|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Playing 4 Keeps™ Gaming Newsletter for Winners Celebrating Twelve Years! Gaming Workshops Since 1995
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
™ A Gaming News Letter For Winners July/August 2007 Volume 9 Issue 8 Copyright ©2007 Michael Vernon
"Luck Has Nothing To Do With It When You Are Playing 4 Keeps!"
***************************************************************
On The Coat Tales of a Gambler - Episode 18 ***************************************************************
***************************************************************
For twelve years I have been teaching life’s spiritual lessons in the classroom of a casino. How you play your casino game is no different to how you live your life. I only suggest that you examine both honestly for the correlations.
It is my intention to demonstrate, by sharing examples, as you evolve, transformation is just ahead of you. How long your evolution can take is a variable. Time is an invention of man, not universal law. The degree to which you will experience change depends mostly on you. The idea that life happens to you or at you is simply a victim’s mode of operating. Once you accept the fact that the reality being experienced is a manifestation of your energy, you can begin the journey toward self-improvement. Sometimes change is as simple as extending your arms, opening your hands, showing the universe that you are ready and willing to receive.
Transformation is usually not an overnight experience. The process of self-improvement rides with the discipline of patience. Others around you may not be as prepared or ready to accept the "winds of change" and may try to pull you down. Thus, it is probably a path that you walk alone. My ol’ teacher, Stuart Wilde used a woodpecker metaphor. He said, that spiritual evolution comes with patience and discipline, like a single woodpecker. The woodpecker pecks away, peck, peck, peck, until, “the whole bloody tree comes down”. I think Stuart has beavers and birds mixed up, but the metaphor is great because it is odd. We remember the odd things in life and that is why it was Stuart’s method of teaching spirituality and self-empowerment.
Life is moving quickly as technology advances. About 1988, or so, Stuart wrote the book, “The Quickening”. It was somewhat ahead of its time for the spiritual movement. “The Quickening” was not so much about how our life’s pace was increasing, it had to do with metaphysical concepts. Its focus was on esoteric concepts of mind over matter, what Stuart called “Turbo Thought”. It was, in fact, during this time in Stuart’s life, that he began playing blackjack using “Turbo Thought” to bolster his winning. This led him to the “Easy Money Blackjack seminar”, which he only presented for a few years. There after, Stuart gave me the okay to continue with my version of the seminar, “Blackjack for Winners”™.
How much wealth or abundance a person is able to handle, is directly proportional to the size of their “vessel”. This would be their ability to hold energy and handle the energy coming to them. This concept is common to a number of ancient wisdoms. Recently, while in Las Vegas, one of the students in my dice program reminded me of this concept and how it worked for him. He explained the vessel as a bowl. Everyone has a bowl. Bowls are of different sizes and proportionate to a person’s abundance and energy. In order to have “more”, a person must clear out “negative karma”. Doing so can then increase the size of their bowl and thus they are able to take on more. He went on to say with caution, increasing the size of the bowl also meant an increase in responsibility. If a person was not ready to take on more, a larger bowl could mean chaos.
When you are holding on to too much “stuff”, the “stuff” that does not support your life, not much else can fit. Ever feel overwhelmed? Either you have to release and let go or you have to make your “vessel” larger in order to hold more. It is like cleaning out the closet in order to make space for the next thing.
If you are holding apples in one hand and oranges in the other hand and life is trying to give you a watermelon, you have to make a transition in order to accept the melon. You do not necessarily have to discard the other fruit, but you do have to empty your hands. Sometimes however, the evolutionary process does require us to get rid of the old before taking in the new as a way to create a bigger energy. An example would be the way some players cling to a method of play that has no basis and pretty much guarantees them to be separated from their money. They have a history with a strategy that does not win. For them to take on a new strategy is often difficult, simply because they are accustomed to their losing ways. It is as though they are committed and cannot abandon the weak play. They cling to a losing system, waiting for that glorious day, when they can take heart that their system finally did come good. The word “stubborn” comes to mind.
