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The Favorites - Gambling's Wild History with David Schwartz · The Favorites Sports Betting Podcast

0:08
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Favorites of the Podcast presented by BET
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Speaker 1: three six y five. We are part of the Volume
0:14
Speaker 1: Podcast Network. I am Chad Mollman of the Action Network.
0:17
Speaker 1: We are live from our Tommy John Holmes Studios. I'm
0:20
Speaker 1: joined as always by my co host, my companion, mikem Boudre,
0:24
Speaker 1: my BFF professional better Assignmon Hunter.
0:26
Speaker 2: And I saw I man Chadow.
0:29
Speaker 3: What's going on?
0:29
Speaker 2: Brother?
0:30
Speaker 4: Listen.
0:31
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm more of an interested student in
0:38
Speaker 1: the glorious, colorful, exciting past that is betting and the
0:47
Speaker 1: sports betting world. It's how I got into it right,
0:51
Speaker 1: Like I was never better first writer second. I was
0:57
Speaker 1: writer first who loved the psychology. I love the history,
1:00
Speaker 1: I love the story of the mob. I love sort
1:02
Speaker 1: of the characters who populate the world of sports betting.
1:08
Speaker 1: And so you know, we had Mitchell had come up
1:12
Speaker 1: with this great idea a few weeks ago where he
1:15
Speaker 1: did some great old gambling stories and some of which
1:19
Speaker 1: he stole from an excellent book called Roll the Bones.
1:25
Speaker 1: And today we are joined by the author of Roll
1:32
Speaker 1: the Bones, a long time professor at UNLV University Nevada,
1:38
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, the nation's pre eminent gambling historian Roll The
1:43
Speaker 1: Bones We Know is Matt's favorite book. So imagine Matt's
1:46
Speaker 1: delight when we found out our author and our guest
1:52
Speaker 1: has a brand new book that just came out in
1:54
Speaker 1: January called Something for Your Money, The History of Las
1:57
Speaker 1: Vegas Casinos, available now wherever books are sold. He's someone
2:02
Speaker 1: I've known for years. He was a regular and patient
2:06
Speaker 1: source when I would head out to Vegas during my
2:10
Speaker 1: ESPN days and was out there for a variety of stories.
2:13
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, Dave Schwartz, Thanks for having me, Chad,
2:17
Speaker 1: thanks for having me listen. Your book has thrown Matt
2:22
Speaker 1: Mitchell for a loop. He can't believe this book exists.
2:26
Speaker 1: He can't believe it tells every story that he's been
2:30
Speaker 1: dying to know for years. Can you please, for Matt
2:35
Speaker 1: Mitchell's sake and for the sake of our listeners who
2:37
Speaker 1: are all avid interested parties in bedding, how did you
2:42
Speaker 1: end up doing this?
2:44
Speaker 3: Well? I grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, just
2:46
Speaker 3: around the time that they legalized gambling, so one of
2:49
Speaker 3: my earliest memories was them blowing up the old hotels
2:52
Speaker 3: and building casinos. So it's a kid. I was really curious, like,
2:55
Speaker 3: why do people gambling casinos? Why are they blowing up
2:58
Speaker 3: all the old hotels and stuff like that. So when
3:01
Speaker 3: I went to grad school, I decided to write a
3:03
Speaker 3: dissertation in that and that started me on the road
3:06
Speaker 3: to studying the history of gambling and casinos.
3:09
Speaker 1: And so you wrote Roll the Bones. You wrote Something
3:13
Speaker 1: for Your Money, which just came out. Both of them
3:15
Speaker 1: are packed with deliciously colorful stories about not just sort
3:25
Speaker 1: of the recent history of betting, but the entire history
3:29
Speaker 1: of betting. Gambling is so intertwined with the history of America,
3:38
Speaker 1: right from lotteries being how we paid for the American Revolution.
3:45
Speaker 1: Lotteries were how Harvard and Yale were funded and founded.
3:52
Speaker 1: This it is core to the American experience. All that said,
4:00
Speaker 1: what were your favorite stories when researching these books?
4:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's kind of interesting. One fun story.
4:06
Speaker 3: It just shows how far we've come politically and in
4:09
Speaker 3: a lot of ways. So in the eighteen twenty eight election,
4:11
Speaker 3: which was the rematch of Andrew Jackson against John Quincy Adams,
4:15
Speaker 3: one of the scandals was that John Quincy Adams allegedly
4:20
Speaker 3: had bought a billiard's table for the White House and
4:23
Speaker 3: so there is an outrage that how dare he buy
4:26
Speaker 3: gambling equipment with public money? Ironic because Andrew Jackson was
4:30
Speaker 3: a huge, degenerate gambler, just like absolutely would love the
4:34
Speaker 3: bent On horses. Just totally sick, sick gambler. So it's
4:38
Speaker 3: kind of funny that they cus the New England John
4:41
Speaker 3: Quincy Adams the intellectual of being a gambler. You know,
4:46
Speaker 3: they tried to do some spin and these days, again
4:49
Speaker 3: the president or the candidate wouldn't speak for themselves, they
4:51
Speaker 3: would have people speak for them. So they tried to
4:53
Speaker 3: do some spin and say, well, you know, he didn't
4:56
Speaker 3: really buy it, he doesn't gamble, he just has it
4:58
Speaker 3: so that the visiting aristocrats have something to do and like, oh,
5:02
Speaker 3: now you're an aristocrat. Now you're better than us. So
5:06
Speaker 3: trying to make it better made it worse. And it
5:09
Speaker 3: was one of those things. You know, probably public frustration
5:12
Speaker 3: over the banking system, all those issues were the things
5:16
Speaker 3: that probably really got Jackson in the White House, but
5:19
Speaker 3: you know, this was a little part of it. So
5:21
Speaker 3: I think that's fascinating that gambling had a role in
5:24
Speaker 3: this very pivotal election eighteen twenty eight.
