Weekend Warrior…
Not every player
has the opportunity of playing weekly or even monthly for that matter. I realize
that many of you out there are weekend warriors when it comes to gaming. Getting
out three to five times a year may be all the casino time available to you.
I have had
discussions with many a player that falls into this category. With summer
vacation upon us, I thought perhaps a few pointers would help those of you
planning to hit Las Vegas, or some other casino resort for a weekend or more.
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When trips to the casino are few and far apart, an eager attitude
is often the first thing to you need to keep in check. Sure you don’t get to
play all that often, but you do not want to spin yourself out of control,
playing too much and playing games that you have no business entering in the
first place. You will have only so many days and hours to enjoy, so make the
best of it by planning your time. Plan the casinos you want to play, the time of
day you will visit them and allow enough time for a session to develop. This
means planning waiting time too. Picking the timing of when you will enter a
game could be the difference between going into a losing game or simply not
playing, but holding on to your cash. I suggest a morning session, then a lunch
break, perhaps some time at the pool or a nap, then a second session, followed
by another break. After that session go up to the room, shower, change your
cloths and have a nice dinner. Close out the day with an evening session and try
to finish up at 11:00, or no later than midnight. You can figure approximately
three hours per session and get plenty of playing time in each day. You also
have time to relax and have other entertainment, (like check in with your
spouse… if you still have one).
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Try to not immerse yourself into a complete gaming holiday. Taking
care of yourself, protecting against fatigue, keeps you on top of your game. I
caution against the all-nighter, and then on a few hours sleep, trying to finish
out your weekend vacation burned out.
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Making your bankroll last for the extent of your trip is another
consideration. Running out of playing money before you run out of trip is no
fun. Your style of play is totally dependent upon the limited amount of money
that you have to risk. For a ten-dollar player of either blackjack or dice,
$2,000 provides enough capital and cushion for a conservative player. Dividing
the total bankroll by $300, and you will have six session bankrolls with $200
left over. Money left over from a losing session may be joined with the $200 for
another buy-in. This amount of money allows for at least two days of play,
playing three sessions per day.
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I do not advocate the notion of, “The money that is taken to play,
is the money taken to be lost.” Under no circumstances do I encourage this kind
of loser thinking. We know the game is odds against our winning, and we also
know that by playing smart, picking our game and following the energy, we can
often find ourselves in the “black”. Play for the win, not the jackpot. Better
to string several small wins together than to try for the moon. Don’t go
bankrupt and then play from behind your whole trip. Playing tight and playing
right, you should end your trip with a few bucks in profit or just a few dollars
down. Either way, play in such a way that you keep your losses to a minimum.
Your entertainment at the tables should be cheap fun.
Michael.Vernon
On the Coat Tales
of a Gambler… Part 11
June, 1956, it was
my first time to go to Myrtle Beach. I didn’t even know life existed out side of
Badger and Greenville, Alabama. I was fifteen years old and on my way to the
tenth grade.
I had an old, worn
out ‘47’ Chevy. I spent the summer dragging main and hanging out on the corner
with the older boys, at Don’s Drive-in (some of these guys were the ones I later
ran with in the days of Scarpone). Don’s Drive-in had parking for about six cars
and four stools inside. He loved us kids and didn’t mind that we’d hang out all
night on a coke and hamburger. He was a big fan of the football team… pictures
on the wall and all. Sometimes I got conned into going to the Mystic Moods Dive-in
movies with a trunk load of guys. I hated sneaking them in, scared that if I got
caught, my dad would take my car away. Aside from schlepping my buddies, that
‘47’ served as my training ground for smooching at the drive-in. Hell, for fifty
cents each, I could take my girl out and never see the dang movie. To bad they
did away with drive-in movies. I think if we still had’em, today’s kids would be
better off.
Having a car at
fifteen was a big deal. Most of my buddies walked. But I had saved up my gas
station money and soda jerk money to buy that Chevy. The guy wanted $250 and I
got him down to $225. I thought I was hot stuff for just a kid.
It was a straight
six, three speeds on the column. The headliner was torn in the back (you can
take a good guess) and it had that funky old car smell. The radio almost worked.
