Hazard (gambling)

“ Most extraordinary runs of luck have occurred at hazard, a player having sometimes thrown five, seven, and even eleven mains in a single hand. In cases of runs like this the peculiar feature in the French game became valuable, the bank being prepared to pay all winnings, while, generally speaking, a hand of six or seven mains at English hazard would exhaust all the funds of the players, and leave the caster in the position of "setting the table" and finding the stakes totally unnoticed or only partially covered. ”

“ Many shrewd players, however, preferred some other main, with the view of having a more favourable chance to depend upon of winning both stake and odds. For example, let us reverse the case given above, and suppose the caster called 5 and threw 7; he would then have 7 as his chance to win odds of 3 to 2 in his favour.
Such was the game of English hazard, at which large fortunes were lost. Cheating could only be effected by the use of loaded dice, which were called "dispatches," or by high and low dice having only certain numbers. ”

“ The pull, or percentage, of roulette against the player, being, however, nearly five times that of hazard, the small stakes played realise as large a result to the bankers. It requires all the vigilance of a player to guard his interests at this game; for, generally speaking, there is much confusion in the distribution of money staked by the many adventurers, on the numbers, and other points of speculation attaching to the game ”

“ Neither the greenhorn nor the player who is wise in his own conceit takes into consideration the enormous odds in the one game, or the large “rake off” in the other, regulated only by the conscience (?) of the dealer, and his knowledge of just what the players will stand. Therefore the harvest is ripe and is quickly garnered. Hazard has never been much of a favorite, the play being scarcely extensive enough to meet expenses; while on the other hand, the stud poker tables have always been well patronized. ”

“ Hazard, which is now practically obsolete, seems to have made an irresistible appeal to the gaming instincts of former generations, and the financial ravages for which it was responsible eventually provoked such scandals that the game was rendered illegal in 1845. It was a somewhat complicated form of gambling, and in these days, when so [Pg 76] many easy forms of speculation exist, would in all probability have died a natural death even without the intervention of the law. ”

“ The quasi-gambling principle upon which all such places are conducted stimulates the love of hazard and makes way for the betting propensity to become full-blown. Of course, one can bet, if one have money; two lumps of sugar and a few flies will enable a man to lose the fortune of the Rothschilds, if he will. ”

“ Gambling creates the hazard, making the gain or loss of income depend on an event that is not a necessary part of productive enterprise. Typical gambling is the transfer of wealth on the outcome of events absolutely unpredictable, so far as the two gamblers are concerned. Examples are the shaking of unloaded dice or the honest dealing of a pack of cards, and the betting on prices in so-called "bucket-shops" by persons having no connection with the market of real things, and seeking to get something for nothing as a result of mere chance. ”

“ PRELIMINARY REMARKS—FOOD FOR REFLECTION. Only gamblers defend gambling. Those who play faro, roulette, hazard; those who buy mutual pools or “puts and calls;” and even those whose instinct for gaming is satisfied with a partly legitimate business, go on with their practices without an analysis of their actions. It is the object of this work, not only to trace the history of gaming, so far as is recorded, but to expose to the mind of the most casual reader the sophistries upon which the art of gambling is based. ”

“ Passage and Hazard, which latter was the game most usually played, and of which Cotton remarks “Certainly, Hazard is the most bewitching game that is played on the Dice; for when a man begins to play, he knows not when to leave off; and, having once accustomed himself to play at Hazard, he hardly, ever after, minds anything else.”
Ned Ward [8] (1663-1714) , of course, mentions gamblers and gambling, but his experiences are of low Coffee Houses and Alsatia: and, presumably most of the Gambling Houses were of that type, for Thomas Brown [9] (1663-1704) speaks of them as follows. ”

“ The roulette tables attract the crowd, as well as for the reason that the game opens to the player many modes of proportionate risk, as that it affords him opportunity to play smaller sums on any one event, than he can at hazard. ”

“ There are now probably very few people in England who could conduct a game of hazard, the rules of which are practically forgotten. The last man who was thoroughly versed in the intricacies of the game is said to have been a certain well-known bookmaker, Atkins by name, who, as late as the 'seventies, used to keep a hazard-table going at Brighton during the race week, where considerable sums of money were lost and won. ”

“ In such a state of society every field of activity capable of generating such elements of hazard is pressed into the service of gambling: sports and business occupations become popular in proportion as they can by their structure be made to minister to the craving for hazard; every sort of competition where a sufficient element of the incalculable exists is pervaded by gambling.
If the monotony of toil drives large numbers of workers to seek violent sensational relief in gambling, the ennui of idleness prompts the leisured classes to the same abuse. ”

“ Though the transfer of property by gambling not merely feeds the passion but imports grave moral injuries of its own, it cannot be said to originate gambling or to [10] be essential to the play of the interest in chance or hazard. The folly and the social injury of gambling grow with the proportion of the stakes ”

“ They are all gambling, their mats spread on the ground; and you will see groups of fifty seated on the ground, and playing all day and night. The town is full of them. Mr. Stevens has them right under his thumb. They are as afraid as death of him, and do just what he tells them. He told the chiefs of the tribes he would not let them disturb the whites. That night they kept up an awful howling and singing, making night hideous like a pack of wolves. ”

“ There is some chance at faro, if the game is square. But roulette; bah! It is plain robbery."
"The blind Madonna of the Pagan, as Stevenson called chance," mused the colonel, lighting a cigar. "I often wonder if gambling is not as much a particle of our blood as salt. Perhaps you have all wondered why I never have kept a racing-stable, why I play bridge and poker for fun. ”