5:26
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Speaker 1: When you were thinking about this is a field of study,
7:01
Speaker 1: or thinking about what your first book was going to be,
7:05
Speaker 1: the next book was going to be, how you're teaching
7:08
Speaker 1: gambling as a professor, how do you frame the idea
7:15
Speaker 1: of risk and gambling into the evolution.
7:20
Speaker 4: Of the country that we see today.
7:24
Speaker 3: Well, really is an essential part. And if you look
7:25
Speaker 3: at it, you know, America, the United States, it really
7:29
Speaker 3: is a place of second chances, and that means that
7:32
Speaker 3: things didn't go well your first chance. So there is
7:35
Speaker 3: this idea that the United States is just tolerant a
7:38
Speaker 3: risk and that's how things happen. And sometimes it goes
7:41
Speaker 3: really well, sometimes it doesn't go so great, but there's
7:44
Speaker 3: always another shot.
7:48
Speaker 1: Matter, Simon, I don't want to monopolize. If one of
7:52
Speaker 1: you want to jump in, I know, Matt, you've got
7:53
Speaker 1: a lot of questions.
7:57
Speaker 5: Dave, one of My favorite anecdotes from Roll the Bones
8:02
Speaker 5: is about William Penn. Is it true that the land
8:08
Speaker 5: that would become the state of Pennsylvania was potentially the
8:12
Speaker 5: repayment of a royal debt?
8:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, that is the story. Obviously I wasn't
8:18
Speaker 3: there so when when he signed that marker. But William Penn. So,
8:23
Speaker 3: William Penn was a Quaker leader anybody from Philly, you know,
8:25
Speaker 3: I went to school in Philly. So the statue of
8:28
Speaker 3: Billy Penn. So he was a Quaker. Quakers were not
8:32
Speaker 3: the most popular group in England at the time, and
8:36
Speaker 3: somehow he got this grant for Pennsylvania, which is a
8:40
Speaker 3: really lucrative part of what would become the colonies and
8:43
Speaker 3: later the US. And the story was Sir William Penn,
8:47
Speaker 3: William Penn, the Quaker's father was a gambling buddy of
8:51
Speaker 3: King Charles the Second and when he when Sir William
8:55
Speaker 3: Penn died, Charles the second owed him a lot of
8:58
Speaker 3: money and basically on his deathbed said just take care
9:01
Speaker 3: of my son and we're good. And supposedly that's where
9:04
Speaker 3: it came from. So that's how the Quakers ended up
9:06
Speaker 3: with Pennsylvania. And that's how we get to the eagles,
9:10
Speaker 3: I guess.
9:11
Speaker 5: And that's that's the most remarkable thing about this book.
9:14
Speaker 5: That's like fifty five words in this book. I mean,
9:19
Speaker 5: you just move on to seven hundred other fascinating things.
9:22
Speaker 5: It really is a remarkable piece of literature.
9:25
Speaker 1: Do we have any idea where Charles the Second and
9:30
Speaker 1: William penn were gambling?
9:33
Speaker 3: Yeah? Probably farrow fa r oh. That was the popular
9:36
Speaker 3: game back then, So probably Pharaoh, But it could also
9:39
Speaker 3: have been a number of card games, you know, not
9:42
Speaker 3: poker because I wasn't inventing the app, but a number
9:45
Speaker 3: of there are a number of earlier bidding card games
9:48
Speaker 3: that would eventually kind of evolve into poker. And the
9:51
Speaker 3: King had a marker like, yeah, well not literally, that's
9:54
Speaker 3: just my gambling. Yeah, Like having worked in the casino industry,
9:59
Speaker 3: you kind of use the terminal alogy basically as a
10:01
Speaker 3: gambling debt, not legally collectible, but morally collectible. And that's
10:05
Speaker 3: the thing about gamblers that they rather pay the gambling
10:07
Speaker 3: debt to prove that they're good for it than not.
10:11
Speaker 3: So yeah, Charles the Second was good for it in
10:13
Speaker 3: the end in Pennsylvania. Is the proof?
10:16
Speaker 1: Well, Simon as a billy adjacent native. This is in
10:23
Speaker 1: your territory. It is part of your history now to
10:25
Speaker 1: know that you are doing the right thing in your
10:28
Speaker 1: community by gambling as much as you possibly can.
10:32
Speaker 6: And it's crazy to think everything GE's birth from the
10:33
Speaker 6: pen name Penn Medicine. I mean obviously, like you just
10:37
Speaker 6: talked about, our capitol building has William Penn standing on
10:40
Speaker 6: the top of it.
