One of my early lessons about casino games came
from my mentor Stuart Wilde. The lesson was simple enough, “know your way around
the casino”. It, however, contains five sub-parts; know the location of the
game, the cashier, the restroom, the bar, and the exit. The five parts aren’t
necessarily listed in any order of importance. However, sometimes it is cheaper
to skip the game and buy a drink at the bar. Did you ever play a tough game, and
end up paying $177 for two beers? Don’t ask!
It was maybe three years ago; I was having a
drink with the Dice Coach at Green Valley Ranch, after playing blackjack. We did
okay in the session and I was first to color up, calling it quits. Dice Coach
wanted to know why I left the game when I did. My reply went something like
this, “I am looking for reasons to leave a game. Reasons to continue to play
should be obvious enough.” I don’t recall now what it was, but something
happened in the game that tipped me off that it was time to leave. Dice Coach
confirmed that the game deteriorated after I left the game.
From the book - Life Was Never Meant To Be
A Struggle
by Stuart Wilde
Am I trying to Capture a Castle I
Don't Really Need or Want?
"What is your motivation for taking action?
What is the level of your commitment and do you actually want the end result?
For example, are you dating the brother so that you can be close to the man
you actually love? Is it worth the effort or is there a simpler way?
In the five-day intensives called
"The Warrior's Wisdom" that we put on in Taos, New Mexico, we have a
section called the "Quickening". In it you learn to speed up your etheric
energy and to evaluate your every move in light of results and of the speed at
which things materialize in your life.
Expending energy in a wasteful way is the
road to poverty and struggle. One gets bogged down in one's own inefficiency
and eventually one's life becomes an affirmation of helplessness.
Remember, most of the paths you will be
offered are totally inappropriate for you. At every turn give yourself five
good reasons for saying no. And while walking into a relationship or project
look for the exit." Stuart Wilde
This short excerpt may be the best strategy in
or out of a casino. I thought I might dissect the lesson, as I understand it,
and explain how it can apply to gaming.
Ask yourself:
-
What is your motivation for playing a casino game?
-
What is your level of commitment?
-
What do you really want as the end result?
The answers will vary from player to player, so
what is the point here? Self-awareness happens by answering the questions. Take
some time now to come up with your honest answers to the three questions above.
As easy as it may appear, once you set upon the task, it might take you to a
deeper understanding of yourself as a player. Figuring out your motivation may
evade you at first, when it comes down to writing it out in words. Oh sure, “to
win money” is most likely to be the number one reason. But is it really? Scrape
away the warm and fuzzy obvious answer and dig down a little more to uncover the
inner reasons for why you play.
Your level of commitment is equal to your
intestinal fortitude. Do you have what it takes? Do you want to expend what is
necessary to succeed? For example, what does it really take to become a skilled
dice influencer? How many hours of practice and casino play will it take to
master the skill? The answer will not be the same for each player because we all
have different abilities, understandings and conceptions. The universal answer
could be, “I will do whatever it takes to achieve my goal.” The hitch is that
complete commitment is lacking in our culture. The tendency is to quit before
achieving completion and end up settling for less. Sometimes we settle for less
out of boredom, but mostly I feel it is from past conditioning that it is okay
to do less than our best. Excellence is admired, but mediocrity is almost the
standard and norm. So, without 100% commitment to a goal, it is more likely to
fail than it is to succeed. Since failure is familiar, and we are use to it, we
accept it. Oh, well!
Is winning the answer, or is the goal to just
to have a good time? Wanting to win, in itself, is not enough. Wanting lacks
intention. It can be negative yearning, which actually pushes the goal away.
Having a good time is easy enough for us to justify and write off with
acceptance. At least I had fun… losing. In the end, when playing a zero sum game
with the odds against you winning, answering the third question makes it as
tough to be honest. What do you really want as the end result?
The “Quickening”, as it is referred to, has to
do with sharpening your senses and your perception of reality. It takes
practice, patience and a level of commitment. The “Quickening” is similar to
learning a new language or perhaps playing a musical instrument. It is through
the speeding up of your etheric, that you are able to touch into other
dimensions and perceive information. Your learning curve quickens with practice
after achieving a certain amount of information.