“ The unsuccessful gambler is one of the worst of wrecks. He runs his little course of dissipation, dishonesty, cheating and swindling. He is over-matched and eliminated by the bigger, keener, self-controlled gambler, who eats him up as the big spider eats up the little spider. Hanging around saloons, [Pg 360] begging for a little money with which to bet, doing the dirty work of the bigger gamblers—that is the fate of the little gambling cast-off. ”

“ I would not for a moment underrate the practical dangers which are found to attend the practice of gambling. It is remarked that the gambler, if he continues to play for a long time, is under an almost irresistible impulse to increase his stakes, and so re-introduce the element of uncertainty. It is in fact this tendency to be thus led on, which makes the principal danger and mischief of the practice. Risk and uncertainty are still such normal characteristics of even civilized life, that the mere extension of such tendencies into new fields does not in itself offer any very alarming prospect. ”

“ In one hour, in spite of a little cheating—I never had learned many tricks with cards, the Charlemagne pass to recover a cut and dealing from the bottom being the only means at my disposal—I had to buy another stack of chips. This time I got a thousand, for I meant to have all of the advantage that the “press of money” is supposed to give one at gambling.
There was no use. Right along I bucked the game, for my time was none too long, but the best I could get were hands that took second prize each time. I do not believe that I won a single hand on that thousand dollars' worth of chips. ”

“ Gimp played only a modest louis. Behind his hand he whispered to Hugh:
“This is the best system of all. It’s known as ‘playing the corpse.’ You get opposite a big player and play the contrary. When they have to make a progression, you win on all its terms. It goes without saying they’re dead ones from the start. The Casino will get their money. You’re playing on the side of the Casino, that’s all. And while the Casino is taking big risks, you are taking small ones. ‘Playing the corpse,’—it’s the only sure system I know. It’s a shame to take the money. You know I hate gambling like hell ”

“ When one becomes a thorough gambler, he is like that tree lightning-smitten, rotten in root, dry in branch, and sapless; seasoned hard and tough; nothing lives beneath it, nothing on its branches, unless a hawk or a vulture perches for a moment to whet its beak, and fly screaming away for its prey.
To every young man who indulges in the least form of gambling, I raise a warning voice! Under the specious name of AMUSEMENT, you are laying the foundation of gambling. Playing is the seed which comes up gambling. It is the light wind which brings up the storm. ”

“ The reason why a gambler should kill himself appears to him in the aspect of lost honor. If he 70joins to this a loss of money—the only thing for which he has striven—he cannot summon fortitude to live. He goes out of the world, impelled by a just nature, that thus removes his life from the earth which he has encumbered.
The strain of gambling is a sharp one. It breaks the nerves and prematurely ages the face. ”

“ There is this insuperable difficulty with the born gambler that he is unteachable. The fool who ruins himself at Homburg or Monte Carlo belongs to the same type as the young man above, whose identity was betrayed by a love-letter. Gamblers are always discovering some infallible system of beating the bank. The first word in La Bruyére's famous work—"Tout est dit" "Everything has been said,"—is true of gambling against the bank's system, which is to take a positive advantage which must win in the long run. ”

“ There were the purely games of chance, as faro, monte, dice; games partly of chance and partly of skill, as whist, euchre, poker, backgammon; games of skill, as chess, checkers, billiards. Games which require much thought or skill are never resorted to for popular heavy gambling. They are too slow and there is too much labor connected with tiiem. Something more quick and soul-stirring is what is wanted. Next to the pleasure of winning is the pleasure of losing : stagnation is unendurable. ”

“ Games partly or wholly hazardous are very common among all ranks of this people. The game of cards is almost always played for money or for some other stake, and is called by way of distinction “the game of hazard.” ”

“ It is not, for instance, true that skill, judgment, or self-command is of the least assistance at the roulette-table or at rouge-et-noir. The fact that these qualities are so commonly regarded as serviceable to the player may be cited as a conspicuous evidence of the derationalising influence of gambling even in the case of those who do not gamble. For in reality they are only useful in proportion as the game is not pure gambling.
The curious cunning expended in devising [8] “systems” and the attention to multifarious incidents of “luck” indicate a genuine inhibition of the reasoning faculty. ”

“ Being a stranger in the town, I went into almost all the houses, and found them playing, in some with dice, and in some with balls, at the different games, the names of all of which I do not know: but gambling was going on to this extent, and no check to it, whatever, was put by the local authorities. At the same time, upon the race course, the thimble men were in hundreds, with their tables, as well as by the roadsides on every approach to Doncaster, playing, and cheating the people out of their money, as fast as they could induce them to play. ”

“ This last fact is generally recognised: all gamesters denounce betting on “certainties.” Again, both on the turf and the stock exchange chance may be reduced or even eliminated by an actual manipulation of the forces so as to yield a result favourable to the interests of some of those who pose as gamblers. But when the result supposed to rest on chance is known or controlled by any sort of skill, fraud, or force, the case is not one of pure gambling; for though it is a matter of significance that gambling commonly keeps company with cheating, the latter is not gambling. ”

“ The proceedings in the elevator and tunnel were the same as on the previous occasions.
Five minutes later I was seated at one of the tables inside, with five hundred dollars' worth of chips before me, gambling as I never had gambled before in my life. The game into which I went first was straight poker. I chose it because it was the card game with the highest stakes of the evening. I played carefully, yet with a desperation that meant I should win, given an even break in the luck.
That even break did not come to me at the straight poker table. ”