Skipping Towards Gomorrah (5 page)

I lost about a hundred dollars in one hour the first time I played slots, which for sentimental reasons I did at Circus Circus. The whole time I was feeding quarters into a slot machine, I somehow couldn't shake the feeling that maybe this slots stuff was for suckers. Or clowns. People do win money playing slots, of course—there are pictures of them on the walls in some of the casinos. Still, more people lose money than win, as any fool knows. You can't tell this by listening to slot machines, however. The noise when someone wins is loud—slot machines don't actually drop coins into the stainless steel trays underneath them. They
spit
the coins into their steel trays. The coins hit the trays with a loud clang that can be heard all over the maze, bolstering the hopes of losers like me. (“People are winning! I might be next . . . must . . . keep . . . gambling . . .”) Your perception is warped, of course, because none of the slot machines makes any special sound when someone loses a quarter or a silver dollar or, over in the high-stakes slots area, a five-, ten-, or twenty-five-dollar slug.

So what's the appeal of slot machines? Familiarity would be my guess. At every casino, the slot machines are laid out in a confusing maze of dead-end streets, spirals, and cul-de-sacs—a lot like the suburbs most gamblers live in. Like the suburbs, slot machines are isolating; you don't have to interact with other gamblers or a dealer to play the slots. The only person you have to interact with is a cocktail waitress. Someone may be playing the machine right next to you, but you're supposed to mind your own business, just like you would in the 'burbs. Craps and card tables, on the other hand, are intimidating urban areas, at the very center of the casino, laid out in a grid. You're jammed elbow to elbow with strangers at card tables, and while you avoid making eye contact, as you would in a subway or crosswalk, at the same time you keep close tabs on what the people around you are doing. Craps and card tables, consequently, can seem intimidating to new gamblers—especially suburban gamblers—while the maze of slot machines seems familiar and homey. What's more, today's slot machines are almost all computers—and what could possibly be more reassuringly familiar to American workers than sitting in front of a computer all day? At work, we're paid to sit in front of a computer. In Las Vegas, we pay to sit in front of a computer. And at home or in Vegas, we rely on alcohol to get us through.

But there's a price to pay for the comfort and familiarity of slot machines. The odds are stacked against the gambler at the slot machines. Of course, the odds are still stacked against the gambler at the gaming tables, too, they're just not stacked so high. Since my odds of winning at slots were less than they would be at any other game, I would have to learn some of the other games in the casino. Or try to.

 

I
thought about playing craps, which according to the gambling books I was reading presents the knowledgeable player with his best odds of winning. Unfortunately, becoming a knowledgeable craps player takes twenty or thirty years. Trying to learn the game at Caesar's Palace, I stood with a group of people around a craps table while a charismatic old dealer taught us how to play. He was tall, bald, and gaunt, and he smiled like a cop: the corners of his mouth turned up, but his eyes were hard. The odds of beating the house, the dealer said, were indeed better at craps than at any other game in the casino. A tipsy frat boy nodded and smirked. Both the long-and short-term consequences of too many beers were quickly catching up with him (i.e., he wouldn't be needing that
r
much longer). Soon-to-be fat boy turned to his friends and boasted that he would “soak this place.” They all high-fived each other. The dealer smiled wolfishly. Then he raised his arms and made a grand, sweeping gesture, taking in the whole room.

“Look around, son,” the old dealer said, chuckling at the frat boy joylessly. We all took in the gaudy, over-the-top, brass-and-smoked-glass, football-field-size casino floor. It was Angie Dickinson vintage, but it was still very, very impressive. “Does it look like we get taken very often? I said your odds were
better
at craps. But they're not better than the casino's odds. They never are.”

Craps is the most complicated game ever devised by the mind of man. The table is a rectangular oval with foot-high sides that looks like a strange sort of shallow bathtub lined with green felt. The felt surface is covered with numbers and boxes, and the table itself is surrounded by four or five dealers and sometimes twenty or more players. One of the dealers wields an intimidating-looking stick. The game is played with dice, and everyone who steps up to the table has to take a turn throwing the dice. There are about ten million different kinds of bets you can make, and one bad throw of the dice can cost everyone at the table a whole lot of money.

“Dice tables bring out the emotions more than any other game,” writes the author of a book on craps. “There's a certain camaraderie among players that for some reason doesn't occur at any other tables. Players feel free to yell, shout, scream, applaud, and cheer. . . .”

Which means, of course, that craps tables invariably attract big, loud, drunk assholes. Frat boys, angry suburban dads, Wall Street types, good ol' boys with their mouths full of chewing tobacco: these are the guys who play craps. Cigar smokers play craps. Mobsters play craps. Bullies play craps. They all scream and yell at the person who has the dice, which is why I just couldn't bring myself to play the goddamned game. Being an unathletic, uncoordinated fag in high school left me with many unhappy memories of being the person who had the kickball or the soccer ball or the bat. While other players yelled and shouted, I would invariably disappoint. Knowing how angry a group of junior-varsity boys can get with only the honor of defeating another group of junior-varsity boys, I couldn't face a table full of angry adult male gamblers with actual money at stake. If I was going to gamble, I would have to learn to play cards. I played cards with my mother as a kid, but I couldn't find any gin or hearts tables in the casinos I was in. And just when I thought I might have to learn to play poker or blackjack I discovered . . .

