Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/1513811
And he's so worked up he says, 'Krause, you have to go to a different table, or they'll figure out we're running a scam on them, and they'll throw us out!' So I go over to a different table, watch it go red a couple of mes, and then I put my first two bucks on black. Bam! I lose. I put my four bucks up--wham! It's gone. Eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, a hundred and twenty eight...and I'm broke. I think I was at that table four minutes, and I lost every dime! "Now, this is embarrassing. You know, I have a Mas- ters degree in Engineering, but I also have a minor in Probability Theory. I know completely well that a system like this has a predictable nega ve outcome. Eventually, you're going to wind up busted. If you're lucky enough to get a streak you can win a li le mon- ey, but you have to be able to stop before the streak ends and you lose it all. I knew all that, but here I was, my whole wad was gone, and it wasn't even ten o'clock in the morning yet. That wheel went red 13 mes in a row the moment I walked up, what's the odds of that? I'm serious, I'd been in a Vegas casino for a total of ten minutes and I was already totally broke. "Dazed and demoralized, I shuffled on down to the other end of the hall, and here's Sieman at his ta- ble. Chips stacked up eight inches high--one stack, two stacks, three, four--he's got a small fortune in winnings in front of him, and he's only been playing, what, thirty minutes? He'd never lost once, every- thing ran his way. He's got a cigar burning and I walk up, he whispers 'Krause! How'd you do? Look at all this money!' I can't speak. "He dragged up all these chips and went over to the cashier, turned them all in for cash, and then he's standing behind this kiosk coun ng it like some kind of shylock money-lender. 'Krause! Look! I won like 378 dollars! How did you lose? It's not complicated..." I'm s ll too stunned to say anything. "I tell him the table went red 13 mes in a row, and he's s ll convinced that I did something wrong. So he says 'Here, we'll go back and you just stand next to me for luck.' So we go back, I stand and watch while he just con nues to win. Oh he'd lose one or two, but then he'd win six, seven mes in a row. He piled up another three, four, five hundred dollars! Then he'd gather it all up, scurry back to the teller window and cash it in, so he'd have the cash in his pocket. He went like this all day--win some, cash it in, go back to the tables. I'd stand there next to him and watch; what else am I going to do, I haven't got a dime. But at one point I go off to the men's room, and when I get back he's panicking. 'Krause! Where'd you go? Don't you ever leave! I lost seven mes the minute you walked away! Don't leave my side!' So I du fully keep standing there, and you know he just kept winning, and winning, and winning, on a stupid double-up strategy that everybody knows is a losing proposi on. The dealer was dumbfounded. But Rick just stood there and beat the odds, and he was ecsta c." A lot of fun followed, but the truth is, we ended up back in L.A. with no money, a $50 beater truck with a new $2000 stereo system in it, and about three million dollars worth of memories. Paul: "I guess this is a great me to reveal the source of Rick's "Super Hunky" nickname. There's been a lot of myth spread about where that name came from, but I'll set the record straight. Rick grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, in a family that originally came from Czechoslovakia, or from what became Czechoslovakia a er the collapse of the Aus- tro-Hungarian empire following World War I. There happens to be a lot of Czechs in Youngstown, and though calling a Czech a "Bohunk" was rela vely disparaging, it was accepted as local slang describ- ing someone of Czech descent. What a lot of folks don't know about Rick is that, in his youth, he was a very serious weightli er, and he worked out con- stantly, with an eye on a possible Olympic career. With an affinity for high weights and lots of me in the gym, his gym-mates started calling him "Super Hunky," as in "Super Bohunk." Somehow the name followed him from Ohio to California, although Rick always claimed to hate that nickname. Vic: "Is that true? I never knew that..." Paul: "It was in Rick's book, Monkey Bu . Didn't you read it there?" Vic: "I know I've got that book around here some- where...." Paul: "Of course, you know as well as me that Rick just lived to pull off stunts that drew all kinds of a en on. Lots of it posi ve, but of course plenty of it nega ve as well." Vic: "You mean like the me he rode a Triumph chopper in the Mint 400 desert race?" Paul: "Yep, and the Fastest Dirt Bike ever, with the 130 mph KTM 495, and of course any of his chain lube shootouts, or the two-stroke oil shootout."