They are all gone now. I don’t think about them much anymore, except, fleetingly, at this time of year, late January. They would have loved it, the buildup to the Super Bowl, an exhilarating time for men like themselves, those shadowy figures from my childhood.
My uncles were not like the uncles of my childhood friends — tall, blond, smiling men who taught their nephews how to toss a baseball. My uncles were short, dour men in shimmering sharkskin suits. They smoked crooked Toscano cigars and taught me, from the time I was 6, how to palm the ace of spades, how to spot shaved dice and how to pray to God before I went to bed that the Bears would beat the Packers by at least a point and a half.
They weren’t really my uncles; they were my father’s gambling cronies. Italian men with names like Schiama (the jabbering one), Freddy the Welch and Tommy the Blond (not really blond, just not as dark as his cronies). Their wives, my aunts, were big, peroxide blondes in the habit of saying “kinks” for kings, as in, “I got three kinks, doll.”
My father never worked a day in his life. He was a gambler and a con man and a grifter for all of the 65 years that I knew him. He gambled on pool, cards, dice, horses, sports events, two pigeons sitting on a fence, anything — as long as he could find an edge. Shaved dice. Marked cards. A drugged horse. And when he couldn’t find an edge, when the game was fixed against him, he gambled anyway, because, he told me, “it was the only game in town.” When he was 89, he gambled on a triple-bypass heart operation because he liked the odds. His doctor told him that if he survived the operation, he had a 60-40 chance of living six more years, and he did. He spent those last years in an assisted-living facility, where he booked bets on the pay phone in the lobby. I can imagine him now, in the midst of the playoffs, getting the line on the San Diego Chargers or the Philadelphia Eagles, scribbling it on a piece of paper he held against the wall, studying it, then placing his bet.
My father never knew his parents. He spent the first 15 years of his life in an orphanage, a good apprenticeship for a gambler and a swindler. He learned early how to con his custodians out of extra food and sometimes even affection. When he left the orphanage, he turned to gambling for his livelihood and his satisfactions. Gambling proved that he existed, that he was special, smarter than his marks, smarter even than God’s will.
Here’s what it was like to grow up a gambler’s son. I couldn’t listen to “The Lone Ranger” on the radio because my father had to listen to horse-racing results. I could never root for the Yankees and our heroes (DiMaggio, Berra, Raschi, Crosetti) when they played the Red Sox if Uncle Freddy was “down” on the Red Sox. Matchbooks were strewn everywhere throughout our house, yet my father didn’t smoke. When I was 7, I burned up a matchbook and was punished — not for almost starting a fire but for destroying my father’s betting line, which he always wrote on the inside covers of matchbooks. Whenever he was sitting in the back seat of a police car, arrested for gambling, he’d ask the officer in front for a cigarette. He’d light the cigarette, then toss the matchbook with his betting line, the evidence, out the window. When I was 12, my father bought me an expensive Herb Score baseball glove; three days later, he pawned it. After one of his disastrous betting weekends, real estate agents wandered through our house asking my mother questions about heating costs. When my father was sick in bed with the flu, I would come home from high school to find my mother on the phone, scribbling numbers on a bunched-up napkin while my father shouted down from their bedroom, “Get the line on Frisco!”
A brilliant, self-educated man, my father cited “The Gambler,” by Dostoyevsky, as proof that all gamblers, himself included, were “degenerate gamblers,” the phrase he always used. But it was obvious to me that he didn’t really think of himself as a degenerate gambler, because he always used to preach that no matter how much he gambled he always made sure that he was able to meet his “nut,” his family’s minimal living expenses. And he did. We lived in a leafy, WASP-y <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
ffice:smarttags" /><st1
lace w:st="on">New England</st1lace> suburb, while my uncles still lived in the Italian neighborhood in the city. I went to a private Jesuit prep school and then to a Jesuit college because, my father told me, he wanted me to be “white.” To be Pat Jordan, not Pasquale Giordano, my father’s given name.
My father had no interest in money. “It’s about the juice,” he said, the action. Money was just a means to keep score. He gave it away, to his friends, his wife, me. He paid for every dinner with his buddies, overtipped every bartender and waiter, bought my mother diamonds when he was flush, bought me expensive baseball shoes made of kangaroo leather and bought nothing for himself, except a new navy blazer with brass buttons every 20 years or so.
He hated casinos because they were “dehumanizing institutions,” and he knew about institutions. “Besides,” he said, “you can’t beat the iron,” meaning the casinos’ winning percentage. He preferred illegal, private games because they were more exciting (the threat of cops breaking down the door) and more challenging. “It’s not how good you gamble — it’s about how many mistakes your opponent makes,” he said. “Casinos don’t make mistakes.” My father prided himself on his ability to “read” his opponents, find their weakness, exploit it, outsmart them (always the point of my father’s gambling) and, if necessary, outcheat them.
When I was in my 20s, by then an ex-professional baseball pitcher, a schoolteacher, a husband, a father — a respectable burgher in a way that he never was — my father gave me a lecture on vice. “There are only three vices in this world,” he said. “Booze, broads and gambling. If you’re gonna do it right, pick one and stick to it.” I laughed, because at the time I had no room in my life for vice. Forty years later, shortly before he died, he repeated that lecture to me. By then I had more than a passing acquaintance with the first two vices, but not the last. I laughed again, and said, “Don’t worry, Pop, I never gamble.” He gave me a disgusted look and said: “You? A freelance writer 40 years?”
Which was why, last fall, a couple of years after he died, I went to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>. To find out how far the apple had fallen from the tree, but even more important, to try to understand my father’s gambling, my father, in a way I never had when he was alive.
“Gambling gives meaning to some people’s lives,” David Schwartz said over the ka-ching of the slot machines in the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1
laceName w:st="on">Mandalay</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Bay</st1laceType></st1lace>, where I was staying. The vast casino was almost deserted on this weekday afternoon, except for a few elderly women playing the slots.
“Gambling is all about risk and reward,” Schwartz said. “It’s hard-wired into our brain since the dawn of man.” Schwartz, who is 33, grew up near <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City> and got his Ph.D. at U.C.L.A., where he wrote his dissertation on gambling. Today he is the director of the Center for Gaming Research at the <st1laceType w:st="on">University</st1laceType> of <st1laceName w:st="on">Nevada</st1laceName>, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>. “I don’t know if it’s a disease,” he said. “We have free will. We can walk away.” I told him about my father. “Gamblers always pay for dinner,” Schwartz said. “A lot of them lead ascetic lives. Money is just how they keep score.” Then he told me a story about Lem Banker, a gambling legend in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>.