A room filled with old and dilapidated furniture cannot receive new furniture until the old stuff is hauled out of the way. The old furniture represents old energy, so the action of moving symbolizes new thought forms and beliefs along with a physical clearing. It all comes down to the individual taking charge, taking action. What are you willing to do to initiate a shift in your energy?
Stuart Wilde used to do a seminar about abundance consciousness. At the time, it was his most popular program. For whatever reason, he stopped presenting it a round 1988. He used to talk about thought forms, emotion, affirmations, money, intention and writing down goals. He also had subliminally programmed audios that would help initiate the change in the subconscious mind. He knew that the biggest battle to win was with the subconscious mind. In order to win, the bottom line was action. Through action, the subconscious mind would get it that the old ways were no long acceptable.
Stuart would say, “You can do all of these things, and if you retire to your easy chair expecting ‘God’ to deliver, don't be shocked when your wish is not delivered to your doorstep. You have to get off your ‘dead ass’ and get out of the chair and do something if you really expect something different to occur. The ‘God Force’ recognizes energy. Energy is a magnet. If you do nothing the ‘God Force’ can only deliver to you nothing…. Even if it is only raking twigs and small rocks across the yard at five in the morning, you must take some kind of action. This action will be a dedication to what you want. Life, after all, was never meant to be a struggle. You can draw to you what you want through metaphysics, using discipline, intention and action.”
So, what does this have to do with casino games? Just everything!
Copyright ©2007 Michael Vernon
Fair Market Value in Craps Mike in Hawaii
When you place a cheque (OK, a chip) on a craps layout, you can ask an interesting question. How the answer to this question changes based on what point is set, whether or not the next roll is a come out roll, and exactly where on the felt you place it, is quite interesting and instructive.
The basic question is this: Once a $5 red chip is on the felt, what is it really worth? How much should you pay, or be paid, to pick that chip up and call off the bet right now?
Let's have an example. Your friend bets $5 don't pass. The shooter throws a six. Your friend says "Fooyee I never win on six" and reaches to pick up his chip. What should you do?
The answer might surprise you. The second that $5 chip hit the don't pass line, it was no longer worth $5. When the shooter missed hitting a 7 or 11 on the come out roll and set a point of four, the value of that chip changed again, dramatically.
From moment to moment each chip has a future. There is a finite list of things that can happen to it, both positive and negative. When you take all these things together, with their proper weights and values, both plus and minus, you end up with what that chip is really worth now that it has been bet. This is its Fair Market Value. The table below illustrates all the future paths a chip on the pass line faces and the long term, average probability of each outcome.
When you toss a nickel on the pass line, it instantly changes value. (It is a bit like driving a new car off the lot for the first time.) It is now a $4.93 chip, not a $5 chip. Why? The chart above shows all the things that lie in its future. When they are all added up, they come out about seven cents short of $5.00. Or about 1.4% less than they should total. Where have we seen that percentage before? It is the well-known "House Advantage" on a pass line bet.
Now this is the value of the chip awaiting the come out roll, all filled with hope for a natural win. Once the come out roll is over, If the chip still survives to face the "Chasing a Point" phase of the game, its average value (considering all possible points that might be set and the probability of each one) drops to just $4.37. That is a grizzly 12.5% house advantage. Think about that for a minute...
Time's up. The house advantage on a Hard 4 or a Hard 10 bet is just a bit over 11%. The house advantage on a Hard 6 or a Hard 8 is closer to 9%. In short, the future for a poor red pass line chip, which was a once proud $5 American Cash Money Bill, has turned rather sour after missing the natural win on the come out roll.
It gets worse. This $4.37 is the average value after the come out roll. Since we will know by then what point was set, we can re-compute the Fair Market Value of that chip again based on which pair of points, 6 & 8, 5 & 9, or 4 & 10, is actually being chased. Remember the points arrange themselves in pairs with similar math properties.
Check out the bad news. If the point is 6 or 8, then your pass line bet is still worth $4.55. If the point is 5 or 9, its value drops to just $4.00. But if the point is 4 or 10, the damage is massive. The Fair Market Value of that chip would be just $3.33! The house advantage on that poor thing is 33 percent!