10:40
Speaker 2: And it's pretty insane to think not that filled Upia
10:44
Speaker 2: is just known for betting.
10:45
Speaker 6: But at its core, I mean, I can't tell you
10:48
Speaker 6: many street bookies I knew Chad growing up, where every neighborhood,
10:52
Speaker 6: every block has a different guy, And it's tarting to
10:55
Speaker 6: make more sense. You really think about the state and
10:58
Speaker 6: how it was founded and the people that live there,
11:00
Speaker 6: and because that was probably I wouldn't say common knowledge
11:03
Speaker 6: right back then, but people must have known. I mean,
11:05
Speaker 6: everyone just talks to everyone's at everyone's business. This is
11:08
Speaker 6: before obviously newspapers and everything like that. I mean the
11:11
Speaker 6: word must have spread around town about how Pennsylvania got birthed?
11:14
Speaker 2: Am I assuming that right?
11:16
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah? And I think people knew how big, you know,
11:19
Speaker 3: Charles the Second was into a lot of that they
11:21
Speaker 3: spent a lot of time in exile in France. The
11:24
Speaker 3: French then were the notorious gamblers, so kind of picked
11:27
Speaker 3: up that habit. And it's kind of interesting too when
11:29
Speaker 3: you look at people who don't like gambling, which there
11:31
Speaker 3: are people for a while in England they said, well,
11:35
Speaker 3: this isn't a genuine English hobby, it's a French perversion
11:39
Speaker 3: that came into England. So it's kind of funny how
11:41
Speaker 3: that is spun, you know, and we see that happen
11:44
Speaker 3: throughout history.
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Speaker 1: Well, look, you must have seen this through many stages
11:48
Speaker 1: in your research, whether it was you know, England in
11:52
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds to sports betting and that being the
11:57
Speaker 1: third rail of gambling. I remember sitting with you in
12:01
Speaker 1: the UNLV library and I think in the building where
12:06
Speaker 1: your department is, and we were talking about Delaware in
12:09
Speaker 1: New Jersey and how Delaware at the time that legalized
12:13
Speaker 1: New Jersey had just filed suit to get passed, but
12:18
Speaker 1: the Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act overturned.
12:23
Speaker 4: And you use the.
12:24
Speaker 1: Phrase sports betting is the third rail of all the
12:27
Speaker 1: betting types, lottery, legal poker, legal casinos, Native American casinos,
12:35
Speaker 1: all of that. What do you think finally turned. In
12:39
Speaker 1: your point of view, from your very deep knowledge and
12:44
Speaker 1: base of perspective, what do you think finally turned for
12:47
Speaker 1: sports betting.
12:48
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because if you look back in the
12:50
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties, when people in the government were researching, well
12:54
Speaker 3: what is gambling and how's it happening? It was mostly
12:56
Speaker 3: illegal and I remember I think it might have been
12:59
Speaker 3: something that can him out of New York City or somewhere.
13:01
Speaker 3: But this government study said, you know the numbers, which
13:06
Speaker 3: was the illegal lotteries, and policy like, that's the worst.
13:09
Speaker 3: It's the most exploitative sports betting. At least a better
13:12
Speaker 3: has a chance, but this is just the worst. And
13:15
Speaker 3: ten years later, what did states legalize lotteries? And at
13:20
Speaker 3: the time there's a lot of debate, well, if we
13:22
Speaker 3: were to legalize sports betting, what happens if the betters
13:24
Speaker 3: get lucky? Now we owe money. So governments didn't want
13:28
Speaker 3: to do it because they didn't want to take on
13:29
Speaker 3: that liability. What happened was the private casino companies, basically
13:35
Speaker 3: because they have the casino itself to offset that, and
13:38
Speaker 3: they can use a sports betting to draw people in.
13:40
Speaker 3: And the old model in the new model it's just
13:42
Speaker 3: another revenue source because it's online. You know. Basically, once
13:46
Speaker 3: they got behind it, thing shifted. But before that, states
13:48
Speaker 3: weren't really eager to legalize it because you know, I mean,
13:51
Speaker 3: just imagine what it would be like if state in
13:54
Speaker 3: New Jersey or Pennsylvania or anyone was running, you know,
13:58
Speaker 3: running a sports book. We would be very different.
14:00
Speaker 1: Well wait a second, that's I had no idea that
14:04
Speaker 1: was the case my understanding, and I didn't do any
14:07
Speaker 1: research on this.
14:08
Speaker 4: I just sort of assumed it was that.
14:11
Speaker 1: Sports betting never really got traction because of moral issues,
14:17
Speaker 1: and you're saying it had nothing to do with it.
14:18
Speaker 1: It was really about the fear that they would all
14:23
Speaker 1: of a sudden be on the hook for customer friendly
14:27
Speaker 1: outcomes as they call them today, and have to pay
14:30
Speaker 1: out and all of a sudden, instead of having a surplus,
14:33
Speaker 1: they've got a debt.
14:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I think that, And again I'm not in
14:36
Speaker 3: their mind, so I wasn't there back then. I don't
14:38
Speaker 3: know what they did. But if we look at it,
14:40
Speaker 3: look at the different forms of gambling. Most states legalized
14:43
Speaker 3: lotteries first highest margin, you know, then went into casinos. Ah,
14:49
Speaker 3: they can tax it. They can make decent money. Sports
14:52
Speaker 3: betting was last because that has the narrowest margin, and again,
14:55
Speaker 3: you know you don't have that. It's not as dependable.
14:58
Speaker 3: So when they're doing it or budgetary reasons like okay,
15:01
Speaker 3: we're going to generate with a lottery, we can generate
15:03
Speaker 3: this much money a year to fund the schools. Sports betting,
15:06
Speaker 3: you know, not that stable. So I don't think there's
15:10
Speaker 3: a lot of people rushing to legalize it back then.
15:13
Speaker 4: Hmm.
15:14
Speaker 1: It's always about the money, it's never about the morals.
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16:23
Speaker 3: You know.
16:23
Speaker 1: In your book, Dave, you wrote a little bit about
16:27
Speaker 1: the Keyfaber hearings. For those who don't know, I'll say
16:29
Speaker 1: it quickly so I can set up the question. In
16:32
Speaker 1: the nineteen early nineteen fifties, estes Keifaber, who was a
16:35
Speaker 1: cenator from Tennessee, very ambitious guy. There was a lot
16:38
Speaker 1: of consternation within communities, especially big cities, about the influence
16:43
Speaker 1: of organized crime, and so he set up this two
16:47
Speaker 1: years of investigations, going city to city on a tour
16:51
Speaker 1: where he had subpoenaed the organized crime bosses and they
16:56
Speaker 1: were being forced to testify about their business and everything
16:58
Speaker 1: that was going on. To me, one of the biggest
17:01
Speaker 1: things that came out of it was the realization by
17:04
Speaker 1: the public that sports betting was the biggest revenue driver
17:11
Speaker 1: for organized crime. And to me, Dave, I don't know
17:13
Speaker 1: if you have studied and seen differently, that felt like
17:19
Speaker 1: a death blow for sports betting. That felt like a
17:23
Speaker 1: fun thing people did in the community to being sort
17:25
Speaker 1: of a nefarious, dangerous thing, and it changed that business
17:28
Speaker 1: is trajectory, yeah.
17:30
Speaker 3: Because if you look at the history of illegal gambling,
17:32
Speaker 3: right back in the twenties, when we know organized crime
17:35
Speaker 3: was doing a lot of stuff, you would see if
17:37
Speaker 3: you go back in the newspaper archives, we'll talk about
17:40
Speaker 3: local rackets, boss. So there was like the Brooklyn rackets
17:43
Speaker 3: and the Waterfront rackets, and the Newark rackets and the
17:45
Speaker 3: Philly rackets. It was all local. Okay, what happens in
17:49
Speaker 3: nineteen fifteen fifty one, and the keyf offer is okay,
17:52
Speaker 3: he needs an issue. He wants to be president, he
17:55
Speaker 3: needs an issue. Kind of went into antitrust stuff, but
17:58
Speaker 3: that didn't excite people. McCarthy he had already taken anti communism,
18:02
Speaker 3: so that's gone, Well, what about gambling. Well, wait, the
18:05
Speaker 3: local gambling you're doing with your bookie, that's actually part
18:08
Speaker 3: of this national or even international crime syndicate. So it's
18:12
Speaker 3: a national issue, so Congress has jurisdiction because across the
18:15
Speaker 3: state lines, and that's where it really shifted. That's where
18:19
Speaker 3: you had the idea of the mafia as a national
18:21
Speaker 3: organization or even international organization. Before that, it was all local,
18:25
Speaker 3: you know. And again, it's kind of fun to go
18:27
Speaker 3: back in the archives and see when they start using
18:30
Speaker 3: that language. So yeah, it did change the narrative because
18:32
Speaker 3: originally people said, well, yeah, I'm just putting down a
18:34
Speaker 3: two dollar bet. And there's a book in the archives
18:37
Speaker 3: called a two dollars bet means murder, Wow, And it's
18:41
Speaker 3: trying to tell people, yeah, your harmless sports betting is
18:44
Speaker 3: actually funding organized crime, and that did shift the narrative.
18:48
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right.
18:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's nothing like a complete and total extraction from
18:53
Speaker 1: your two dollars bet to that being the reason why
18:56
Speaker 1: the person down the street is getting knocked off.
18:58
Speaker 5: I mean, I've been killed by a small bet before
19:02
Speaker 5: it's done me that much.
19:03
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
19:06
Speaker 5: One of my kind of favorite themes of the of
19:11
Speaker 5: both your books.
19:12
Speaker 3: But there's so much.
19:16
Speaker 5: There's so much gambling embroiled in parts of American history
19:22
Speaker 5: and American culture and really international world history. Going back
19:25
Speaker 5: hundreds of years. But one of my favorite anecdotes was
19:29
Speaker 5: that in the middle of the nineteenth century, the first
19:33
Speaker 5: major regulatory act in congressional history, so tigers have been
19:38
Speaker 5: around for like whatever eighty years, related to boiler construction
19:43
Speaker 5: and steamboat licensing. Could you explain why that was related
19:47
Speaker 5: to gambling?
