack. Still hoping talks will break down and I will get a few days off. If not, I will get my raise AND all of this bonus money!
Wednesday 3 July 2002
It took a few phone calls, but I got my bonuses. One of the accounts has a balance of $300 but the other three accounts are closer to $400 after $200 in play. Talks are at a stand still and our union has given a final deadline of 12:01AM 4th of July. This is very convenient as this is our payday and the money should be in the bank by then. I am beginning to line up my run of casinos for the second week of the strike if it goes that long.
DAY1 - Thursday 4 July 2002
Yee Haa! It finally happened. I am now a househusband! I got up and sent the wife off to work. Made her a lunch, gave her the car keys, and began making a living from home. The kids have plans already so the trip to the beach is off. It is probably too hot even for that right now. Made a coffee and logged on and began to play. How much do I have to play to make $80 a day?
Working with the 50% $100 bonus at the required 5 x action requirement, I would have to play 4/5 of it each day, which is equal to $1200 a day. I have already put in $800 to obtain the bonuses, and just played $100. After another $300 in hands I have made my $80. This does not included the amounts that I am up over the original deposit and bonus. That amount will only be taken into consideration when the last hand is put into play. Well, its time for breakfast. Gotta go!
DAY 2 - Friday 5 July 2002
Ha! Surprise surprise surprise! I called CIBC about my USD VISA to enquire about why my transactions were being blocked. I was also going to see what would happen if I cancelled the card and got a refund. I do have a whack of cash out there that was to return to this card and didn't get the time to play it. The surprise is the cancelled may card because I missed a payment! I have a ton of cards with tons of credit on them and they should know better. So the fact remains that CIBC USD VISA will still work for onLine transactions. I can call to get another one when I want to.
Today should be a full day of playing, but I have the kids today. Normally I don't "work" on the weekend, but maybe this weekend will be the exception and I will do some of today's "work" on Friday Saturday and Sunday.
DAY 3 - Monday 8 July 2002
I had a rather busy weekend. There was a Saturday viewing for an auction that started Sunday. Friday evening when we got back from seeing "Just Like Mike" with the kids we were invited to an unpublicised auction on the Saturday. So the weekend was filled with converting the locked in portions of my bankroll into works of art, gold coins that I got for the price of the gold alone, and a Persian hand woven Tabriz rug for 1/4 of it's value. Maybe not the thing to be doing in the middle of a strike, but chance often only shows itself once, and often at the most importune times.
After I dropped the wife off at the subway and before I went to pick up my collection of British Sovereigns, I hit one of the sites that I am working over. Giving it the old 2 4 8, I put in 1200 in action, often having to back down to 2 to start over after a battle of the 8's as I clicked the early morning away. I will finish off the required action tonight and piddle about afterwards and coax the bank up to the $391 it was when the battle commenced this morning. I am at $345 right now. Slightly behind in required action, but also enjoy the time off relaxing. You CAN have it all!
DAY 4 - Tuesday 9 July 2002
Last night we went back to the auction. This time I purchased the 1867-1967 Centennial set of Canadian coins, including the rather rare $20 gold coin which is 1/2 oz. of gold. I got the entire mint set for less than the cost of the gold in the $20 coin. I also picked up another gold Sovereign one minted for South Africa.
Back to blackjack. Put in another batch of hands this morning, after waxing the car. As you can imagine, playing blackjack for a living is about as exciting as doing just about anything else. You want to put in the action quickly, but risk doing a nosedive into your expected winnings. Tedious $2 bets take forever, so it remains a balancing act between the tedious and the risky, dancing from $2 to $4 to $8 bets versus the Microgaming RNG. Boring!
DAY 5 - Wednesday 10 July 2002
Last night was the end of the auction. When all was said and done, I had 2 1/2 oz of gold coins, all at below the price of gold. I plan on selling these coins to turn a profit. The birth of McGarvey Antiques? Another business to add under the Enterprises Unlimited umbrella.
Rather dissatisifed with yesterday's blackjack. I finished one site off and ended up with the deposit and bonus, but very little of the original money that was sitting dormant in the account. The second site I went to began doing the same thing to my balance, so I stopped playing for the day. To make myself feel better I reminded myself that I could be walking in circles and possibly make $200 for 10 days on the picket line. This is equal to $125US. And I am not done with these sites just yet. Many times I have logged on and pushed my balance up by $100. Let's see what happens today.
DAY 6 - Thursday 11 July 2002
Oh-oh! Looks like I will be going back to work tomorrow. That's fine with me. Politically speaking I am rather right winged and really don't like being a part of a union. On the other hand, I do feel that the union does try to protect people, and has, in the past, forced the line upwards for the average working person whether they are in a union or not. Another one of those subjects that gets people going. Like abortion, religion, and who will win next year's Super Bowl!
Yesterday I held my ground pounding away with McGarvey's Grind. Starting with $381 I played for two hours and ended up with $381 finishing off the second casinos required action. At one point I had the balance up to $425, but the hands just were not co-operating. I thought I should change from the Grind to the Capped Marty on a number of occasions trying to outsmart the game. Has Microgaming finally got the hang of Artificial Intelligence? I doubt that. The fact of the matter is, no matter what system you fire at the game, you have no advantage other than the 50% bonus.
Virtual City finally allowed me my 100% Canada Day Bonus. They said they were having trouble with their machines and told me to be patient and that I would get my money. Too bad I couldn't get 100% bonuses from the other sites. That would have cut the required action down to a more reasonable level. Such is the life of an onLine blackjack player. Because I needed the action to cover my time off on strike, I took what I could get right now. Normally I just sit back like a sniper waiting for a good clean shot at a decent 100% bonus, or something better than that, 200% at times.
Friday 12 July 2002
Back to work! Since I have not put in all of the required action at all of the sites, I will not be able to give a final tally for probably about a week. I have $500 in bonuses on the line, and have $200 of them secured. Though I have lost some of the previous bonus money in the process, I would hope that one of the other three sites will end up being a little more favourable. The six days off times the $80 works out to $480, just enough to cover my week off. I enjoyed the time off, and didn't work too hard at the blackjack playing. I think anyone can do better than I did by putting more time in than I did.
It's great to know that you don't have to worry about little blips in your income. If you are a part time worker, or at home from an injury of some sort, there is always another way to pull in some cash. Even if you never miss a day of work, you can enjoy the leisurely pleasure of playing blackjack for fun and for profit!
It's now Labour Day weekend and most of the checks are in. There is still one outstanding that I have not finished off the full required amount of action for. Some of the casinos only refunded a portion of the money and told me that I had not given them the entire action required and only gave me back $100 instead of my full deposit of $200. This ended up costing them a bit more money than it would have otherwise. The final check is from Virtual City.