No wonder the Casino considers this a "Contract Bet". You would be at a HUGE advantage if you could drop a nickel on the pass line, wait to see if you get craps or a natural win and then if you set a point, just pick up your red chip and put it back in your rail to await the next come out roll. On average if a point is 4 or 10, the Casino has already won about 33% of all money trapped on the pass line.
So What Just Happened?
When Craps entered the second phase, Chasing Points, the rules changed, but the odds did not. The odds stayed at even money. Even money was not that bad a deal before the come out roll because of all the wonderful things that could happen on that first roll. So when everything was considered, including all the great stuff that happens 22% of the time on the come out roll, the deal was only sour by 1.41%.
But after the come out roll the only thing that matters is the odds of making your point vs. sevening out. Even in the best case, a point of 6 or 8, the 1 to 1 odds is a bad deal. In the case of a point of 4 or 10, it really stinks! Stuck with one to one odds as the hand goes south with the setting of a point, the pass line chips are no longer being properly compensated for the new increased risk that lies in their future. Thus their Fair Market Value is degraded.
Let's say that again. Stuck with one to one odds as the hand goes south with the setting of a point, the pass line chips are not being compensated for the new increased risk that lies in their future.
We can take a side trip to faerie land to show another aspect of this. What if we lived in a wonderful world where the pass line was not a contract bet? What if you could plunk down your nickel and then if the game advanced to Chasing a Point, just pick it up and opt out of the bet at that point?
The Casino would be crazy to allow that! If you essentially convert all the points to a "Push", like the 12 on a don't pass line wager, and make the pass line a one roll, come out roll only bet. The house takes a terrible beating. This phase of the game favors the shooter a whopping 33% when isolated by itself. The Casino is counting on the two thirds of the time that the game will advance to Chasing a Point to get its turn at the lopsided vig.
What about the DARK SIDE?
(insert funky breathing) Everything changes when your world goes dark. Interestingly enough, even though there is a slight change in the house advantage on a don't pass bet, the value of a $5 chip dropped on the don't pass line is still basically $4.93. One can simplify by saying the house advantage on both the pass line and the don't pass bets are essential the same 1.4% without committing too big a crime against Math.
Over on the Dark Side, we are quietly crossing our fingers and hoping for anything BUT a 7 or 11. What happens to the value of our chip if the shooter misses a natural win? It shoots up in value! If it survives a come out roll, the average value of the $5 chip is now $5.63. It has a positive house advantage, which is a bit awkward to think about. Let's say it has a Better's Advantage of 12.5% on average. But again, which point is set makes a big difference.
Things are basically reversed. Now the worst paying points for the Dark Side are 6 and 8. But even there, the value of the chip goes up dramatically. If the point being chased is 6 or 8, the chip is worth $5.45 or has a Better's Advantage of about 9%.
If the point is 5 or 9, that value goes up to $6.00. And if we get the super dark power points of 4 and 10, the value skyrockets to $6.67! The worst of the two phases for the Dark Side is the come out roll. If that is survived, then chances are good there is gravy is in the future.
No wonder the Casino does not consider this a "Contract Bet". They would be tickled all pink bunny fuzzy if you picked up your $5 chip on the don't pass line after the come out roll! You would be letting them off the hook. With a point of 4 or 10, a chip that has survived a come out roll on the don't pass line has a whopping better's advantage of 33%. If you are crazy enough to opt out of that bet, the Casino ain't gonna stop you. You have already gotten lucky. You have not yet been paid for that luck of course. You can still lose that money, but odds are now significantly in your favor.
Over at faerie land, we can look at the don't pass bet converted to a single roll, come out roll only bet. (Those of you with a weak constitution may want to look away at this point.)
Nightmare on Don't Street! 45% House Advantage? That is truly the stuff of slasher movies. As you can see, any chip that survives a come out roll on the don't pass should be considered a "contract bet" by the player. Picking up a chip off the don't pass after a come out roll is a really bad play. It has most definitely taken its chances and now Chasing a Point is the phase of the craps game don't pass chips live for.
