In my first week on Vavada casino , I dropped three thousand. It wasn’t tilt. Tilt is for amateurs. It was just the math punishing me. A bad run. I stuck to my rules, my bet sizing, my session limits. The next week, I was down five hundred more. My wife, who is a saint, just asked if I needed her to make me a sandwich. She knows the score. She knows the bad weeks are just the cost of doing business.

Then, in the third week, the tide turned. I remember it was a Tuesday night. The live dealer, a woman with a very professional, bored expression, was dealing from an eight-deck shoe. I was playing two hands, minimum bets, just feeling it out. And then the patterns started. It wasn't anything magical, just the statistical swing finally swinging my way. The dealer busted seven hands in a row. I started pressing my bets, not wildly, but incrementally.