Blackjack

“ A great many of our men naturally went to the Casino to behold the world-famous gambling tables, but if I ever had any worries about their squandering their earnings they quite disappeared. Many only watched at the outer edge, or else bet one chip very timidly. An aged harpy, who looked as though she had played at Monte Carlo since the time of Napoleon III and who kept a note-book of her losses and winnings and never bet less than a hundred francs at a time, took it upon herself to teach one of our talented young flute players how to play with one white chip. ”

“ It really seemed like a private game, with all of the players masked.
I watched one more hand, as much to see how the details were carried on silently, as for any other reason, for I knew the game. It was what is colloquially known as “seven-card pique,” though it bears no relation whatever to piquet, being a corruption of ordinary stud poker. Two cards were dealt around first, face down. Then the next card was turned face up for each player. The highest card had the privilege of betting or checking the bet. The next man to the left then could bet, drop, raise or simply check. ”

“ The law is very strict. Whenever and wherever he is observed, the card-player for money may be arrested. [15] There must be distinct evidence, however, that money changes hands. Gambling-houses do not exist and never have existed. The three-card man, the hunt-the-pea artist, and the roulette board are not seen at public fêtes. They would be promptly "run in." But the professional gambler does exist. So far as his art is concerned, he is generally a poor species of ruffian. Loaded dice and sufficient sleight of hand to substitute them for the legitimate ivories are his stock in trade. ”

“ The business of the place is naked gambling, and there is no effort to hide it or soften it with the "social amenities." The players barely glanced at us as we entered, and the games go on. A man with the appearance of a mechanic, reaches over the monte table and chucks a pile of silver half-dollars down on a particular card. The dealer draws the cards with a steady hand, the player wins, and the assistant, without a word, shoves toward him the amount of his winnings, in gold or silver. ”

“ He passed the barrier, closely followed by Bruce, crossed the foyer, and disappeared through the baize doors that guard the magnificent room in which roulette is played.
Round several of the tables a fairly considerable crowd had gathered already. The more, the merrier, is the rule of the Casino. There is something curiously fascinating for the gambler in the presence of others. It would seem to be an almost ridiculous thing for a man to stalk solemnly up to a deserted board and stake his money on the chances of the game merely for the edification of the officials in charge. ”

“ In his pockets, he was carrying less than two hundred dollars in cash.
Now, nobody with that kind of chicken feed can expect to last long at the Golden Casino unless they stick to the two-bit one-armed bandits. But putting money on a roulette table is in a higher bracket by far than feeding a slot machine, even if you get a steady run of lemons.
Howley didn't waste any time. He headed for the roulette table right away. He watched the play for about three spins of the wheel, then he took out his gadget—in plain sight of anyone who cared to watch—and set the dial for thirteen. ”

“ In the penny machines in the cigar stores the probabilities are harder to figure. You play a cent in the machine, and if you get two pairs from a revolving pack of cards, always exposing the faces of five, you win a 5-cent cigar. In most of the machines you must get "jacks up or better" in order to win. Any poker player will bet you a chip on any deal that you will not have as good as a pair of trays, and the chances that you will have two pairs as good as jacks up must be at least twenty to one. ”

“ Forty-four cards are employed, the nine and ten spots being discarded. “Chips” are “barred,” and the players stake cash or its negotiable equivalent. The bank, too, is exposed, and is placed in the center of the table, and contains from $250 to $500 in silver, arranged in stacks of $20 each. The game is very fascinating, counting its devotees by scores, and a great deal of money is bet on it. The dealer deals from his hand as in poker, and it is supposed to be exceedingly difficult for him to “put up” a game, a belief that adds not 507a little to its popularity. ”

“ Twenty or thirty men were betting at roulette, in groups of three or four each. John passed them with a negligent, preoccupied air, walking straight back.
No faro play was just then going on. At one layout sat a dealer in that state of chilled ophidian tension characteristic of professional gamblers in the face of their prey, and by none so remarkably achieved as by the faro bank dealer, who drinks ice water without warming it, who sees without looking, who speaks only under great provocation and then softly, and whose slightest movement is pontifical until he reaches for the six-shooter. ”

“ I very much doubt whether any player ever won more than 100,000 francs at a single sitting. To do even that he must plunge like a ship in a hurricane. There is, of course, a saving limit set by the Casino Company upon the play. It is to the interest of the Casino to cultivate the idea, and the letter writers are willing tools. Not only at Monte Carlo, but everywhere, in dearth of news, gambling stories come cheap and easy. And the cheaper the story the bigger the play. “The Jedge raised him two thousand dollars. ”

“ I never saw anything but poker played in the house, but the game was sometimes for tremendous stakes. Everybody seemed to have almost unlimited money who came there to play, for money was plentiful in Washington that year, and a thousand-dollar bet was no more an occasion for surprise than one of fifty dollars, though a five- or ten-dollar limit game was common enough,114 too. You could play a modest game if you liked, for there were several tables going every night, but if you preferred, you could generally get into a table stakes game and flash any sort of a roll you saw fit. ”

“ On the dealer’s side, besides the rack containing the chips, the cash drawer and the invisible six-shooter, is a little metal box in which a pack of cards will snugly lie, face up. The dealer moves the cards off one at a time. They fall alternately into two piles. One pile wins; the other loses. The players bet which pile a card will fall in, indicating it by the way they place their money on the table. No vocal sound is necessary. It is a silent game. The expert might play for ever and never speak a word. ”