"Free" Odds Bets
So what about odds? First of all there are no odds on either the pass line or the don't pass for the come out roll. So you are only going to be adding this bet in the second phase, Chasing a Point. Second, this odds bet is a zero sum bet. That zero is very powerful. Anything multiplied by zero is still zero. Mathematicians make things go "poof" all the time by finding a zero to multiply by. The odds bet, unlike the carried over pass line chip, is paid at true odds, not the 1 to 1 odds of the poor trapped pass line chips. The house advantage and the better's advantages are both zero as a result.
So what happens if you make an odds bet on the Right Side? You dilute some of the large house advantage that your pass line chips are now facing.
What happens if you make an odds bet on the Dark Side? Opps, you dilute again, but this time you are diluting YOUR better's advantage!
Moral to this story is you need a very good reason, something else going on with your composite betting strategy, to justify making an odds bet on a don't pass wager. Typically that would be a temporary odds bet to hedge some other bet for the next roll only.
Here is an interesting question:
Is it better to put $15, three reds, directly on the pass line before the come out roll, or should you just put one red chip and if a point is set, put down the other two as an odds bet?
With the first scenario we just plunk down three reds, $15. Our composite house advantage is still 1.41%. The Fair Market Value of those three chips is $14.79. If we end up (two thirds of the time) with a point, then on average those three chips are only worth $13.12, more or less depending upon which exact point it is set of course.
With the second scenario we have the now familiar chip worth $4.93 awaiting the come out roll. Two thirds of the time it advances to chasing a point and gets downgraded to just $4.37 on average. But now we are going to add $10 to it that is bet at true odds. Since it is a zero sum bet, for the odds bet portion the Fair Market Value is $10, exactly the face value of the chips. A zero sum bet always sees a fair and even handed future. Thus its value is not affected by the possible vagaries of chance. The odds on the zero sum bet have been adjusted to exactly compensate you for that risk correctly. Remember the odds payoffs change based on which point was set, at least for the odds bet portion. The average value of what is now on the pass line is $14.37 instead of $13.12. We have diluted the bad news and gotten back to a more sensible scenario. You have chopped the nasty post-come out roll 12.5% house advantage to just one third of that amount.
One could even adjust your odds based on how bad the point was for you. This would be a rather sophisticated strategy. You would want to get your average bet to be equal to the $15 (example) you could afford to risk on the pass line. You might put down $5 on the pass line and then take single odds for the 6 and 8 which need the least dilution, double odds on the 5 and 9, and triple odds on the 4 and 10. All in an effort to get the average post-come out roll disadvantage to minimize. To do that you would want to bet more odds on the 4 and 10 than on the 6 and 8, a bit backwards of what is intuitive.
What happens if you Place the 4 or the 10 for $5? Normally that would be considered a bad bet since it has over a 6 percent house advantage. But wait, at this point your poor pass line nickel is facing at LEAST a 9% house advantage. The nearly 7% on a Place 4 or 10 doesn't seem so bad by comparison. For ages people have said the worst bet on the craps table is Big Red. But if Chasing a Point of 4 or 10, your poor Pass line bet is facing a whopping 33% house advantage. More than double the nightmare house advantage on Any Seven.
Everyone talks about how odds can reduce the effect of house advantage. But they are usually looking at the concept from the start of the hand. But the odds don't go down at the start of the hand, they go down only if the shooter starts Chasing a Point. For the right better, splitting up you pass line money so that some of it is held in reserve for odds during those 2 out of 3 times a point is set is a good idea.
Conversely it is an equally bad idea for the wrong better…unless those odds are being used as a hedge on some other bet. Bottom line for the wrong better? If he or she is well heeled enough to bet three units, they should bet those three units on the don't pass line right up front and cross their fingers.
Overall the $15 is not that devalued sitting there waiting for the come out roll. In fact they are still worth $14.80. True, when viewed from a one roll perspective that poor stack of nickels should be quaking in their boots, if they had boots. But, if there is life after the come out roll, all three chips will be looking great. It makes no sense for the wrong better to dilute his hard won better's advantage with odds, at least not from a simple don't pass analysis.