Chasing a game, moving casino-to-casino is
expending energy. It may be necessary, in order to find the right game, but you
must be aware that you are burning energy in the pursuit of the right path.
For those of you familiar with my strategies, you may be wondering if this is
contradicting what I have said about hunting the game, it is not. I am
clarifying that, although it is important to position yourself in a “best
scenario” situation, you may burn energy in the process. Consider this as a
caution note. As you use up your energy looking for a game, you may become
frustrated finding no game, and you chose to play just the same. The decision to
play happens out of frustrating and a feeling helplessness. Discipline is lost
and inefficiency sets in as a result. All that you know about using energy is
discarded and you play, simply because of wanting to play. (Check what
you wrote down for your motivation to play.) Playing desperate, playing tired
playing to play, because you want to, will usually end up with you in “poverty
and struggle”.
This leads me back to the opening of the
article, which speaks about the exit. It is easy enough to look down at your
chips and see that you are winning. When you are winning, it is like “easy
money”. Everything you do is working and paying off just fine. The reason I am
always on guard for the exit is to protect my winning session. One of my many
goals for a game is to keep as much of the money won from the game as I
possibly can. I play for that challenge, keeping the money. I am not keen
on losing half of what I have won by continuing to play long after “the game” is
done. It is not my goal to write in my journal, “I could have won more if I had
quit at the right time.” Like following the stock market, I want to get in low
and sell at the top. Being on guard for the time to exit supports my goal for
keeping what I have won. It is my motivation and commitment to be on the alert
for any subtle shifts in the energy that provide me with a hint to exit.
When it comes to gambling, anyone, anytime, can
walk up and play any game. When it comes to capturing the castle, it is not just
about the attack, it is about making it to the exit with full pockets.
As Predicted...
You may not have read it here, but I predicted $1000 gold by
March 31st. I also predicted that casinos may attempt to do some goofy things to
thwart dice setters. Both have happened.
I am getting reports of casinos flat out barring dice setters
after missing the back wall once. There are also reports of casinos making table
conditions more bouncy, uneven or using other props to otherwise insure a random
game. I have a few things for you to consider about this news.
1. How much of this is just short term paranoid knee jerk
reaction on the part of the casino's bookkeeper?
2. Are there really that many skilled dice influencers out
there hurting the bottom line?
3. Will the trend continue to spread to all casinos? If it
does, will it kill the game of craps?
4. Will the casinos realized that they have over reacted
again, as they did in the sixties with blackjack rules when Beat the
Dealer was published?
5. If players stop playing the game, will casinos do away
with craps all together or will they bring back the "old game"?
6. If craps is randomized by casinos eliminating any affects
of dice setting, how many former dice setters will continue to play craps?
I do not know the answers. I do know that my Do's and Don't
of Dice™
strategy performed consistently before dice setting in a
random game. I have
said, "If I ever had to give up any aspect of my dice game that I would be okay
with letting dice setting go." I do believe that my time invested in learning
dice setting was worth while. During the time I lived in New Mexico, I played a
hell of a lot of craps. At the same time, many of my successful sessions were
the result of random rollers, playing in a random game. Of all my eighteen years
of playing
and studying the game of craps, the longest hands have been from random rollers.
So, I am alarmed by this news of changes for craps table
condition? No, I predicted it. Will it affect how I play? I seriously doubt it?
Becoming overly dependant on one strength can oddly become a tremendous
weakness. Being able to diversify options increases the possibilities for
adaptation. I successfully adapted to the random game about 1993.
By the way, for any one morning the potential loss of the
"Golden Goose", there is no golden goose.
Top>
On The Coat Tales of a Gambler -
Episode 21
I Meet the New York Mob…
Sailor continues with his life story of what it
was like knowing Scarpone, a professional gambler in the South…
I was born and raised in Alabama. It was not
until after I met up with Scarpone that I actually traveled some. All the trips
were of course related to gambling. It was either a cock-fight in Georgia, poker
in Florida, or a craps game at some road house in Mississippi. In 1964, I was
twenty-three and a few southern states were the sum total of my worldly
experience.