“I got married last Friday,” Schwartz said. “Before the ceremony, my wife to be discovered her wedding band didn’t fit. I told Lem. He said: ‘Go down to this jeweler I know and he’ll take care of it. Just tell him your Uncle Lem sent you.’ ”
The following morning, I took a taxi to the Gambler’s Book Shop on <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">11th Street</st1:address></st1:Street>, just off <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Charleston Boulevard</st1:address></st1:Street>, to meet Uncle Lem. (Are all gamblers “Uncles,” with a sawbuck for the kid but never a trip to the circus?) I was supposed to meet Lem at noon. He was 79 and had a grumpy old man’s voice over the phone when I called to set up a meeting: “Whaddya want?” I explained myself. “Meet me at the bookstore,” he said. I asked how much the taxi fare would be. “Don’t worry about it, for Chrissakes!” he said. “I’ll pay it.”
“Lem is a little late,” said Howard Schwartz (no relation to David), the owner of the Gambler’s Book Shop. “Let me show ya around.” Schwartz is a former <st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">New York</st1lace></st1:State> newspaper reporter, slight, bald, Woody Allen in “Broadway Danny Rose.” He showed me his store devoted to all things gambling. Then he led me into his back room. A poster on the wall read “Area Patrolled by Attack Cat.” He pointed to a cardboard box on a sleeping cot. I peeked inside. There, on a bunched-up blanket, slept the smallest kitten I’d ever seen. “Four days old,” Schwartz said. “I’m feeding it with an eyedropper. The vet said at that age three out of four die. Not good odds.” Schwartz shrugged. “So I’ve been sleeping with it every night. Gamblers love cats and dogs.” For gamblers, a pet is a substitute for the human relationships they find troubling. A pet’s love is unconditional. Human love is demanding: Stop gambling!
Schwartz produced a folder of articles about Uncle Lem and a copy of the book “Lem Banker’s Book of Sports Betting.” It was written in 1986, then went out of print until Schwartz reprinted it himself. I began to leaf through the articles and the book.
Lem Banker is considered the greatest living sports bettor in the country. He bets more than 100 sports events a week, mostly baseball, basketball and football, college and pros. If he wins on 56 percent of those games, he makes his nut. If he hits 60 percent or higher, he gets rich. During one stretch, Lem picked 13 consecutive Super Bowl winners against the spread.
Uncle Lem appeared. He is a big, muscular, vigorous man for his age. He wore a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, jogging shorts and sneakers. Before I could ask a question he began telling me stories.
“I knew ’em all,” Lem said in his gruff voice. “Lefty Rosenthal from the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Chicago</st1lace></st1:City> mob. Ice Pick Willie Alderman. Liver Lips Gordon. Louie the Butcher. ... I knew all the fighters — Ali, Rocky Marciano, Jake LaMotta, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston, he was a friend of mine. Joe Louis was late for his funeral because he had to get down on some sports. ... I knew everybody. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Kirk Kerkorian, the businessman.”
I asked Lem when he started gambling.
“I started booking bets in my father’s candy store in <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Union City</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">N.J.</st1:State></st1lace>, when I was 20,” he told me. “I never had a job since. My father said I’d always be a bum.” Lem bet mostly sports events because he loved sports. He was good enough at basketball to be offered scholarships to <st1laceName w:st="on">Long Island</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">University</st1laceType> and the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceType w:st="on">University</st1laceType> of <st1laceName w:st="on">Miami</st1laceName></st1lace>. He played against Bob Cousy and Easy Ed Macauley in the summers.
“I went to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Miami</st1lace></st1:City> on a scholarship in 1949,” Lem said. “But I dropped out and started booking students’ bets. Only sports. No horses, no cards, no table games. I only bet people. I like the underdogs. I use a little psychology to see which underdog is ‘up’ for a game. It’s all instincts, kid.” (My old man called me kid until the day he died, when I was 65.)
Lem was a still a wannabe major gambler and bookie in 1957 when the feds busted a gambling ring in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Indiana</st1lace></st1:State> and subpoenaed 300 people, among them actors, athletes, politicians and Lem Banker. Before he testified, one of the indicted gamblers told him: “You’re a young fellow. Don’t get yourself in trouble for me. Tell the truth.” Lem told him not to worry and took the Fifth.
Some “people” in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City> liked it that Lem Banker was a “stand-up guy,” so they invited him to town to set up his sports book. “Why not?” Lem said. It was in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>, in 1959, at the age of 31, that Lem married a beautiful model named Delores Vicario. She was naïve about his gambling. She asked him once why he always said Sandy Koufax, a fellow Jew, was the best pitcher in baseball and yet always bet against him. Lem said, “I’m a gambler, sweetheart, not a fan.”
According to Lem, betting every day keeps him young: “Keeps my heart pumping. Some people take Plavix for their heart. I bet. Otherwise life would be boring.”
He has two satellite dishes and eight television sets in his Spanish stucco mansion. He sits at his kitchen table and figures out his bets based on his instincts, his information and a simple philosophy: get the best odds and “don’t make high bets when you’re on a bad streak.”
After he figures out his bets, he punches the boxing bag in his backyard, then starts to field calls from his cronies, which always begin the same way: “Lem, who do ya like?”
“I tell them,” Lem said. “I never charged anyone for my picks, like some guys.” At one time, newspapers across the country, from The New York Post to The San Francisco Examiner, carried Lem’s picks. Today he has a weekly TV program on KLAS-TV in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>.
Before dinner, and before he watches the night’s sports on TV, Lem lifts some weights. A few bicep curls, bench presses. He’s a health nut. He doesn’t drink or smoke. That’s one reason he doesn’t like casino games — sitting at a card table for hours, smoking and drinking: “It’s unhealthy. Booze and broads ruined more gamblers than sore-armed quarterbacks.” To reinforce his point, he stood and flashed me a bodybuilder’s double-bicep shot. Then he crunched his pecs, making them jump.
When I got up to leave, I asked Howard Schwartz to call me a taxi. “I’ll drive ya,” Lem said. We walked through the bookstore, past a woman at the cash register. She came rushing out of the store toward Lem.
“I thought it was you,” she said, grabbing his arm. I got into the car just as I heard her say, “So, Lem, who do ya like?”