Viewing Chips through the Crystal Ball
When we look into the crystal ball and use it to view chips on the craps table, we can see some interesting things. Viewed through the crystal ball, the chips may magically change value, well not magically. Their Fair Market Value represents what we should have to pay or be paid, in order to pick those chips up and call off the bet at any given point in the game. Any bet on the table at any time can be subjected to Fair Market Analysis. But many bets are decided in a single roll, so the rules cannot change. Rules for many multi-roll bets do not change in ways which dramatically alter the chips value like they do for the pass line and don't pass bets. (Can you spot the other class of bets which do undergo similar changes of value?)
For the free odds bets on the pass line and don't pass we are looking at chips which are fully compensated for the risk in their future, so their value does not change. But for chips on the pass line and don't pass the value changes dramatically as craps moves from the Come Out Roll phase to the Chasing a Point phase. In fact, for the chips trapped on the pass line, the Fair Market Value gets quite hideous once the come out roll is passed. The chip values change because the risk in their future changes, but the odds do not change to reflect, to compensate for, those changes.
Diluting the house advantage with some odds (assuming you can afford the increased average bet) is a good idea at this point. One can consider access to an odds bet on the pass line as kind of a compensation for having a chip stuck on the pass line after the come out roll.
On the other side, diluting your better's advantage with odds on a don't pass bet just does not make much sense. There are strategies which use a temporary odds bet on the don't pass to hedge action somewhere else on the felt. A good case can be made for such strategies. But by themselves odds are a bad idea for the don't pass bet.
Mike In Hawaii Copyright © 2007
On The Coat Tales of a Gambler - Episode 18
Sailor continues with his story…
I have never met anyone that approached the likes of Scarpone. He was cut from a different cloth, bigger than life, in the way he did everything. Besides being tall, dark and handsome, he owned a special charismatic personality. Scarpone could make a prostitute want to pay him for sex when he turned on his Latin charm. He naturally attracted the attention of others. He could make anyone feel better simply by being in his company. Just being around him made the whole world look good. Talk about energy… hell, Scarpone could gamble all day and night and into the next day looking like he’d come off eight hours of peaceful sleep. That was one reason he could take on so many road trips. He kept going and going and going.
Scarpone had a girl friend in Memphis. I only remember her first name, Elmira. She was a gorgeous girl in her early thirties. Elmira was a long legged blond, with no question about her “personality” on top. Stacked and packed, she could be every Marine’s dream. I know for fact she had Scarpone acting like a walking Zombie. She always wore sexy clothes, hanging out of her top, high heels and a tight shirt that seemed to grow her legs even longer, if you know what I mean. Her English was great, but she had a kind of smoky deep voice, with an ever so arousing European accent. The way she spoke her words, “Da’ling”, dripped off of her lips. She was from the Ukraine and came over to the States after the war. I think the only reason Scarpone didn’t marry Elmira was because of her age. The irony of it was Elmira might have been his closest match and not just because of her stature. Elmira had a similar survivor’s personality to Scarpone. She had that kick-ass, “can do” arrogance. She got her way or you better get the hell out of hers, kind of personality. And, all the time, Scarpone was doing everything he could to please Elmira. She had him working as hard as he could to make sure she was satisfied in every way.
All three women that Scarpone married were in their early twenties. One was only twenty-one when they got hitched. Of course, none of his marriages lasted very long. Scarpone’s gambling ways, late nights, and seldom being home, were the demise of all his marriages. He never got it; money was not a cure for a woman’s loneliness. Never mind the suspicions he created for being with other women while on the road.
In the late fifties, early sixties, Memphis was a burgeoning city for the likes of Scarpone. For one thing, Memphis was birthing the Blues. African American musicians were coming out with the next wave of music culture. Because of segregation in the South, their music was confined to the juke joints. The juke joints were like a “party house”. They not only staged the Blues, but also had great food, bootleg whiskey, beer, dancing, and there was always gambling in the backroom. Craps was a very poplar game in the juke joints.