19:48
Speaker 3: Okay, so we all know this isn't the golden age
19:50
Speaker 3: of steamboats all that fun stuff. Also people use steamboats,
19:55
Speaker 3: they became gambling tools. People both gambled on them, you know,
19:59
Speaker 3: playing all kinds of aims, especially poker, but also people
20:02
Speaker 3: would bet which steamboat was going to get there first.
20:05
Speaker 3: The captains were cut in on it so they would
20:07
Speaker 3: have an incentive, and they found that captains and the
20:11
Speaker 3: crew would push the steamship so hard that boilers exploded,
20:15
Speaker 3: and they said, this is too much risk. We've got
20:17
Speaker 3: to cut back in this. So it is amazing how
20:19
Speaker 3: something like that, And it also shows how universal that
20:23
Speaker 3: gambling gene is, where like literally the vessel you're riding
20:27
Speaker 3: on with the high pressure steam that is deadly that
20:30
Speaker 3: you know has killed people before, you're still going to
20:32
Speaker 3: overload it just to get that edge. That is wild.
20:36
Speaker 3: It's crazy that.
20:37
Speaker 5: You report that in one year five hundred people died
20:41
Speaker 5: from this, and in.
20:42
Speaker 7: Congress is like, holy shit, guys, you keep blowing up
20:46
Speaker 7: your own passengers because you can't just erasing your steamboats.
20:50
Speaker 7: We are going to make our first ever regulatory action' hilarious.
20:54
Speaker 5: And obviously you know what tremendous about about Las Vegas
20:57
Speaker 5: and its history, and we'll dive into that shortly. But
21:00
Speaker 5: those teamboats obviously related to the big business of New Orleans.
21:05
Speaker 5: Could you explain briefly, you know, kind of how important
21:10
Speaker 5: New Orleans was to the development of American gambling pre
21:13
Speaker 5: Las Vegas.
21:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, New Orleans is huge. It was really
21:15
Speaker 3: America's first gambling capital, without a doubt. You had the French,
21:19
Speaker 3: you had the Spanish, you had Native Americans, you had
21:21
Speaker 3: African cultures coming in there. So you also had a
21:24
Speaker 3: lot of people, a lot of money. It was a
21:26
Speaker 3: thriving port. So it really is where America. If people
21:30
Speaker 3: in America wanted to gamble, most gambling was happening there.
21:33
Speaker 3: They experimented with legal gambling houses really early on in
21:36
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century. The games of poker and crafts were
21:39
Speaker 3: both both born in New Orleans or near New Orleans.
21:43
Speaker 3: So really New Orleans in the nineteenth century was the
21:47
Speaker 3: capital of gambling in America without a doubt.
21:50
Speaker 5: Incredible.
21:51
Speaker 6: Yeah, I just want to piggyback off that. I've thought
21:54
Speaker 6: a lot about this and you know, gambling. To me,
21:56
Speaker 6: it's a really important part of my life. And you know,
21:59
Speaker 6: you seem like some of knows all about I mean,
22:01
Speaker 6: every little detail, every story. And you know, a story
22:04
Speaker 6: I love that I read a long time ago is
22:05
Speaker 6: about Native Americans didn't have a word for lie, but
22:08
Speaker 6: they did have a word for bet. And I always
22:10
Speaker 6: thought that's such a human thing, like at our core,
22:13
Speaker 6: I mean, think of the earliest man. What you said was, Buddy,
22:16
Speaker 6: I bet you I can race you home and beat
22:17
Speaker 6: you in a race where I can kill that animal
22:19
Speaker 6: before you can kill it, like a little bet like that.
22:21
Speaker 6: What is your discovery of the earliest bets ever written
22:25
Speaker 6: or made in human history?
22:27
Speaker 3: What goes way? It goes back really far. And I've
22:29
Speaker 3: got another layer of this, you know, so in the earth,
22:31
Speaker 3: basically for a lot of human history, people weren't living
22:34
Speaker 3: in settlements, the first settlements, you know, we find evidence
22:37
Speaker 3: of gambling, you know, primitive dice, things like that, and
22:42
Speaker 3: kind of the funny thing is so like if we
22:44
Speaker 3: would say, and I'm not saying this is the absolute year,
22:46
Speaker 3: but if we say the earliest dice were ten thousand
22:48
Speaker 3: years old, the earliest cheating dice crooked dice, or like
22:53
Speaker 3: nine and ninety nine years old, So cheating was also
22:55
Speaker 3: part of it a long ways away, and it's kind
22:58
Speaker 3: of funny. Like one of the more poignant stories is
23:01
Speaker 3: the when Mount Vesuvius erupted and POMPEII was engulfed in ash,
23:05
Speaker 3: you know, in the taverns. You know, there was this
23:09
Speaker 3: one thing where it was a gambling table and they
23:12
Speaker 3: had the guy's debts were like just scratched up on
23:17
Speaker 3: the wall and they're just thinking like suddenly there's all
23:20
Speaker 3: the ash and the lava coming down, and this guy's
23:23
Speaker 3: last thing is like, oh man.
23:25
Speaker 1: I'm down, and then he's like, great, I'm off the hook.