The following morning I took a taxi to Wayne Allyn Root’s house in a gated subdivision outside <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>. His wife, Debra, an evangelical Christian and a former Miss <st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1lace></st1:State>, met me at the door. She showed me into their living room. “<st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> will be down in a minute,” she said, and left. I looked around. <st1:City w:st="on">Wayne</st1:City>’s house was a shrine to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City>. The walls were adorned with posters of him, photographs of him, newspaper and magazine articles about him. There were copies of his books, “Millionaire Republican” and “The King of Vegas’ Guide to Gambling,” everywhere. <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City>’s Web site is full of references to him as “the king of Vegas,” “the Warren Buffett” of gambling, “the oddsmaker of everything in the world,” the Tony Robbins of gambling. It lists all the TV shows he’s been on, which include “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Best Damned Sports Show Period,” and the publications that have profiled him. In one such profile, written by Wayne himself under the byline “Cool Hand Root,” he claims that sports betting is the new American pastime because fans can do it at home, in front of their favorite piece of furniture, the TV set. It appeals to Americans’ love of both money and sports, it allows the average fan to match wits with professional gamblers and it’s a pleasant and entertaining way to spend a Saturday with friends, eating pizza, drinking beer and watching sports on TV. Even if fans don’t win their bets, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> writes, they get their money’s worth in entertainment. <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> may be the only sports handicapper in the world who sells his betting picks to people while reminding them that even when they lose their money, they shouldn’t complain because they had so much fun losing it.
<st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> appeared, smiling, a small man dressed in a black shirt, black slacks and black dress shoes. Johnny Cash crossed with Liberace.
<st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> sat down and began talking. He doesn’t like to waste time. Time is money. He said he grew up Jewish in a tough neighborhood in <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Mount Vernon</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">N.Y.</st1:State></st1lace>, and began gambling at 13, in imitation of his father, who played the stock market. “For 95 percent of gamblers,” he said, “it’s about the action. What do you think the N.F.L. is all about? Who’d watch a lousy game if they couldn’t bet?” According to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City>, when fans bet they form an emotional relationship with the men and the team they’re betting on. That’s where they get their pleasure. The money won, or lost, is only incidental. That’s the way <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> likes it. “For me, it’s all about the money,” he said. “I live for it.”
Most of his customers are small-business men. “In charge of their own lives, decision makers,” <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> said. “I want high rollers who can afford to lose.” (<st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> talks more about losing than any gambler I’ve met.) <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City>’s sports picks are packaged in a series of tiers. “It’s all about information,” he said. “The more they pay, the more information they get.” Bettors who pay $25,000 a year for <st1:City w:st="on">Wayne</st1:City>’s picks get appreciably more information — including the opportunity to speak with <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> directly — than bettors who pay $450 for a single week’s picks.
<st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> jumped up. “Wanna go for lunch? Do you like Chinese?” We ate lunch at Chin Chin Café, inside the <st1:State w:st="on">New York</st1:State>-<st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">New York</st1lace></st1:State> casino. Wayne attacked his chicken as if it were his last meal, yet without interest, as if it were something to get out of the way before he went on to more important things. I asked him if he ever felt guilty about making his money by gambling. He looked up at me as if I had used a word in a language he didn’t understand and said: “Guilt? I don’t have any guilt. I think zero about why things are. I just accept what they are and find a way to take advantage of them.”
When the check came, I reached for it. <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> made a feeble pass at it, too. “I was gonna pay,” he said, but he didn’t.
That night, Eric Drache picked me up in front of the <st1laceName w:st="on">Mandalay</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Bay</st1laceType> and drove us to a small brightly lighted Italian restaurant on the outskirts of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City> called Cafe Chloe. Besides playing poker himself, Eric has managed poker rooms at the Mirage and the Golden Nugget and been a director of the World Series of Poker for 16 years. Now he produces television shows of poker events.
I asked him when he became a gambler. He drew a distinction between gambling and playing poker. When it comes to the latter, “I’m not a gambler,” he said. “A gambler is someone who wagers at unfavorable odds. I make sure the odds are in my favor.” He grinned. “Except once. Many years ago I was the sixth-rated poker player in the world.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, I spent the year playing against No. 1 to No. 5.”
Eric told me that his father was a gambler: “A big-time loser on horses. Mob guys used to come to our house in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">New Jersey</st1lace></st1:State>.” No doubt Eric started gambling in an attempt to prove to his father that he was a winner. “As a kid, I wasn’t good at anything,” he said. “I was looking for something to be good at. I liked poker because it was romantic. I wouldn’t have to work for anyone.” He grinned sheepishly. “I lost constantly as a kid before I figured it out.” When wagering on horses and sport, he said, “I couldn’t bet small.”
Eric also did a little bookmaking in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">New Jersey</st1lace></st1:State>, which led to legal trouble in 1968, when he was only a kid. “I went to jail,” he said. “I could have got off if I ratted out where I got my betting line. But I didn’t. To this day, as a felon, I can’t vote in Vegas. But I have had a gambling license.”
When the check came, Eric grabbed it before I could even reach for it; he paid from a wad of bills. Then we got into his S.U.V. and drove down the Strip. When we arrived at the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Mandalay</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Bay</st1laceType></st1lace>, he said: “Will you do me a favor? Call my ex-wife? Her name is Jane Lovelle. She knows a lot about gambling.”
I called Jane Lovelle, a psychiatric site manager at a jail in the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">San Francisco</st1lace></st1:City> area. I told her I had dinner with her ex-husband. “Of course he paid,” she said. “Gamblers always pay so they can be in control and as a way of demonstrating they’re successful. Eric’s an amazing tipper.” They were married for seven years, until, she said, his gambling affected their marriage. “His gratifications were in cards, not personal relationships,” she said. “I would make a nice dinner and he’d say: ‘Not now. I just lost 15 stoves.’ Gamblers don’t really have a true desire to have emotional relationships with others.”
Vegas is the ultimate petri dish for gambling,” said Dr. Robert Hunter, who has been the director of the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Problem</st1laceName> <st1laceName w:st="on">Gambling</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Center</st1laceType></st1lace> for more than 20 years. According to Hunter, only about 5 percent of gamblers develop a problem. “Gambling addiction is more biology than psychology,” he said. “It has molecular similarities to drug and alcohol addiction.” The P.G.C. brochure describes gambling addicts as those who have lost “the ability to control their impulses to gamble.”