Scarpone loved Blues music, so the trip to Memphis for a game was as much a holiday vacation as it was a business trip for him. He once told me how his father, Fidel, had Cuban music in their family’s cantina and that the blues, for him, had the same kind of rhythm. He would say, “I feel the Blues right here!” pounding his fist over his heart. There was one radio station in Memphis that played the Blues. Scarpone could hardly wait to drive his Lincoln into signal range and tune in WDIA, an AM station that is still broadcasting today.
In late June of my nineteenth year, Scarpone was rounding up a couple of guys to make a trip to Memphis for the Fourth of July. He invited Benny “Out da Window” DeMarco. He was Scarpone’s close friend and the one who had given him his nickname. Scarpone was Italian for big foot.
Benny was not from the South originally. He was born in Brooklyn, pure Italian, with the complete with a New York attitude. He moved to the South to get away from some trouble he caused while in New York. Benny had a great sense of humor and was never without a wisecrack or a joke. To get a clearer picture of Benny, imagine Nicky Santoro, played by Joe Pisci in the 1995 movie, “Casino”. Benny was a hot-headed Italian and as unpredictable as a snake. He always scared me. My first impression of Benny was on my first road trip with Scarpone. There was a poker game in the Hill Country of Northern Mississippi. We got to the barrelhouse where the game was held. We went inside and two thugs met us at the door. One of the thugs says to Scarpone, “Who the F… are you?” Scarpone quietly replied that we had been invited by the boss to join the game. The thug asks, “Yeah, what game is that?” Then Benny steps forward and says, “Let me show you our invitation.” In his left hand was something like a book of matches or an old business card. Out of nowhere, on his right hand, brass knuckles. When the bouncer reached out to grab the invitation, Benny dropped kick the poor bastard right in the balls. When he bent over grabbing himself in pain, Benny hammered him across the bridge of his nose, He broke the guy’s nose in a gush of blood. Without hesitation, Benny spun around and, grabbing a cue from the pool table, shoved the business end of the cue into the throat of the thug left standing. In a calm rage Benny said, “Look mother F’er, we are the invited guests of your boss, Mr. whatever the F… his name is… Now, get the F… out of our way, or be smarter than this dumb bastard spelling blood all over the joint and show us to the goddamn poker game, thank you.”
Besides being a burglar and Scarpone’s henchman/equalizer, Benny worked as a bartender in a Greenville beer joint. Scarpone and I went to the Raven’s Roost, the beer joint where Benny worked, to see if he could tear away for the Memphis trip.
Scarpone says to Benny, “Are you busy?”
Benny’s reply was typical. “No, I’m riding a bicycle, what the F… does it look like?” He followed that up with, “We were so busy today at lunch time, customers were coming through the knot holes to get in the joint!” Then he let out a loud rolling laugh.
Before Scarpone could get to his question about the trip, Benny was already in control of the conversation. “Hey! Hey!” He says, “Mike the Knife was in this morning looking for you. What’s shaken?”
Scarpone simply asked, “Do you want to go to Memphis for a card game?”
Benny replied with, “Ya’goddamn right I do! When do we leave?”
Scarpone said, “I’d like to get an early start. How about we pick you up after you shut the bar down next Wednesday, and then we swing by and pick up the Blade?”
“Yeah, that’s good.” Benny said. “Now you bums piss off unless you’re going to order something to drink.”
Benny got up and walked away like we were never there, laughing that same laugh, like wheels on a bumpy road. He never did ask us for a drink. Scarpone looked my way and nodded toward the door and we left.
We picked the guys up as scheduled and, by three in the morning, we were well on our way to Memphis. Scarpone loved driving his big o’l Lincoln and pointed it down the highway, cruising a little over the speed limit. He was not into the cops; so keeping close to the speed limit was Scarpone’s way. We drove straight through, stopping only for gas until about noon the next day. We stopped in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Scarpone wanted to call Elmira to let her know we were about hour away. He made sure she had booked rooms for the guys. He’d be staying with her, of course. We ordered sandwiches and coffee from the café, and gassed up the Lincoln while Scarpone was on the phone. For a man of few words, he could go on with a woman. No matter how tough a guy thinks he is, I suppose we all have some weakness. For Scarpone, it was women.