23:31
Speaker 1: That's I was actually thinking. The guy who won is like,
23:34
Speaker 1: are you freaking kidding me? I finally hit a streak
23:37
Speaker 1: and now we're all going under.
23:39
Speaker 4: This is ridiculous.
23:41
Speaker 5: Yeah, really bad beat. Volcanic bad beat for sure, Yeah, volcanic.
23:45
Speaker 5: So yeah, I can't get worse than that.
23:47
Speaker 1: That was good.
23:51
Speaker 5: One thing I wanted to also point out from your
23:53
Speaker 5: book is you have this recurring theme which I really enjoyed,
23:56
Speaker 5: kind of the Simon's point of you, like, you go
24:00
Speaker 5: back to the earliest bets made in humankind, but all
24:04
Speaker 5: the way up to the present day. You keep describing
24:06
Speaker 5: societies that are getting more and more advanced. Gambling exists
24:10
Speaker 5: because it's people are congregating. Then gambling is frowned upon,
24:14
Speaker 5: that it is outlawed, and that it is found to
24:16
Speaker 5: be totally irrepressible, and that it is eventually tolerated or regulated,
24:21
Speaker 5: but that it happens in every corner of the world
24:24
Speaker 5: over and over and over again for thousands of years.
24:27
Speaker 5: So looking back at the history of gambling kind of
24:30
Speaker 5: overall and maybe Las Vegas specifically, our audience is mostly
24:34
Speaker 5: sports betters, Like, what are the lessons that our audience
24:38
Speaker 5: can take away.
24:40
Speaker 3: Well, it's basically, I mean, there's a couple of them.
24:42
Speaker 3: First of all, people have always gambled. I mean, obviously
24:45
Speaker 3: not everybody, but a lot of people have always gambled.
24:48
Speaker 3: But things do go in cycles, and there's no reason
24:52
Speaker 3: to think that people are going to keep on betting
24:53
Speaker 3: the way they're betting right now, you know, because if
24:56
Speaker 3: we look back, just looking at casinos in Vegas in
24:59
Speaker 3: the sixties, and we're just going to go back sixty years,
25:01
Speaker 3: which is not that much time historically, but like sixties,
25:05
Speaker 3: they're mostly playing craps. Blackjack is just starting to get
25:09
Speaker 3: big because skill play is just starting to get popular,
25:11
Speaker 3: but it's still mostly craps. There's maybe a couple of
25:14
Speaker 3: dozen slot machines, is not that big a deal, and
25:17
Speaker 3: the casinos are a lot smaller. Go to the nineties,
25:20
Speaker 3: giant air conditioned slot machine houses, just total slot machines.
25:24
Speaker 3: But the slot machines look really different than they are today.
25:26
Speaker 3: They're mostly steppers, a couple of video machines, but mostly
25:29
Speaker 3: steppers versus today. Less focus in the gambling, more focus
25:33
Speaker 3: and everything else. You've got electronic table games, You've got
25:37
Speaker 3: all kinds of things evolving, you know, And that's and
25:40
Speaker 3: think about how sports betting has changed too with the
25:42
Speaker 3: advent of technology, and now you don't have to go
25:45
Speaker 3: to the bookie bookies in your phone, so there's just
25:49
Speaker 3: a lot of that going on. And I think my
25:51
Speaker 3: other lesson is, you know, they say the house always wins,
25:56
Speaker 3: Usually the house does but when it does, and I
25:59
Speaker 3: this might be kind of ominous for sports betting. You know,
26:01
Speaker 3: when the house doesn't win, the house tends to change
26:03
Speaker 3: the rules. So if people find something, find an exploit,
26:07
Speaker 3: they will change the rules to prevent that because the
26:10
Speaker 3: house has to win otherwise they don't stay in business.
26:13
Speaker 5: Oh, for sure, that's another recurring theme throughout throughout history.
26:17
Speaker 1: Well, that's also why the States didn't want to be
26:21
Speaker 1: in that business, right They worried that they all of
26:25
Speaker 1: a sudden would have a season where they owe money
26:27
Speaker 1: instead of are taking in money.
26:28
Speaker 4: And what do you do with you know, that hole
26:32
Speaker 4: in the budget.
26:34
Speaker 1: Sports betting specifically, why do you think, I guess from
26:40
Speaker 1: your point of view, you said it'll change.
26:43
Speaker 4: How is it different than what you thought it.
26:47
Speaker 1: Would be when it was legalized, even in these past,
26:50
Speaker 1: say seven years.
26:52
Speaker 3: Well, it's really interesting because if you look at the
26:54
Speaker 3: history of sports betting in Nevada, traditionally it was maybe
26:59
Speaker 3: and I'm saying from the eighties onward, when you had
27:01
Speaker 3: the advent of casinos being in sports betting, it was
27:04
Speaker 3: maybe one percent of total Nevada gaming revenue, maybe one percent.
27:08
Speaker 3: You know, then in the early twenty tens, we get
27:10
Speaker 3: up to two percent and kind of into three percent.