Hunter told me that there are two types of gamblers: action seekers and escape seekers. Escape seekers are machine gamblers — video poker, slots. Action seekers are card players, craps shooters, sports bettors. Although both types gamble for immediate gratification, escape gamblers need it even more immediately than action gamblers. Push a button, win or lose.
I’d put it this way: Escape gamblers lose themselves in a machine’s electronic glow in the same way that children are hypnotized by video games. It’s a way to disassociate themselves from an unpleasant reality. Action seekers gamble for the competition, the risk-reward.
He introduced me to two of his staff members, Christine and Howie. Everyone on his staff is a recovering gambling addict. Howie used to be a pit boss on the Strip. Christine is a former C.P.A. who worked for the city. Howie is in his 60s, Christine in her 50s. Hunter urged them to tell me their stories. “I was an action gambler,” Howie said. “I wanted to be a big shot like Lem Banker.”
In a barely audible voice, Christine said, “I was an escape gambler, video poker, to escape from my crummy life.” She was caught stealing money from work to pay off gambling debts. “I lost my job, my house,” she said. “I hit bottom. The only thing left was suicide.”
Hunter said: “Christine isn’t a character out of Damon Runyon. She’s out of Ibsen.” Runyon’s characters are action gamblers, big, brassy, egocentric, self-assured to an extreme. Ibsen’s characters are escape gamblers, frustrated, neurotic, trapped, self-destructive. “Most of the gamblers in our group, or in G.A. in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>, are escape gamblers,” Hunter said. “Maybe 90 percent.”
I attended a meeting of gambling addicts at the P.G.C.; Hunter introduced me to them. They talked mostly about themselves, their lives, in a therapeutic way of self-discovery. Compared with the Gamblers Anonymous approach, the P.G.C. program I saw in action is more about self-awareness than it is about emotional support. P.G.C. members could have been in any therapy group, coping with anger problems or divorce.
Finally, Hunter asked me if I had any questions. I did. If risk and reward was such an essential part of their natures, how did they feel about the loss of it?
They all responded in the same way, saying that they just channeled their risk-reward nature into being a better mother, father, employee. One woman raised her hand and said: “Yes, I feel I lost my alter ego. The person I wanted to be. That friend who guided me into risk. When you stop gambling, you have to find another you. But that evil, exciting friend pops up in other ways now. Like urging you to go sky diving.”
A man said: “I felt like I lost part of my nature at first. I missed it a little bit. Nothing can replace the high of gambling. But now I’m a big shot as a reformed addict to other addicts.”
I had one more question. If gambling is a physical addiction, why not treat it with medicine? Treating it with psychological self-awareness implies that it’s a problem of will.
“Because there is no medicine,” Hunter said.
“I don’t want anything to eat,” Jimmy V. said. “Just ask your questions.” We were sitting in a coffee shop near the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Mandalay</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Bay</st1laceType></st1lace>. Jimmy Vaccaro, who is 61, was dressed in a white sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers. He looked like an old-timey gambler, used to smoke-filled rooms, not fancy <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City> casinos. Yet Jimmy V., which is how everyone knows him, is one of the more powerful men in town. He has set the odds for casinos in <st1:City w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1:City> and at the Atlantis in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Bahamas</st1lace></st1:country-region>.
Until Jimmy came to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City> in 1974 and opened a sports book, he “never had a job in my life,” he said. “My parents were small-time gamblers in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Pittsburgh</st1lace></st1:City>. Italians ran most of the games. Mob guys. As a kid, I thought the gambling atmosphere was exciting. Like a family. Even if I blew my money, I felt I was part of something. I liked living on the sly” — an expression my old man used often — “anything you do on the sly is great. If you have to work at it it’s not fun. I liked the risk-reward. The hardship. The dark side of it. I enjoyed something with pain involved.” I laughed, but Jimmy didn’t even smile. He just went on in his flat, uninflected voice. “I was a teenager the first time I saw a juiced table. I got cheated in dice.” It was an education, “like I graduated from Harvard,” he said. “No one’s ever not been cheated. It’s part of the progression. I don’t know anyone whose closet doesn’t have something dark in it.”
I was embarrassed to mention to Jimmy how my old man always cheated at cards or dice, but I did. For the first time, he smiled. “More power to him,” he said. “That’s the point, isn’t it? To outsmart the other guy any way you can.”
Jimmy no longer shoots craps or plays much poker — he just bets on sports events. “I don’t have to gouge your eyeballs out anymore,” he said.
He checked his watch. “I gotta go,” he said. I had one more question. What about Gamblers Anonymous and the Problem Gambling Center?
“Problem gamblers are life’s losers,” he said. “They wanna go broke. They always find a reason why they lost. I lose, I go home. Reasons are part of the equation. Once I bet, I understand I have no control, so I understand loss.” He stood up to go. He added: “Everybody can’t be winners. That’s why we need born losers.”
After Jimmy V. left, I checked out. But before leaving, I found a blackjack table with only one player. I sat down and gave the dealer a C-note. She handed me some chips. I placed a bet. She dealt the cards. I won. Then I won a few more hands. I was up $200. I liked that, the $200. But I was waiting for that gambler’s high. I played a few more hands. Nothing. I thought about my flight home. My wife. My dogs. I lost a few hands. Maybe I’ll go smoke a cigar outside before I get a taxi? I lost again. My $200 in winnings was gone now. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get it over with. I began to double up until I lost all of my original $100, except for a lone $5 chip. I tossed it to the dealer. She thanked me with a small nod.
Outside, I watched the taxis and limos drop people off. They were smiling, excited, as they entered the casino. I stood there thinking about what I’d learned in Vegas. About gambling, gamblers, my old man, myself. My father decided at some point in his life that it was gambling that defined him. It didn’t matter whether that was true or not, it mattered only that to him it was true. Alea ludo ergo sum. I gamble, therefore I am. He told me once: “Find out who you are, kid. And be it.” A good lesson for a gambler’s son.
A taxi pulled up to the curb. “The airport,” I said. The taxi pulled away from the hotel, turned left on the Strip and began moving past the <st1:City w:st="on">Luxor</st1:City>, the Excalibur, <st1:State w:st="on">New York</st1:State>-<st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">New York</st1lace></st1:State>. The cabby looked in his rear-view mirror and asked, “So, did you have a good time in Vegas, buddy?”
“O.K.,” I said. I looked out the window. “I wish my old man had been with me.”