After we got into Memphis, Scarpone took us near Beal Street and dropped us at the flophouse. Nothing fancy, for sure, but clean enough. I settled into my room, unpacked my bag and was reading in bed. It wasn’t long before there was a knock at my door. I opened the door and there stood a hooker. She was sent over by Scarpone and it turned out she knew Elmira. Benny and Mike were also visited by ladies of the night that trip, compliments of Scarpone. Though I never knew for sure, I always suspected Elmira to be a prostitute.
After a long night and long sleep, we all met at a café on Beal Street. We kind of stuck out, and at the same time, it was not unusual for whites to frequent Beal Street for the music and food. The game we came to play was held in a juke joint Elmira frequented. In fact, it was through Elmira that Scarpone came to know about the game. Poker was the main event, but we knew that a craps game or two would be going on as well. After we ate lunch, we jumped into the Lincoln and Elmira directed Scarpone through Memphis to the game, Jimmy Jive’s Juke Joint, locally know as JJ’s.
Although JJ’s was a hangout for African Americans, all the poker players were white. It was a high stakes game and the house stood in for a rake of the pots. Each table had a dealer that took care of the rake. Having a dealer was something different than we were use to. Elmira said, “goodbye,” and hitched a ride with another woman and her boyfriend back to Memphis. For all I know, it could have been her pimp and another working girl. The “brothers” were engaged in a loud craps game. There was a make shift craps table, bankrolled by the house. No chips however, and the minimum bet was twenty-five cents. Two hired guys for the house ran the game. The joint offered some snacks on a bar for free, along with lemonade, but if you really wanted something to eat of drink, it was pay as you go. However, the prices were very reasonable, as I recall, and the food still lingers in my memory as the best barbeque pork, sausage and ribs I ever had.
There were enough players for three tables of seven-card stud. Scarpone, Benny and Mike the Knife split up, one to each table. No point in making a long drive just to beat up on each other in a card game. The other thing was, everyone knew we came together and, even though Scarpone was not on any scam, he was not going to provide anyone with suspicion either. I played some craps for a while and then a few guys showed up and started a low limit poker game that fit my bankroll. I have always preferred to play cards to dice. I don’t know what it is about dice, the game just seems too slow for my attention. Maybe I am ADDT or HDAT or is it DDT, ha ha. (Sailor requested the correct letters be used when writing the story. I believe that Sailor is referring to ADD, attention deficit disorder)
Scarpone came with forty grand. Benny and Mike were no light weights either. They probably had around twenty-five to thirty grand each. All up, in the dingy backroom of a juke joint, maybe half a million dollars cash between all the players was in action. There were some seriously wealthy businessmen in that game from Memphis, but you’d never know it to look at them. I was accustomed to seeing a lot of cabbage in a game, but seeing it going like it did, on those three tables, really puckered my poor little ass.
After about ten hours of play, Scarpone called it a night. He was down in cash but in a good mood just the same. He went over to both Mike and Benny, said something to them and then came over to me and asked me if I want to stay or be dropped off back at the flophouse. I was ready to call it a night also, so I left with Scarpone. He said he just wanted a few hours break to bonk Elmira and get a nap. He said we’d be back for more play around five in the morning. Mike and Benny opted to stay and play. When we left, Mike was doing okay but Benny was steaming. I recall Scarpone saying something like he hoped that Italian hot head could keep his cool and not cause any trouble while we were away.
To be continued…
Well, that’s it for this edition of the Playing 4 Keeps™ Newsletter.
See you at the tables Playing 4 Keeps™ Michael Vernon
*************************************************************** |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
***************************************************************
Testimonials from P4K Seminar Participants
Blackjack Players Craps Players
***************************************************************
***************************************************************
***************************************************************
Playing 4 Keeps™ enriches a player's experience to become a consistent winner. My commitment to you is empowerment. Learning to employ discipline creates confidence and strengthens intention through metaphysical lessons. Most importantly I create metaphors linking the knowledge from playing casino games to experiencing winning ways in "the game of life". Michael Vernon
***************************************************************
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