 

C
asino War! Remember war? It's a kids' game, played with two fifty-two-card decks. Two players simultaneously turn over one card. The higher card takes the lower. If the players turn over cards of identical value, you go to war: You both put two cards facedown, then one more card faceup. The winner takes all the cards. Winning “wars” is the only way to win the game—and wars are rare. Consequently, a single game of war can take hours, which is why my parents taught it to their four children. It kept us occupied while they sinned. Well, war only recently arrived in Las Vegas, where it's played primarily by nongamblers. I stumbled over the game in the casino of the Venetian, one of the big new hotels, and I knew that this was a card game I could play. The rules were a little different, though. The players didn't get their own decks; instead, the dealer gave you one card, then dealt himself one card. If your card was higher, you won. It was so simple that I figured I couldn't mess it up.

So I pulled up a chair. Pretty soon I had a complimentary cocktail in my hand, and I was chatting away with the other warriors at the table. While we played, the dealer treated us to a long, humorous monologue designed to discourage us from ever playing Casino War again. He pointed out again and again that the best we could hope to do was leave his table with the money we sat down with. The fifty-fifty odds meant we were likely to break even, but unlikely to win.

While the dealer tried to talk us out of playing War, some frat boys gathered to watch as we played. Soon they were making fun of us.

“Oh, they're playing War,” one said. “Watch out! High rollers! Give these whales some breathing room!”

“What a pussy game,” said another.

“Bock, bock, bock,” said a third, flapping his arms like a chicken.

No security guard came to shoo away the frat boys who were calling us names, and the dealer didn't seem to mind them. Why should he? He was trying to talk us out of playing this game himself.

When I got up from the table two hours later, I wasn't even, as the dealer predicted. I was ahead. I sat down with $100 in five-dollar chips, and got up with $150 in chips. But some of my fellow warriors weren't so lucky. A smiling Asian man made dozens of hundred-dollar bets and lost almost every time. A slightly tipsy, very chatty woman who was sitting next to me burst into tears when she lost her last chip. And a man who claimed to have won three thousand dollars the night before at the Bellagio left the Venetian after two hours with the same money he sat down with.

Sitting at the table with strangers, playing a pussy game, I felt as if I were watching the American tragedy restaged as farce. Losers come to Las Vegas in hopes of feeling like winners, if only for an evening, and winners come to Las Vegas because they can afford to lose once in a while. Out there in real-life America, the winners and losers live in separate worlds: winners in gated communities, losers in ever-harder-to-find “affordable housing.” Only in hyperunreal Las Vegas do the winners and losers rub shoulders—some sitting right next to each other at the card tables—and enact a highly ritualized, booze-soaked version of the striving, winning, and losing at the heart of American life.

 

H
istorically, Christian moralists in America have opposed gambling. Dice, cards, slots—the sin of gambling was right up there with adultery. By placing their faith in chance, gamblers were refusing to submit themselves to the will of God, making a false idol of money, worshiping luck and not Christ. Gambling was long seen as a form of stealing, because for someone to win at a game of chance, someone else has to lose. Duh. The winner profits at the expense of the loser and gives nothing in return, which was seen as violating Christ's instruction to love thy neighbor. Christian moralists believed that gambling encouraged the sin of envy, and while gambling is not forbidden anywhere in the Bible, there are many passages that discourage the love of money or wealth:

“The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth with gain” (Ecclesiastes 5.10). “No one can serve two masters . . . you cannot serve God and Mammon” (Matthew 6.24). “Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy, has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God” (Ephesians 5.5).

And let's not forget those Roman soldiers who threw dice for Christ's robes.

Considering the long tradition of antigambling sentiments and agitation (see
Guys and Dolls
) among Christian conservatives, it's strange that gambling rarely comes in for criticism from the Bill Bennetts and Robert Borks. The gambling issue doesn't get a lot of play with reliably conservative members of the U.S. House or Senate either. How did something that was once viewed as a sin comparable to adultery become so widespread in a country filled-to-bursting with self-appointed virtuecrats, moral scolds, a Christian Coalition, and hundreds of conservative members of Congress? Do they all agree with the gaming industry when it argues that gambling isn't a moral issue at all, and certainly not a sin?

Or is it the money, honey?

House Speaker Dennis Hastert visited Las Vegas in August of 1999. “Hastert rarely missed an opportunity Wednesday during his visit to Las Vegas to rip vocal gaming industry opponent Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va.,” the
Las Vegas Journal-Review
reported.

So let me see if I have this straight: Republicans are pro-choice, pro-personal-freedom, and anti-restricting-the-rights-of-others when it comes to
gambling,
but not when it comes to anything else. When it comes to gambling, conservative Republicans will ignore thousands of years of moral teaching, Scripture, and tradition to support “personal gaming” because adults have a right to choose. Hey, Dennis: How about the right of adults to choose to have an abortion? Or commit adultery? Or listen to rap music? Or visit a prostitute? Or smoke pot?

“Gambling has become accepted as part of America's mainstream culture, alongside leisure activities such as attending movies, athletic events, and the theater.” So begins
Keeping It Fun: A Guide to Low-Risk Gambling,
a pamphlet produced by the American Gaming Association. “The vast majority of Americans who gamble do it recreationally without any adverse consequences. . . . Keep gambling what it should be—entertainment. Know how to set limits, and, most importantly, know when to stop.” According to the American Gaming Association, no one should gamble alone, no one under age should gamble, and no one should gamble to compensate for feelings of depression or low self-esteem. It's good advice—in fact, it's the exact same advice I would give pot smokers, adulterers, and gluttons.

 

“B
et with your head, not over it. 1-800-BETS-OFF.”

That message was brought to me courtesy of a cash machine in Dubuque, Iowa. Gambling long ago left Las Vegas, and I figured it was about time I did, too. Las Vegas is an overwhelming place, and the longer you stay in the city the less it charms. Two days is the ideal length for a visit to Las Vegas, and I had been spending weeks at a time in the city. So I decided to leave Nevada and visit the first American city to welcome riverboat gambling. Only after making that decision did I learn that city was Dubuque.