Pat Jordan, a frequent contributor to the magazine, is writing a book about his father and gambling.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
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Curtosy of MW
My uncles were not like the uncles of my childhood friends — tall, blond, smiling men who taught their nephews how to toss a baseball. My uncles were short, dour men in shimmering sharkskin suits. They smoked crooked Toscano cigars and taught me, from the time I was 6, how to palm the ace of spades, how to spot shaved dice and how to pray to God before I went to bed that the Bears would beat the Packers by at least a point and a half.
They weren’t really my uncles; they were my father’s gambling cronies. Italian men with names like Schiama (the jabbering one), Freddy the Welch and Tommy the Blond (not really blond, just not as dark as his cronies). Their wives, my aunts, were big, peroxide blondes in the habit of saying “kinks” for kings, as in, “I got three kinks, doll.”
My father never worked a day in his life. He was a gambler and a con man and a grifter for all of the 65 years that I knew him. He gambled on pool, cards, dice, horses, sports events, two pigeons sitting on a fence, anything — as long as he could find an edge. Shaved dice. Marked cards. A drugged horse. And when he couldn’t find an edge, when the game was fixed against him, he gambled anyway, because, he told me, “it was the only game in town.” When he was 89, he gambled on a triple-bypass heart operation because he liked the odds. His doctor told him that if he survived the operation, he had a 60-40 chance of living six more years, and he did. He spent those last years in an assisted-living facility, where he booked bets on the pay phone in the lobby. I can imagine him now, in the midst of the playoffs, getting the line on the San Diego Chargers or the Philadelphia Eagles, scribbling it on a piece of paper he held against the wall, studying it, then placing his bet.
My father never knew his parents. He spent the first 15 years of his life in an orphanage, a good apprenticeship for a gambler and a swindler. He learned early how to con his custodians out of extra food and sometimes even affection. When he left the orphanage, he turned to gambling for his livelihood and his satisfactions. Gambling proved that he existed, that he was special, smarter than his marks, smarter even than God’s will.
Here’s what it was like to grow up a gambler’s son. I couldn’t listen to “The Lone Ranger” on the radio because my father had to listen to horse-racing results. I could never root for the Yankees and our heroes (DiMaggio, Berra, Raschi, Crosetti) when they played the Red Sox if Uncle Freddy was “down” on the Red Sox. Matchbooks were strewn everywhere throughout our house, yet my father didn’t smoke. When I was 7, I burned up a matchbook and was punished — not for almost starting a fire but for destroying my father’s betting line, which he always wrote on the inside covers of matchbooks. Whenever he was sitting in the back seat of a police car, arrested for gambling, he’d ask the officer in front for a cigarette. He’d light the cigarette, then toss the matchbook with his betting line, the evidence, out the window. When I was 12, my father bought me an expensive Herb Score baseball glove; three days later, he pawned it. After one of his disastrous betting weekends, real estate agents wandered through our house asking my mother questions about heating costs. When my father was sick in bed with the flu, I would come home from high school to find my mother on the phone, scribbling numbers on a bunched-up napkin while my father shouted down from their bedroom, “Get the line on Frisco!”
A brilliant, self-educated man, my father cited “The Gambler,” by Dostoyevsky, as proof that all gamblers, himself included, were “degenerate gamblers,” the phrase he always used. But it was obvious to me that he didn’t really think of himself as a degenerate gambler, because he always used to preach that no matter how much he gambled he always made sure that he was able to meet his “nut,” his family’s minimal living expenses. And he did. We lived in a leafy, WASP-y <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
ffice:smarttags" /><st1lace w:st="on">New England</st1lace> suburb, while my uncles still lived in the Italian neighborhood in the city. I went to a private Jesuit prep school and then to a Jesuit college because, my father told me, he wanted me to be “white.” To be Pat Jordan, not Pasquale Giordano, my father’s given name.My father had no interest in money. “It’s about the juice,” he said, the action. Money was just a means to keep score. He gave it away, to his friends, his wife, me. He paid for every dinner with his buddies, overtipped every bartender and waiter, bought my mother diamonds when he was flush, bought me expensive baseball shoes made of kangaroo leather and bought nothing for himself, except a new navy blazer with brass buttons every 20 years or so.
He hated casinos because they were “dehumanizing institutions,” and he knew about institutions. “Besides,” he said, “you can’t beat the iron,” meaning the casinos’ winning percentage. He preferred illegal, private games because they were more exciting (the threat of cops breaking down the door) and more challenging. “It’s not how good you gamble — it’s about how many mistakes your opponent makes,” he said. “Casinos don’t make mistakes.” My father prided himself on his ability to “read” his opponents, find their weakness, exploit it, outsmart them (always the point of my father’s gambling) and, if necessary, outcheat them.
When I was in my 20s, by then an ex-professional baseball pitcher, a schoolteacher, a husband, a father — a respectable burgher in a way that he never was — my father gave me a lecture on vice. “There are only three vices in this world,” he said. “Booze, broads and gambling. If you’re gonna do it right, pick one and stick to it.” I laughed, because at the time I had no room in my life for vice. Forty years later, shortly before he died, he repeated that lecture to me. By then I had more than a passing acquaintance with the first two vices, but not the last. I laughed again, and said, “Don’t worry, Pop, I never gamble.” He gave me a disgusted look and said: “You? A freelance writer 40 years?”
Which was why, last fall, a couple of years after he died, I went to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>. To find out how far the apple had fallen from the tree, but even more important, to try to understand my father’s gambling, my father, in a way I never had when he was alive.“Gambling gives meaning to some people’s lives,” David Schwartz said over the ka-ching of the slot machines in the <st1
lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Mandalay</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Bay</st1laceType></st1lace>, where I was staying. The vast casino was almost deserted on this weekday afternoon, except for a few elderly women playing the slots.“Gambling is all about risk and reward,” Schwartz said. “It’s hard-wired into our brain since the dawn of man.” Schwartz, who is 33, grew up near <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Atlantic City</st1lace></st1:City> and got his Ph.D. at U.C.L.A., where he wrote his dissertation on gambling. Today he is the director of the Center for Gaming Research at the <st1laceType w:st="on">University</st1laceType> of <st1laceName w:st="on">Nevada</st1laceName>, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>. “I don’t know if it’s a disease,” he said. “We have free will. We can walk away.” I told him about my father. “Gamblers always pay for dinner,” Schwartz said. “A lot of them lead ascetic lives. Money is just how they keep score.” Then he told me a story about Lem Banker, a gambling legend in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>.“I got married last Friday,” Schwartz said. “Before the ceremony, my wife to be discovered her wedding band didn’t fit. I told Lem. He said: ‘Go down to this jeweler I know and he’ll take care of it. Just tell him your Uncle Lem sent you.’ ”
The following morning, I took a taxi to the Gambler’s Book Shop on <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">11th Street</st1:address></st1:Street>, just off <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Charleston Boulevard</st1:address></st1:Street>, to meet Uncle Lem. (Are all gamblers “Uncles,” with a sawbuck for the kid but never a trip to the circus?) I was supposed to meet Lem at noon. He was 79 and had a grumpy old man’s voice over the phone when I called to set up a meeting: “Whaddya want?” I explained myself. “Meet me at the bookstore,” he said. I asked how much the taxi fare would be. “Don’t worry about it, for Chrissakes!” he said. “I’ll pay it.”