“ Bets are then made by placing one’s stake on the card betted on; and are decided according to which of those laid out first makes its appearance, as the dealer draws card after card from the top of the pack. It is a game at which the dealer has such advantages, and which, at the same time, gives him such facilities for cheating, that any one who continues to bet at it is sure to be fleeced.
Faro, which was the more favorite game for heavy betting, and was dealt chiefly by Americans, is played on a table the same size as a monte table. ”

“ Nik hesitated. "Maybe it's hard to understand, but ... do you see those white chips?"
"Yes."
"The casino issues only a limited number of them—each casino has its own chips. There are never quite enough to go around. And they're the only things you can use to gamble. Objectively they mean nothing—they have no value. But they've come to have a special value here. A compulsive gambler will do almost anything to get more chips, especially if he's a heavy loser. Without chips he can't gamble. That's why there are some things you can buy with chips that you can't get any other way." ”

“ But there is another device known to the manipulators of this game which is even a more bare-faced robbery than the use of “strippers” and “faked” boxes. When a “soft mark” is playing at the table and has repeatedly doubled his stake, and begins to see the bottom of the pile of money which he has brought with him, he very frequently asks the dealer how long he will be permitted this mode of play. The dealer, after estimating in his own mind the amount of money which the dupe may have in his possession, tells him that the doubling must quit on either the second or third run. ”

“ There is one banker and any amount of players, each one of whom holds the box in turn. When a point under ten is thrown all the players lose their stake. If, however, a point above ten is thrown the banker pays double on all stakes. At private play every player banks in his turn, but in the Palais Royal the bank was, of course, held for the proprietors of the gaming-rooms.
The game of creps or craps mentioned in the list of tolerated games is now obsolete as a medium for any serious gambling in Europe. ”

“ The most approved methods of cheating are practiced in the Paris gambling dens. One is by arranging a “chaplet,” that is, putting the cards into the deck in some particular order, the succession of which is retained by the memory of the dealer; “stocking” the cards, as it is called in the United States. The collusion of a card room attendant is necessary to affect this. With a “chaplet” the dealer knows, of course, what each card is before it is turned. Dealers have been known to obtain an unfair advantage by having on a table in front of them a highly polished snuff box, or cigarette case ”

“ Since the chips were in the possession of another party, Resorts could no longer do with the chips as it pleased, and could no longer control the chips' use. Generally, at the time of a transfer, the party in possession of the chips can gamble with them, use them for services, cash them in, or walk out of the casino with them as an Atlantic City souvenir. The chips therefore become nothing more than an accounting mechanism, or evidence of a debt, designed to facilitate gambling in casinos where the use of actual money was forbidden. ”

“ Even third-row individuals would dart forward to stake; whence seldom did more than five or ten minutes pass without a scene over disputed money arising at one or another end of the table. On the other hand, the police of the Casino were an able body of men; and though to escape the crush was an impossibility, however much one might wish it, the eight croupiers apportioned to each table kept an eye upon the stakes, performed the necessary reckoning, and decided disputes as they arose. ”

“ When its operations are diverted into illegitimate channels it becomes a source of incalculable injury to society. As a great market place, it plays an important part in modern civilization; as a gigantic agency for the promotion of gambling in the commodities of the world, it is a snare, a delusion and a curse.
Not all the gaming hells of the country combined afford facilities for gambling equal to those furnished by these organizations. The faro dealer places a limit upon the stakes wagered; upon the floor of ’Change one may bet without limit. ”

“ A FRIEND’S BAD FAITH. Among the common devices of faro gamblers to entrap victims, few are more common than to suggest to the proposed dupe that he enter a gambling house and play against the bank, at the same time receiving the secret assistance and co-operation of the dealer. That is to say, the latter individual, who works for a salary, will so manipulate the cards that the outside player shall win the proprietor’s money, after which the dealer and the winner will divide the profits. ”

“ Well, that story reminds me of our grafting politicians. They have no moral compunctions. They look upon theft as right--eminently right. They see nothing wrong in the arrangement that the man who deals the cards should give himself the best in the deck. Never mind what he deals himself, they'll have the deal next and make up for it.
{Dolores Ortega}
But the story, Mr. Knox. I, too, understand poker.
{Knox}
It occurred out in Nevada, in a mining camp. A tenderfoot was watching a game of poker, He stood behind the dealer, and he saw the dealer deal himself four aces from the bottom of the deck. ”

“ It’s them that make the Casino people such an easy mark. You see notices all over the place imploring you to cash in before you leave the building, but half of the players don’t do it. They take the chips away in their pockets. They are used around the town like cash; they are accepted as payment for hotel bills. It’s impossible to keep track of them. Why, they say there are over a hundred thousand francs worth of false counters in circulation right now. And the number’s increasing every day. There’s a gang hard at work this very minute shooting them out. ”

“ When one of the pricked cards is felt, the dealer slips it back and deals from under it until he comes to himself, when he secures it for his own hand, thus gradually obtaining a pair of aces or kings, sometimes two pairs, and occasionally three of a kind. When this trick is successfully performed, the professional is usually able to “clean out” a greenhorn with the utmost ease and dispatch. It is a favorite mode of swindling at poker, inasmuch as it requires no partner, no stocking of cards, and admits of their being fairly shuffled. ”

“ This percentage is technically known as the “rake-off,” and insures the proprietors of the establishment a handsome royalty on all winnings. In “stud” poker the dealer always represents the “house.” The players are never permitted to handle the cards. To quote Tennyson’s poem of The Brook, the “man in the chair might say—
‘Men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.’” In the public gambling rooms, also, many of the gaming devices seen upon fair and circus grounds are to be found, notably the wheel of fortune. ”