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7 GAMBLING When customers asked me if I gambled, I used to say to them, “What kind of work do you do?” The responses were varied—insurance , car sales, homemaker. I’d respond with something to the effect of: “When you’re not cleaning your own home, do you go next door and clean your neighbor’s?” Or, “When you’re not selling a policy, do you go listen to someone else make a sales pitch?” The last thing I wanted to do after an eight-hour shift in a casino was go into another casino or a bar or anywhere noisy and smoky. I was forever amazed by the number of dealers who left work and went out to gamble. Some dealers I worked with ended up spending a day’s tokes on the nearest slot machine. Others preferred the table games. Still others bet the horses or sporting events. A few couldn’t wait to leave work. In the dealers’ room at the Maxim there was invariably a game of tonk or pitch going on. It wasn’t unusual to see one or two dealers lose a day’s tips in a game of one- and two-dollar pitch. I worked in six different casinos, and in every one of them someone was booking bets on sporting games. A few dealers bet the sports and held back enough money to play cards on breaks. When I broke in at the Mint in blackjack and roulette, I dealt often to dealers from the Horseshoe, the Golden Nugget, and the Four Queens d u m m y u p a n d d e a l 122 who were on their fifteen- or twenty-minute breaks. They’d come in with their aprons off, buy in for twenty, and stack chips all over the layout, everything on one spin. Occasionally they’d come in in pairs or small groups and descend on a game like locusts, hands flying all over the place as they laid the bets down. I’d end up mucking up about a thousand chips, win or lose, and if they hit a number, they didn’t toke. They’d just give me one of those I’m-stuck-a-bundle looks. Once I had a group from the Four Queens on a roulette game, and they hit the big number, chips stacked all over it. They jumped up and down and hollered, happy as any tourist who’d hit big. They’d been in twice that evening. I knew they were stiff and in a hurry to get back and work. I didn’t flinch, just took my time paying each one and pushing the stacks out. They were hollering at me, telling me what the payoffs were, etc. I nodded and moved as unhurriedly as possible and still get the job done. One of them complained to the floorman that I was too slow. I’ll never forget what Maury said to them. “He’s got all night to get it right.” Maury smiled at me and walked away. It didn’t take long to learn to pick out the degenerates, the ones who have lost control of their lives. They’d sit on the game, living and dying with every spin, every toss, every turn of the cards, losing more than they could afford. Whether another dealer or just a customer, a sadness surrounded them, a kind of infectious doom that sat almost as heavily on me as it did them. I could never gamble, be like them, because for a given time I was a unwilling witness to their despair. I didn’t want any of my own. A dealer once said to me, “If everyone’s here for a good time, why isn’t anyone smiling?” I think the major reason why I never took up gambling was that type of experience, that being an unwilling party to someone else’s misery, and I simply didn’t want to impose myself on some other dealer or to see in a dealer’s eye that knowing look. It’s as if we all should know better. But too many didn’t and don’t. Some have lost cars and houses and jobs and wives and husbands, everything to gambling. 1999 It went on for over forty-five years before I ever came out here, first sports, mostly football and baseball. When I came out here, I’d go bet a game or two...

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