“Lem is a little late,” said Howard Schwartz (no relation to David), the owner of the Gambler’s Book Shop. “Let me show ya around.” Schwartz is a former <st1:State w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">New York</st1lace></st1:State> newspaper reporter, slight, bald, Woody Allen in “Broadway Danny Rose.” He showed me his store devoted to all things gambling. Then he led me into his back room. A poster on the wall read “Area Patrolled by Attack Cat.” He pointed to a cardboard box on a sleeping cot. I peeked inside. There, on a bunched-up blanket, slept the smallest kitten I’d ever seen. “Four days old,” Schwartz said. “I’m feeding it with an eyedropper. The vet said at that age three out of four die. Not good odds.” Schwartz shrugged. “So I’ve been sleeping with it every night. Gamblers love cats and dogs.” For gamblers, a pet is a substitute for the human relationships they find troubling. A pet’s love is unconditional. Human love is demanding: Stop gambling!Schwartz produced a folder of articles about Uncle Lem and a copy of the book “Lem Banker’s Book of Sports Betting.” It was written in 1986, then went out of print until Schwartz reprinted it himself. I began to leaf through the articles and the book.
Lem Banker is considered the greatest living sports bettor in the country. He bets more than 100 sports events a week, mostly baseball, basketball and football, college and pros. If he wins on 56 percent of those games, he makes his nut. If he hits 60 percent or higher, he gets rich. During one stretch, Lem picked 13 consecutive Super Bowl winners against the spread.
Uncle Lem appeared. He is a big, muscular, vigorous man for his age. He wore a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, jogging shorts and sneakers. Before I could ask a question he began telling me stories.
“I knew ’em all,” Lem said in his gruff voice. “Lefty Rosenthal from the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Chicago</st1lace></st1:City> mob. Ice Pick Willie Alderman. Liver Lips Gordon. Louie the Butcher. ... I knew all the fighters — Ali, Rocky Marciano, Jake LaMotta, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston, he was a friend of mine. Joe Louis was late for his funeral because he had to get down on some sports. ... I knew everybody. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Kirk Kerkorian, the businessman.”I asked Lem when he started gambling.
“I started booking bets in my father’s candy store in <st1
lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Union City</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">N.J.</st1:State></st1lace>, when I was 20,” he told me. “I never had a job since. My father said I’d always be a bum.” Lem bet mostly sports events because he loved sports. He was good enough at basketball to be offered scholarships to <st1laceName w:st="on">Long Island</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">University</st1laceType> and the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceType w:st="on">University</st1laceType> of <st1laceName w:st="on">Miami</st1laceName></st1lace>. He played against Bob Cousy and Easy Ed Macauley in the summers. “I went to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Miami</st1lace></st1:City> on a scholarship in 1949,” Lem said. “But I dropped out and started booking students’ bets. Only sports. No horses, no cards, no table games. I only bet people. I like the underdogs. I use a little psychology to see which underdog is ‘up’ for a game. It’s all instincts, kid.” (My old man called me kid until the day he died, when I was 65.)Lem was a still a wannabe major gambler and bookie in 1957 when the feds busted a gambling ring in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Indiana</st1lace></st1:State> and subpoenaed 300 people, among them actors, athletes, politicians and Lem Banker. Before he testified, one of the indicted gamblers told him: “You’re a young fellow. Don’t get yourself in trouble for me. Tell the truth.” Lem told him not to worry and took the Fifth.Some “people” in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City> liked it that Lem Banker was a “stand-up guy,” so they invited him to town to set up his sports book. “Why not?” Lem said. It was in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>, in 1959, at the age of 31, that Lem married a beautiful model named Delores Vicario. She was naïve about his gambling. She asked him once why he always said Sandy Koufax, a fellow Jew, was the best pitcher in baseball and yet always bet against him. Lem said, “I’m a gambler, sweetheart, not a fan.” According to Lem, betting every day keeps him young: “Keeps my heart pumping. Some people take Plavix for their heart. I bet. Otherwise life would be boring.”
He has two satellite dishes and eight television sets in his Spanish stucco mansion. He sits at his kitchen table and figures out his bets based on his instincts, his information and a simple philosophy: get the best odds and “don’t make high bets when you’re on a bad streak.”
After he figures out his bets, he punches the boxing bag in his backyard, then starts to field calls from his cronies, which always begin the same way: “Lem, who do ya like?”
“I tell them,” Lem said. “I never charged anyone for my picks, like some guys.” At one time, newspapers across the country, from The New York Post to The San Francisco Examiner, carried Lem’s picks. Today he has a weekly TV program on KLAS-TV in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>.Before dinner, and before he watches the night’s sports on TV, Lem lifts some weights. A few bicep curls, bench presses. He’s a health nut. He doesn’t drink or smoke. That’s one reason he doesn’t like casino games — sitting at a card table for hours, smoking and drinking: “It’s unhealthy. Booze and broads ruined more gamblers than sore-armed quarterbacks.” To reinforce his point, he stood and flashed me a bodybuilder’s double-bicep shot. Then he crunched his pecs, making them jump.
When I got up to leave, I asked Howard Schwartz to call me a taxi. “I’ll drive ya,” Lem said. We walked through the bookstore, past a woman at the cash register. She came rushing out of the store toward Lem.
“I thought it was you,” she said, grabbing his arm. I got into the car just as I heard her say, “So, Lem, who do ya like?”