Main thing was it ran. The linkage was rough and often it would stick when
shifting from first to second gear. The first time it happened I was scared that
I had blown the tranny. I drove it in first gear, jerking like a bucking bronco,
all the way to my Uncle Jack’s gas station. He popped the hood, and ordered me
to go get a couple of wrenches. After monkeying around with the linkage and
squirt’n it with oil, I saw the shift lever moving up and down. My uncle called
my pride and joy a “rolling toilet” and told me that I should always keeps a set
of tools in the trunk.
I thought I’d be
smart taking a part-time job as a bag boy at Tiffford’s Market. Dumb me, the
summer before I had worked six nights a week at Potter’s Drive-in as a soda jerk
and a car hop. (It turned out to be the best paying job of all my high school
jobs because of the tips) I could have gone back to work there, but, foolishly,
I thought that I was too big a deal for that kind of job…talk about stupid. I
made less than half the money that summer, compared to the summer before, when I
was fourteen.
The best thing of
all from that summer was I had me a real pretty girlfriend, the great Joyce
Arguello, from Berealla High, in Parker. She was a cashier at Tifford’s, where I
worked. That summer, I burned up the highway going from my home in the south, to
way up north where she lived. That girl filled up three pages of my high school
yearbook with how much she loved me and how great I was. This will make you
laugh: I later, I found out that I was just one of three loves she had going at
the same time.
She was a “Parker
girl”. Parker was a smaller burg, but it was just slightly more affluent than
Greenville. To the folks in Parker, “Greenvillers” were trash. For some reason
that I could never figure out, folks in Greenville kind of accepted this snobby
opinion as fact. In reality, both towns were nice places to work and raise
families. I guess you have that situation just about everywhere. One community
looks down on another, just so they can feel better. Like Espanola is the butt
of all jokes in New Mexico. But, if you want to see low-riders, Espanola is the
world’s capital for them.
Young as we were,
on our way to the tenth grade, we both knew what we were going to do after high
school. Joyce was going to go to college and become an RN… she did too! I ran
into her about ten years later downtown. There she was all dressed in white… the
works… hat, white cape and all. I loved the way nurses used to dress. I recall
wanting to have some excuse to go to the hospital just so Joyce could be my
nurse. I didn’t have the guts to try to re-open our past just in conversation…
never mind being married to Marci and having kids at the time.
As for me, well I
knew that I was going to join the fighting glory of the USMC. Typical of my
ways, I had no plans for anything after that. But Joyce sure did. In my year
book she wrote, “…after I become a nurse and you come home from the Marines,
we’ll get married, we’ll have lots of children and live in a cute little
house…etc., etc., etc.” Ha, ha, youth! I often wonder what she wrote in the
other two guys yearbooks. In my heart I’d like to believe she wrote nothing, but
I will never know.
…It is finally
raining here today. Boy, it has been dry. Fire danger is extreme. They won’t let
you light up a smoke in public… really! You have to be indoors. Guess I could go
to Las Vegas to smoke, nothing there grows so there’s nothing to burn.
Joyce was so nice,
but she was not the first love of my life. My first girl had already dumped me
before it got to love if you know what I mean… so, in a way, guess I never
really did have that first love. But life was sooooooo good in those days. I
felt like I was on top of the world. Heck, I had a car, some money and a
good-looking girl. That was the summer Joyce and I drove to Myrtle Beach. Of
course ya’ll don’t get to hear that story… only that our alibis did not hold up…
the old ‘47’ Chevy did, thank God. That was among my dumber stunts in life and
yes there was plenty of hot water and Joyce’s insane dad complete with a
shotgun. Lost my car for about three months and that pretty much cooled things
between Joyce and me for awhile… still we managed to fan the ember through our
senior year.
Part 12…
I saved something
for you. This was sent to me in the Greenville paper. Thomasville is just west
of Greenville and a stone’s throw from Biloxi, if that’s tell’n something.
Thomasville, AL: Eighteen poker players arrested for gambling have asked for a
jury trial in an effort to change Alabama’s 183 year old law that bans games of
cards and dice. Police sized nearly six thousand dollars when they arrested
twenty-two people. Four pleaded guilty and were fined $100 each. Participates
said it was a “friendly” game. Authorities contend it was high stakes gambling
advertised on the Internet.
This is laughable.
