{"id":1779,"date":"2014-03-22T07:59:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-22T14:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/?p=1779"},"modified":"2018-03-02T07:59:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T15:59:56","slug":"an-audience-of-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/archives\/1779","title":{"rendered":"An Audience of Two"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was bored listening to talks at the Las Vegas<!--more--> ACM convention\u2014Association for Computing Machinery; so I left the room and wandered the wide circular hallway of the Convention Center; and a Baldwin concert grand was just sitting there! No one in sight, I sat down and began the 3\/4-time first movement of Mozart\u2019s Sonata in F, K. 332.<\/p>\n<p>People always show up when music begins; and in a few moments a lady was standing by the piano. The Convention-Center nurse, in her starched nurse\u2019s cap. Then a sturdy fellow appeared, wearing heavy shoes and khaki work clothes, with tools hanging from his wide belt. He and she both had a bit of gray in their hair.<\/p>\n<p>They listened intently as I played to the end of the movement, and we smiled at each other. He turned to her and bowed and said, \u201cMay I have this dance?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><center class=\"jb-trill\"><img src=\"\/trill.svg\" scale=\"0\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>On that same visit, I asked a pit boss at my hotel if someone could really make money playing blackjack using the system in Edward Thorp\u2019s book <i>Beat the Dealer<\/i>. \u201cIf he\u2019s not greedy,\u201d he said politely. \u201cIf he\u2019s greedy, we\u2019ll make it impossible.\u201d His face had a slightly amused look; and his eyes kept moving, watching everything, lighting on me for a half-moment at a time. I said, \u201cSo you\u2019re aware when someone\u2019s playing the system.\u201d The eyes lit on me for <i>two<\/i> moments, and he said, \u201cIt\u2019s money.\u201d <span class=\"jb-end-of-post\"><img class=\"jb-end-of-post\" src=\"\/Mordent.svg\" scale=\"0\"><\/span> <span class=\"jb-end-of-post\"><img class=\"jb-end-of-post\" src=\"\/Mordent.svg\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was bored listening to talks at the Las Vegas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1780,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions\/1780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}