in baccarat and blackjack,
his preferred games. You want an outsized man with
some outsized deeds? Kerry is said to have tipped
one cocktail waitress a house!
How about some fightin’
words? Savor this tall-tale about Packer: A loud
and obnoxious Texas high roller is playing at the
same table as Mr. Packer. This man is being as obnoxious
as, well, as the stereotypical obnoxious Texan in
countless obnoxious Texan stories. [Why aren’t
there any obnoxious Rhode Islander stories?] Finally,
Kerry asks the man to ease up. The man gets louder:
“Do you know who I am? I am worth 60 million
dollars, pardner!” He pauses to let this sink
in, then says: “Sixty million dollars, pardner.
That’s what I’m worth.” Packer eyes
him and says: “I’ll flip you for it!”
The fourth and final
of the modern legends is none other than the Captain,
the man who has beaten craps since 1978, and about
whom I’ve written four books, my latest being
The Craps Underground: The Inside Story of How Dice
Controllers are Winning Millions from the Casinos!
The Captain, like the “million dollar bum,”
is thought by some to be a myth, in this case a
myth made up by me. But the Captain is real, and
what he has done is just as real, as a handful of
casino executives know; but because craps is a negative-expectation
game, what the Captain has done whets the desires
of craps players worldwide that perhaps someday
they can be in his shoes.
Oh, yes, there are
many, many more high rollers that I could name,
Sultans and Princes, Chinese, Japanese and American
jet-setters, Mexican businessmen with a taste for
glamour and daring. They are all out there playing
the games we all play but for stakes that can make
our hearts palpitate with envy. And there are probably
many more streaks and wild strokes of luck that
I have not named that could have easily been included
in this article had anyone known about them. Perhaps,
in the future, some enterprising young writer will
decide to create a book of records so that great
achievements and extraordinary happenings will be
saved for all time, so that the rest of us can read
and wonder....
So, let me tell you
a story....
Once upon a time, you
walked into the casino and the crowds parted for
you. The other players knew there was something
very special about you this night. It must have
been that look you had that said: “Tonight
belongs to me.” And tonight did belong to you,
as you won bet after bet at game after game. And
the story of that night became a legend and was
told over and over and over again -- it was the
night that you brought the mighty casino monster
to its knees and plucked out its golden teeth.
Gambling Legends
Good
Casinos Home