27:12
Speaker 3: So it really is something in Nevada. It really is
27:16
Speaker 3: an amenity to bring people in. The whole idea that
27:19
Speaker 3: they had is I don't want my hot blackjack player
27:23
Speaker 3: leaving to go someplace else to place a bet, so
27:26
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have this here even if it doesn't make money.
27:29
Speaker 3: And you know, every slot manager in the world is saying,
27:32
Speaker 3: if I had that space that the sports book has
27:35
Speaker 3: or the polkroom has, I could make the revenue to
27:37
Speaker 3: make a year. I could make in a month, you
27:39
Speaker 3: know that, And like true, but then they're gonna leave
27:43
Speaker 3: to go bet in someplace else, and they're they're gonna
27:45
Speaker 3: gamble there. So they really did do as amenity. What
27:48
Speaker 3: we've seen, you know, in the past ten years or
27:51
Speaker 3: even less, is the emergence of sports betting as a
27:53
Speaker 3: revenue source in its own through online and mobile, which
27:58
Speaker 3: is something we have not seen in Nevada before or
28:00
Speaker 3: so that's totally different. And it did you know way
28:03
Speaker 3: back when, back in twenty ten, when I was trying
28:05
Speaker 3: to extrapolate, well, how big of a market is it, Like, well,
28:08
Speaker 3: if it's two percent, it'll be this and it turned
28:12
Speaker 3: out to be a lot bigger than that because behaviors changed.
28:15
Speaker 3: So that's just proof that it happens.
28:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember when I first started going out to
28:19
Speaker 1: Vegas and I was working on the odds, and I
28:22
Speaker 1: would get the numbers from the Nevada Gaming Control Board
28:28
Speaker 1: of the total handle and then the hold for these
28:33
Speaker 1: sports books, and I think, correct me if I'm wrong,
28:39
Speaker 1: late nineties, early two thousands, it would be like six
28:43
Speaker 1: million a year in total revenue for every sports book
28:48
Speaker 1: in the state of Nevada. I'm like, why the fuck
28:52
Speaker 1: am I writing this book because this thing doesn't matter
28:55
Speaker 1: at all, like we thought it was a big deal,
28:58
Speaker 1: and it means nothing with the overall scheme of what
29:03
Speaker 1: really is important in the state of Nevada. But it
29:06
Speaker 1: has always sports betting since really the state of Nevada
29:10
Speaker 1: legalized it in the seventies. I think has had this
29:13
Speaker 1: outsized impact on the rest of the industry in terms
29:19
Speaker 1: of not its importance, but a little bit of its glamour.
29:21
Speaker 4: Would you say that.
29:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, And obviously there's a lot more illegal betting going
29:25
Speaker 3: on back then, which I don't think we even you know,
29:29
Speaker 3: for a while, the FBI estimated it. Then at some
29:31
Speaker 3: point they just kind of gave up. I learned that
29:34
Speaker 3: when I was researching another book, covering the Wire, which
29:36
Speaker 3: was about online gaming gambling prohibition. So it's kind of
29:39
Speaker 3: interesting to see how they eventually said, we don't know
29:41
Speaker 3: how much illegal gambling there is, illegal sports betting there
29:44
Speaker 3: is going on. We know it's big, so's that's kind
29:48
Speaker 3: of the uh, yeah, that's kind of where that is.
29:51
Speaker 3: But Nevada, did you know? Originally yeah, they did views
29:53
Speaker 3: it as an amenity, but now it's becoming a revenue
29:56
Speaker 3: source in its own right.
29:58
Speaker 5: This is a sloppyly awarded question, apologies, but like you
30:02
Speaker 5: you could describe a let's say, a thousand years of
30:06
Speaker 5: betting activity across the whole world, right, Yeah, all of them,
30:09
Speaker 5: all of the betting activity in every form, always involved
30:14
Speaker 5: other human parties, and almost always leaving your home, and
30:20
Speaker 5: now only in the last like what decade you no
30:24
Speaker 5: longer need both of those things. How enormous of a
30:29
Speaker 5: change is that in the from a cultural standpoint to
30:32
Speaker 5: like what betting is and how intrinsically human the activity is.
30:37
Speaker 3: It's a big change. That's one that's probably about five
30:39
Speaker 3: or six hundred years in the making to be a
30:41
Speaker 3: little little, little little dramatic there. So if we think back,
30:44
Speaker 3: you know, to the dawn and gambling, as we were
30:46
Speaker 3: saying like, yeah, can I throw this, you know, rock
30:50
Speaker 3: farther than you can? I catch this? Sound them before you,
30:53
Speaker 3: you know that sort of thing, like Simon was saying, Yeah,
30:56
Speaker 3: that is personal. Oh my horse is faster than your horse.
31:01
Speaker 3: All right, well I don't know, but my buddy's horse
31:04
Speaker 3: is faster than your buddy's horse. Okay, now we're doing that.
31:07
Speaker 3: You know, my alma mater can be your alma mater
31:11
Speaker 3: in football, okay, you know, my favorite team can be
31:15
Speaker 3: your team. It was very personal.
31:17
Speaker 2: You have.