The following morning I took a taxi to Wayne Allyn Root’s house in a gated subdivision outside <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>. His wife, Debra, an evangelical Christian and a former Miss <st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1lace></st1:State>, met me at the door. She showed me into their living room. “<st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> will be down in a minute,” she said, and left. I looked around. <st1:City w:st="on">Wayne</st1:City>’s house was a shrine to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City>. The walls were adorned with posters of him, photographs of him, newspaper and magazine articles about him. There were copies of his books, “Millionaire Republican” and “The King of Vegas’ Guide to Gambling,” everywhere. <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City>’s Web site is full of references to him as “the king of Vegas,” “the Warren Buffett” of gambling, “the oddsmaker of everything in the world,” the Tony Robbins of gambling. It lists all the TV shows he’s been on, which include “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Best Damned Sports Show Period,” and the publications that have profiled him. In one such profile, written by Wayne himself under the byline “Cool Hand Root,” he claims that sports betting is the new American pastime because fans can do it at home, in front of their favorite piece of furniture, the TV set. It appeals to Americans’ love of both money and sports, it allows the average fan to match wits with professional gamblers and it’s a pleasant and entertaining way to spend a Saturday with friends, eating pizza, drinking beer and watching sports on TV. Even if fans don’t win their bets, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> writes, they get their money’s worth in entertainment. <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> may be the only sports handicapper in the world who sells his betting picks to people while reminding them that even when they lose their money, they shouldn’t complain because they had so much fun losing it.<st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> appeared, smiling, a small man dressed in a black shirt, black slacks and black dress shoes. Johnny Cash crossed with Liberace.<st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> sat down and began talking. He doesn’t like to waste time. Time is money. He said he grew up Jewish in a tough neighborhood in <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Mount Vernon</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">N.Y.</st1:State></st1lace>, and began gambling at 13, in imitation of his father, who played the stock market. “For 95 percent of gamblers,” he said, “it’s about the action. What do you think the N.F.L. is all about? Who’d watch a lousy game if they couldn’t bet?” According to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City>, when fans bet they form an emotional relationship with the men and the team they’re betting on. That’s where they get their pleasure. The money won, or lost, is only incidental. That’s the way <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> likes it. “For me, it’s all about the money,” he said. “I live for it.”Most of his customers are small-business men. “In charge of their own lives, decision makers,” <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> said. “I want high rollers who can afford to lose.” (<st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> talks more about losing than any gambler I’ve met.) <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City>’s sports picks are packaged in a series of tiers. “It’s all about information,” he said. “The more they pay, the more information they get.” Bettors who pay $25,000 a year for <st1:City w:st="on">Wayne</st1:City>’s picks get appreciably more information — including the opportunity to speak with <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> directly — than bettors who pay $450 for a single week’s picks.<st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> jumped up. “Wanna go for lunch? Do you like Chinese?” We ate lunch at Chin Chin Café, inside the <st1:State w:st="on">New York</st1:State>-<st1:State w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">New York</st1lace></st1:State> casino. Wayne attacked his chicken as if it were his last meal, yet without interest, as if it were something to get out of the way before he went on to more important things. I asked him if he ever felt guilty about making his money by gambling. He looked up at me as if I had used a word in a language he didn’t understand and said: “Guilt? I don’t have any guilt. I think zero about why things are. I just accept what they are and find a way to take advantage of them.”When the check came, I reached for it. <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Wayne</st1lace></st1:City> made a feeble pass at it, too. “I was gonna pay,” he said, but he didn’t.That night, Eric Drache picked me up in front of the <st1
laceName w:st="on">Mandalay</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Bay</st1laceType> and drove us to a small brightly lighted Italian restaurant on the outskirts of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City> called Cafe Chloe. Besides playing poker himself, Eric has managed poker rooms at the Mirage and the Golden Nugget and been a director of the World Series of Poker for 16 years. Now he produces television shows of poker events.I asked him when he became a gambler. He drew a distinction between gambling and playing poker. When it comes to the latter, “I’m not a gambler,” he said. “A gambler is someone who wagers at unfavorable odds. I make sure the odds are in my favor.” He grinned. “Except once. Many years ago I was the sixth-rated poker player in the world.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, I spent the year playing against No. 1 to No. 5.”
Eric told me that his father was a gambler: “A big-time loser on horses. Mob guys used to come to our house in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">New Jersey</st1lace></st1:State>.” No doubt Eric started gambling in an attempt to prove to his father that he was a winner. “As a kid, I wasn’t good at anything,” he said. “I was looking for something to be good at. I liked poker because it was romantic. I wouldn’t have to work for anyone.” He grinned sheepishly. “I lost constantly as a kid before I figured it out.” When wagering on horses and sport, he said, “I couldn’t bet small.”Eric also did a little bookmaking in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">New Jersey</st1lace></st1:State>, which led to legal trouble in 1968, when he was only a kid. “I went to jail,” he said. “I could have got off if I ratted out where I got my betting line. But I didn’t. To this day, as a felon, I can’t vote in Vegas. But I have had a gambling license.”When the check came, Eric grabbed it before I could even reach for it; he paid from a wad of bills. Then we got into his S.U.V. and drove down the Strip. When we arrived at the <st1
lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Mandalay</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Bay</st1laceType></st1lace>, he said: “Will you do me a favor? Call my ex-wife? Her name is Jane Lovelle. She knows a lot about gambling.”I called Jane Lovelle, a psychiatric site manager at a jail in the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">San Francisco</st1lace></st1:City> area. I told her I had dinner with her ex-husband. “Of course he paid,” she said. “Gamblers always pay so they can be in control and as a way of demonstrating they’re successful. Eric’s an amazing tipper.” They were married for seven years, until, she said, his gambling affected their marriage. “His gratifications were in cards, not personal relationships,” she said. “I would make a nice dinner and he’d say: ‘Not now. I just lost 15 stoves.’ Gamblers don’t really have a true desire to have emotional relationships with others.”Vegas is the ultimate petri dish for gambling,” said Dr. Robert Hunter, who has been the director of the <st1
lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Problem</st1laceName> <st1laceName w:st="on">Gambling</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Center</st1laceType></st1lace> for more than 20 years. According to Hunter, only about 5 percent of gamblers develop a problem. “Gambling addiction is more biology than psychology,” he said. “It has molecular similarities to drug and alcohol addiction.” The P.G.C. brochure describes gambling addicts as those who have lost “the ability to control their impulses to gamble.”Hunter told me that there are two types of gamblers: action seekers and escape seekers. Escape seekers are machine gamblers — video poker, slots. Action seekers are card players, craps shooters, sports bettors. Although both types gamble for immediate gratification, escape gamblers need it even more immediately than action gamblers. Push a button, win or lose.