I would not call that high stakes in this day and age. Do the math… $6,000
divided between 22 people... come on! Back in the day of Scarpone, I saw poker
pots with a lot more than 6k in them many times over. I say the above game was
just a small stakes friendly game… even if it was on the net… so what? You
decide! The Internet is wonderful, but kind of dumb to advertise a poker game
you’d think.
By the way,
Scarpone’s favorite game was dice. He had loads and flats and knew how to switch
out a die without a hitch. He knew how to set’em good. I read this stuff about
dice setting and controlling this and that and how to bet which numbers. The
real pros of the game are unsung. (and they liked it that way) They were doing
it long before this hyped fad came along and they had the huevos to pull it off.
Scarpone was real good. He was good at manipulating the dice with his setting
ability, he usually won even with regular, fair dice.
About the only way
Scarpone would ever get into a poker game was knowing, dead sure, that he had a
real live sucker in the game to set up and shake down. Most of these sucker
games, of course, would be no limit. Scarpone would bet the guy out of all the
money he had and give him a hand, something like four Jacks or four Queens. Of
course the guy would be pissing his pants and wishing he had more dough to bet.
Scarpone was more
than just a slick gambler. He was a salesman with a diamond personality. Like
that cliché goes Scarpone could sell ice to Eskimos. His charismatic personality
got him out of more fixes than his pocket ‘38’ ever could. He liked to say that
he could talk himself out of any disagreement. He’d come away the winner with
the other guy glad for it.
Now, back to this
poker game of four of a kind. Scarpone knows the guy has the hand of a
life-time. He sets him up by dealing him the hand. The guy has all his money in
the pot, of course. Scarpone goes into his act. He pretends to remind the guy it
is no limit and it’s okay to go to his pocket for more dough. They guy is
literally all in and Scarpone knows it. So, Scarpone turns on the charming
Spanish grin, (I understand your dilemma, let me help) and says to the guy, “You
know, you are trusted. You would not have been invited to this game if you were
not trusted. You like your hand so much? How about this?” Scarpone would then go
on to tell the guy he could go get more money, as much as he could and come back
to bet. Just so he did not take too long doing it. The hands would be sealed in
separate envelopes while the sucker ran out to get his life savings. Scarpone
and his “second”, and a friend of the sucker, would tag along making it look
right. After returning with more money, the sucker would raise the bet. Scarpone
would act like, “Okay, you got me, but I gotta see your cards,” and would, of
course, call the sucker’s raise. You have to know from the front of this story
that no matter what the sucker had drawn to, Scarpone would amazingly have the
winning hand.
That would do it
for the mark and Scarpone would go into a charade of surprise that both players
had great hands and how close he came to losing to four of a kind. After shaking
hands and a drink to commiserate, Scarpone would pat the guy on the back saying,
“Tough hand to lose, here’s a hundred bucks, I don’t want you leaving skinned.”
I witnessed this
play twice in all my time hanging around Scarpone, but he told me that he had
pulled it off a few other times. He said that it was extremely difficult to make
it work on rich suckers. Second, it was even more difficult finding them in the
first place. Recall our fancy trip to Florida. There, the surroundings of a
men’s private country club make the scene okay for rich marks to waddle up to a
game. But holding a game in a motel room, or back room of a bar, gets real iffy
for most savvy people with money.
Now, it did work,
on occasion, with egomaniacs with a bit of cash. Take the real good player with
money and a belief that says “I can’t be beat”. Give this kind of ego a hand
with four of a kind and you are counting your eggs a-hatch’n.
Taking a guy’s last
buck this way made me feel sorry for the poor sod. But for Scarpone it was just
business. He noticed my feelings one time, and said, “What? That s.o.b. would
not have taken me just as hard? What the hell do you think he was trying to do
to me?” For Scarpone, it was just like a job well done and getting paid for
doing it. The thing is, his passion for the game, his love for being on the
winning side was so immersed in his being, it was almost like he could not lose.
I never saw anyone gamble the way Scarpone did and consistently win. Okay, I
concede that his cheating would play a part in it.
I’d like to tell
you that he taught me everything he knew about gambling, but with Scarpone,
there was a special certain something that simply could not be learned. You
either have it in you or you don’t.
To be continued…
In the next episode
of On The Coat Tales of a Gambler, Sailor writes about being in the
service and Scarpone’s bent dice game.