Benny De Marco was from New York. He came to
Alabama on the lamb. He got mixed up in some mob business and was wanted by the
cops. The mob did not care to have Benny hanging around New York. If he got
picked up, he could implicate the crooks that he worked for. Everybody was
“family” in the mob. But to really understand the Italian Mafia was like
understanding a dysfunctional family. It was a kind of brotherhood, a tight nit
group of thugs that managed to get along for the common cause of making money.
As long as a guy served the cause of the brotherhood, all was good on the
surface. However, with crooks, no one really ever trusted anyone, especially
someone that had got themselves into a jam, and was wanted by the cops.
Benny was not the sharpest axe in the mob’s tool
shed, but he did know which way was up. It did not take him long to figure out
that his mob buddies were more of a threat to his well being, than were the New
York cops. He added up two and four and that equaled south. He decided that
hiding out in Alabama was a whole lot better than being splashed into the East
River while hugging a sack of cement.
Although Benny had to cut ties with New York, he
did keep a connection with a mobster boss, simply known as Mr. Ricky. Mr. Ricky
liked Benny. Benny was the kind of guy that could be assigned a job, and Mr.
Ricky knew, that whatever it took, Benny would complete the job.
Benny was short in stature, but he had the
reputation in New York as the kind of guy you’d never want to piss off. Benny
had a chip on his shoulder and it did not take much for him to catch an attitude
and the next thing you’d know, he’d be beating some poor slob to a bloody pulp.
That’s the real reason Mr. Ricky liked having Benny around. Benny didn’t need a
gun to be a huge threat. He was a mad man with a hair trigger to do violence.
The 1964 World's Fair was in Flushing Meadow in
Queens, New York. The heat was off Benny by then, but he could not go back to
New York to live. The cops tend to forget old warrants, and move on to their
next person of interest, but the “Family” never forgets. Just the same, Benny
received a message from Mr. Ricky that he had a short term proposition and he
wanted Benny’s help with an important job at the World’s Fair. Of course the job
had nothing to do with the Fair, but it was Mr. Ricky's way to keep things vague, yet
interesting for Benny.
I had known Scarpone for a few years by this
time. I had already driven him out of state on several gambling trips. Scarpone
asked me if I would do him a favor. He wanted me to drive his buddy to New York.
It turned out to be Benny De Marco.
Benny owned a 1963 Corvette. Benny was a hot
head and not one to be trusted to keep his cool. That is how I remember Scarpone
explaining why he was asking me to drive Benny to New York. Benny still had a
warrant out for his arrest in New York and Scarpone was concerned for his
friend. His concern was that Benny was not smart enough to stay within the
limits of the law. With Benny driving his speed machine on the open road,
Scarpone worried that Benny would likely land himself in jail. One thing would
lead to another and eventually the bench warrant would turn up and Benny would
be extradited to New York. The job would take only one week including the
driving. Scarpone offered me $100 a day and Benny would pick up all the travel
expenses.
Mr. Ricky wanted Benny for an important mob
meeting. Mr. Ricky needed a body guard, a no non-sense guy that could keep his
mouth shut while imposing a definite threat just with his presence. Hiring
Benny, instead of having one of Mr. Ricky’s own guys had to do with the purpose
of the meeting. Mr. Ricky did not want any of his people to know about the
meeting. As it turned out, I got to make an extra two hundred bucks
driving Mr. Ricky’s Cadillac on the meeting day for the same reason.
The meeting was held near the New York World’s
fair in Flushing. Mr. Ricky put us up in a modest hotel, but it was nicer than
anything I had ever seen. I actually got to spend a couple of days at the
World’s Fair before heading back to Greenville. Man there’s a whole other story
here that I will have to tell you about later. Anyway, my part was to be the
driver on this job and I took it.
On the day of the meeting, Benny and I took a
cab to Mr. Ricky’s hotel. We waited on the driveway until Mr. Ricky came down.
