My entire department got laid off. Not just me, everyone. One of those corporate "restructuring" things. They gave us a week to clean out our desks. It was brutal, but weirdly, it brought us all together. We’d been colleagues for years, but suddenly we were comrades in arms, sharing resumes and cheap coffee in the breakroom for the last time. On the final Friday, we decided to have one last hurrah. Not a sad party at a bar, but a virtual one. A Zoom call where we could all just be together, complain, laugh, and say a proper goodbye.

We were about an hour in. The stories were flowing, everyone was a little tipsy, and the conversation started to lag. Someone, I think it was Sarah from accounting, said, "You know what we should do? Something we'd never do on a work computer. Something stupid." Ideas were thrown out—online tarot reading, those personality quizzes, watching weird YouTube videos. Then Mike, who was always the risk-taker, said, "I've got an idea. Everyone throw ten bucks into a pot. I know a place. We'll play one hand of live blackjack. For the team."

It was so absurd it was perfect. We all Venmo'd Mike. Fifty bucks. The fate of our collective severance package—well, fifty bucks of it—was in his hands. He shared his screen. We saw him type in the web address and there it was, the bright lobby of the sky247 live casino. It was nothing like the slot games I’d seen ads for. This was different. This felt real. He clicked on a blackjack table. A real human dealer, a guy named Dimitri, smiled out from the screen. He was in a sharp tuxedo, sitting in a real-looking studio. "Good evening, players," he said, and it felt like he was talking directly to us. We all waved at Mike’s screen like idiots.

Mike placed our entire fifty-dollar fortune on a single hand. One hand to rule them all. The pressure was immense. Dimitri dealt. Mike got a 9 and a 7. Sixteen. The worst hand. The dealer was showing a 10. A collective groan went through the Zoom call. We were doomed. The etiquette box on the screen lit up: "Hit" or "Stand." We started yelling over each other. "Hit! We have to!" "No, he'll bust us!" It was chaos. Mike, sweating and laughing, clicked "Hit."

The moment stretched out forever. Dimitri smoothly dealt the card. It was a 5. Mike’s hand was 21. Our Zoom call exploded. We were screaming, cheering, clapping. People’s spouses were coming into the frame to see what all the noise was about. Dimitri, the professional, simply turned over his hole card. It was a 6. He had 16. He drew another card. A 10. He busted! We won! Dimitri gave a small, professional smile and pushed the digital chips our way. Our fifty dollars had become a hundred.

We were heroes. We’d beaten the house together. Mike, high on victory, went to the withdrawal page immediately. "We are not pushing our luck," he declared. "We're cashing out and ordering pizza for everyone, on this bet." And he did. He sent us all our original ten bucks back via Venmo and used the fifty-dollar profit to send a mountain of pizzas to everyone's houses. An hour later, we were all still on Zoom, eating pizza from the same chain but in our own homes, still laughing about it.

That was months ago. We’re all in different jobs now, or still looking. But we have a group chat that’s still active. And sometimes, on a Friday night, someone will pop in and say, "Hey, remember Dimitri?" I’ve gone back to the sky247 live section a few times myself, never betting more than a little. I like the human element. It feels less like battling a machine and more like playing a game with a real person on the other end. But I’ve never had another experience like that night. It wasn’t about the money. It was about turning a really crap situation into a weird, joyful, shared memory. It was about fifty bucks and a dealer named Dimitri giving a bunch of unemployed friends the perfect, most ridiculous goodbye gift.