I’d put it this way: Escape gamblers lose themselves in a machine’s electronic glow in the same way that children are hypnotized by video games. It’s a way to disassociate themselves from an unpleasant reality. Action seekers gamble for the competition, the risk-reward.
He introduced me to two of his staff members, Christine and Howie. Everyone on his staff is a recovering gambling addict. Howie used to be a pit boss on the Strip. Christine is a former C.P.A. who worked for the city. Howie is in his 60s, Christine in her 50s. Hunter urged them to tell me their stories. “I was an action gambler,” Howie said. “I wanted to be a big shot like Lem Banker.”
In a barely audible voice, Christine said, “I was an escape gambler, video poker, to escape from my crummy life.” She was caught stealing money from work to pay off gambling debts. “I lost my job, my house,” she said. “I hit bottom. The only thing left was suicide.”
Hunter said: “Christine isn’t a character out of Damon Runyon. She’s out of Ibsen.” Runyon’s characters are action gamblers, big, brassy, egocentric, self-assured to an extreme. Ibsen’s characters are escape gamblers, frustrated, neurotic, trapped, self-destructive. “Most of the gamblers in our group, or in G.A. in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City>, are escape gamblers,” Hunter said. “Maybe 90 percent.”I attended a meeting of gambling addicts at the P.G.C.; Hunter introduced me to them. They talked mostly about themselves, their lives, in a therapeutic way of self-discovery. Compared with the Gamblers Anonymous approach, the P.G.C. program I saw in action is more about self-awareness than it is about emotional support. P.G.C. members could have been in any therapy group, coping with anger problems or divorce.
Finally, Hunter asked me if I had any questions. I did. If risk and reward was such an essential part of their natures, how did they feel about the loss of it?
They all responded in the same way, saying that they just channeled their risk-reward nature into being a better mother, father, employee. One woman raised her hand and said: “Yes, I feel I lost my alter ego. The person I wanted to be. That friend who guided me into risk. When you stop gambling, you have to find another you. But that evil, exciting friend pops up in other ways now. Like urging you to go sky diving.”
A man said: “I felt like I lost part of my nature at first. I missed it a little bit. Nothing can replace the high of gambling. But now I’m a big shot as a reformed addict to other addicts.”
I had one more question. If gambling is a physical addiction, why not treat it with medicine? Treating it with psychological self-awareness implies that it’s a problem of will.
“Because there is no medicine,” Hunter said.
“I don’t want anything to eat,” Jimmy V. said. “Just ask your questions.” We were sitting in a coffee shop near the <st1
lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Mandalay</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Bay</st1laceType></st1lace>. Jimmy Vaccaro, who is 61, was dressed in a white sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers. He looked like an old-timey gambler, used to smoke-filled rooms, not fancy <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City> casinos. Yet Jimmy V., which is how everyone knows him, is one of the more powerful men in town. He has set the odds for casinos in <st1:City w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1:City> and at the Atlantis in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Bahamas</st1lace></st1:country-region>.Until Jimmy came to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1lace></st1:City> in 1974 and opened a sports book, he “never had a job in my life,” he said. “My parents were small-time gamblers in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Pittsburgh</st1lace></st1:City>. Italians ran most of the games. Mob guys. As a kid, I thought the gambling atmosphere was exciting. Like a family. Even if I blew my money, I felt I was part of something. I liked living on the sly” — an expression my old man used often — “anything you do on the sly is great. If you have to work at it it’s not fun. I liked the risk-reward. The hardship. The dark side of it. I enjoyed something with pain involved.” I laughed, but Jimmy didn’t even smile. He just went on in his flat, uninflected voice. “I was a teenager the first time I saw a juiced table. I got cheated in dice.” It was an education, “like I graduated from Harvard,” he said. “No one’s ever not been cheated. It’s part of the progression. I don’t know anyone whose closet doesn’t have something dark in it.”I was embarrassed to mention to Jimmy how my old man always cheated at cards or dice, but I did. For the first time, he smiled. “More power to him,” he said. “That’s the point, isn’t it? To outsmart the other guy any way you can.”
Jimmy no longer shoots craps or plays much poker — he just bets on sports events. “I don’t have to gouge your eyeballs out anymore,” he said.
He checked his watch. “I gotta go,” he said. I had one more question. What about Gamblers Anonymous and the Problem Gambling Center?
“Problem gamblers are life’s losers,” he said. “They wanna go broke. They always find a reason why they lost. I lose, I go home. Reasons are part of the equation. Once I bet, I understand I have no control, so I understand loss.” He stood up to go. He added: “Everybody can’t be winners. That’s why we need born losers.”
After Jimmy V. left, I checked out. But before leaving, I found a blackjack table with only one player. I sat down and gave the dealer a C-note. She handed me some chips. I placed a bet. She dealt the cards. I won. Then I won a few more hands. I was up $200. I liked that, the $200. But I was waiting for that gambler’s high. I played a few more hands. Nothing. I thought about my flight home. My wife. My dogs. I lost a few hands. Maybe I’ll go smoke a cigar outside before I get a taxi? I lost again. My $200 in winnings was gone now. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get it over with. I began to double up until I lost all of my original $100, except for a lone $5 chip. I tossed it to the dealer. She thanked me with a small nod.
Outside, I watched the taxis and limos drop people off. They were smiling, excited, as they entered the casino. I stood there thinking about what I’d learned in Vegas. About gambling, gamblers, my old man, myself. My father decided at some point in his life that it was gambling that defined him. It didn’t matter whether that was true or not, it mattered only that to him it was true. Alea ludo ergo sum. I gamble, therefore I am. He told me once: “Find out who you are, kid. And be it.” A good lesson for a gambler’s son.
A taxi pulled up to the curb. “The airport,” I said. The taxi pulled away from the hotel, turned left on the Strip and began moving past the <st1:City w:st="on">Luxor</st1:City>, the Excalibur, <st1:State w:st="on">New York</st1:State>-<st1:State w:st="on"><st1
lace w:st="on">New York</st1lace></st1:State>. The cabby looked in his rear-view mirror and asked, “So, did you have a good time in Vegas, buddy?”“O.K.,” I said. I looked out the window. “I wish my old man had been with me.”
Pat Jordan, a frequent contributor to the magazine, is writing a book about his father and gambling.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
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> </o>Curtosy of MW
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