He invited us to join him for breakfast. After breakfast we went back out to the
driveway where Mr. Ricky directed me to a Cadillac parked on the drive. He said
the keys would be in it and to bring it around to pickup him and Benny. We were
standing but fifty feet from where the car was parked and for 200 bucks; I was
not going to open my yap about us all walking.
I drove the car with Mr. Ricky giving me
directions. After about a thirty minute drive, we arrived at another hotel. It
was elegant and I cannot recall the name, but you’d recognize it. Mr. Ricky
instructed me to stay with the car, and not to leave it unless I had to take a
piss or get out for a smoke. I didn’t smoke, I never have in fact. Turning to
Benny, Mr. Ricky asked him if he was carrying a piece. Benny said, “No”. Mr.
Ricky said, “Good,” and went on to say, “Of course we will be searched, so there
can be no guns at this meeting, but if there’s trouble of any sort, I expect you
to get me out safely Benny.” Of course by then, it was too late for me to do
anything except wonder about what the hell I had gotten myself into.
It turned out to be a long day of just sitting
in the car and watching well to do people coming and going from the hotel. About
one o’clock, a waiter came from the hotel with one of those fancy covered silver
plates. The waiter came to my side of the car and told me that the lunch was
compliments of Mr. Ricky. I had a corn beef sandwich on rye with potato salad
and a beer. About five-thirty, Benny and Mr. Ricky came out of the hotel and we
drove back to Mr. Ricky’s hotel. Mr. Ricky thanked me for driving and waiting
all day. He told me that Benny would take care of me. That was the last we saw
of Mr. Ricky. We took a cab back to our hotel, and the next morning, we headed
back to Greenville.
Benny paid me the $200 for driving Mr. Ricky and
the $700 Scarpone promised. Of course the $700 did not come from Scarpone; it
came from Benny’s cut for doing the job. When we got back to Greenville, Benny
tossed me another hundred for a tip. He said $900 was a bastard number and one
thousand sounded sweeter. A thousand bucks in one week took away all of my
wife’s anger. She did not believe me in the least that I had a $700 dollar job.
Hell, $700 was about what I made in a month. When I showed her ten one hundred
dollar bills, it was “hot springs or bust” that night.
On the trip home, Benny asked me if I could keep
my f’n mouth shut if he told me why we were in New York. I said, “Sure, you know
me.” Benny was the kind of guy that always needed attention, the kind of
attention that said, “Look at me, Mr. Big Shot”. Anyway, it was his ego that
needed to confess the New York meeting. The secret mob meeting with Mr. Ricky
and whomever he met with had to do with building casinos in Atlantic City. Mr.
Ricky’s meeting was the beginning stages of how the mob would structure their
business arrangement and operate legalized, Las Vegas style gambling, on the
Boardwalk of Atlantic City. Benny went on with how it was all going to happen,
the split between the Families, the people getting greased, the purchase of the
land and of course the paying off of politicians. He went on to say how Mr.
Ricky was making a move, (changing partners) and that was his reason for needing
Benny. I was sitting there behind the wheel nodding, and saying to myself,
“Yeah, yeah, Benny, you are so full of shit. You must think I’ll believe any crap
you make up.” To this day, I do not know for sure if Benny told me the truth or
if he made it all up. Casinos did come to Atlantic City several years later,
after that trip to New York.
Besides the cash I made on that trip, I had a
blast driving Benny’s Corvette. Benny insisted on driving for a short stint on
the way up to New York. We were on a stretch of road in North Carolina. Benny
gunned the engine a couple of times, telling me if I pissed my pants in his car
that he’d break my F’n neck. He dropped the clutch and lit’em up. He wound the
clock to 100 miles an hour before shifting into third gear. With forth gear
still to go, I was praying that he’d run out of speed before we ran out of road.
With my butt only a few inches off the ground, the scenery blew by pretty damn fast at
140.
Each encounter with Scarpone seasoned me a bit
more for the next adventure. Sharing these stories with you, as I look back on
my life, I think I am lucky to have survived. I was a young and naïve. I was
trying to hold a steady job, and stay married, but I was reckless as hell.
On The Coat Tales of a Gambler, will continue…