31:19
Speaker 3: This shift to mercantile gambling and commercial gambling that really
31:22
Speaker 3: happens kind of really gets underway more in the Renaissance,
31:26
Speaker 3: in that period the Reformation, as you have the rise
31:28
Speaker 3: of sort of capitalism and fun things like that, and
31:33
Speaker 3: it intensifies in America with the mention of the spot machine,
31:36
Speaker 3: where like, if you think about what we did in America,
31:38
Speaker 3: we took gambling and we invented a machine that can
31:42
Speaker 3: gamble more efficiently, which is such an American thing. And
31:45
Speaker 3: that's late nineteenth century eighteen ninety nine. This is what
31:48
Speaker 3: they were doing, and this is what Americans are doing, like, oh, railroad,
31:52
Speaker 3: will build build a bigger railroad. Telegraph yeah, all across
31:55
Speaker 3: the country. Gambling, Yeah, here's a machine that'll do that
31:58
Speaker 3: for me. So in every okay, looking at betting. Invention
32:04
Speaker 3: of the telegraph, Hey huh, Now we can find out
32:10
Speaker 3: what's happening at race tracks all around the country. We
32:12
Speaker 3: can bet on them here. And that was really the
32:16
Speaker 3: first remote betting, and I argue that was the first
32:19
Speaker 3: remote remote entertainment where people would actually be hearing them narrate,
32:23
Speaker 3: like what's happening in the race, and they're very excited.
32:26
Speaker 3: And people were freaked out then because they're like, oh
32:28
Speaker 3: my god, why are they jumping and yelling and screaming
32:30
Speaker 3: and stuff and they're not even at the track.
32:33
Speaker 5: I would say it's probably the intrinsic power of the
32:36
Speaker 5: spoken word chad, Yeah, timeless, timeless and evocative.
32:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yeah. And they had no concept of remote
32:43
Speaker 3: entertainment like today where we'll watch the game and get
32:46
Speaker 3: all excited even though we're not in the stadium. You know,
32:48
Speaker 3: they had no concept and that was how that was born.
32:51
Speaker 3: So it is really interesting. In every technological devancement, people
32:55
Speaker 3: are betting, you know, telephones, people using telephones to bet,
32:58
Speaker 3: Internet people using the Internet to bet. Mobile people are
33:01
Speaker 3: using mobile now and I don't see a reason why
33:04
Speaker 3: that won't continue.
33:06
Speaker 4: So which came first? This is a chicken in the egg.
33:09
Speaker 3: Is it.
33:12
Speaker 1: Gambling as a point of pride or gambling for the
33:18
Speaker 1: sake of gambling? And I think there's a nuanced difference there.
33:22
Speaker 1: But before technology, gambling for the sake of pride, because
33:28
Speaker 1: you ed had to be more in person and a
33:31
Speaker 1: little bit more about competition versus gambling that is at
33:37
Speaker 1: scale and is about gambling for gambling sake.
33:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, think about the difference between poker and
33:45
Speaker 3: slot machines. You know, poker, and I know everybody gets
33:48
Speaker 3: bad beats and stuff like that, but it comes down
33:49
Speaker 3: to I'm better than you and I'm taking your money
33:53
Speaker 3: because of skill for even though yeah, I mean there
33:55
Speaker 3: are bad beats and stuff like that, and you know,
33:57
Speaker 3: whereas slot machines is just hey, I'm putting my money
34:01
Speaker 3: up and whatever happens happens, it's out of my hands.
34:04
Speaker 3: So it's that's that different. You know, people who just
34:07
Speaker 3: want that rush of gambling versus people who want to
34:09
Speaker 3: gamble to show their skill. You know, that is the
34:11
Speaker 3: difference right there, and they probably always had a little
34:13
Speaker 3: bit of them. Probably the skill dominated more early on,
34:16
Speaker 3: but since we've gone to more totally random games like slots,
34:21
Speaker 3: a little bit more of the pure gambling.
34:23
Speaker 6: That's why I love gambling though, Like slots now there's
34:26
Speaker 6: an edge. Like I know guys who have quit sports
34:29
Speaker 6: betting on what I do, and they literally live in
34:31
Speaker 6: books or outside sports books by the slot machines, and
34:34
Speaker 6: they just watch people on machines and they know timing
34:37
Speaker 6: wise that this machine's hot, like this is this machine's
34:40
Speaker 6: right in the pop Like they just watch them and
34:42
Speaker 6: play for hours and they'll wait and jump on their machine,
34:45
Speaker 6: which is just to me, it's like crazy how people
34:48
Speaker 6: just find an edge and every little thing like you
34:49
Speaker 6: talked about, and you know, go back ten thousand years
34:51
Speaker 6: of those fake dice pros. Everybody they're always me find
34:55
Speaker 6: an edge. They might call that cheating. To me, that's
34:58
Speaker 6: a professional, that's someone trying to find an edge. So
35:00
Speaker 6: I love the breakdown of all these history right now.
35:02
Speaker 6: It's really interesting.
35:04
Speaker 1: You know, Nate Silver not to plug another book, But
35:07
Speaker 1: talking about slots, he wrote a book that came out
35:09
Speaker 1: over the summer called On the Edge, and he had
35:12
Speaker 1: a section in there about people who, to your point, Simon,
35:16
Speaker 1: are looking to find the edges in slot machines. I've
35:20
Speaker 1: probably been to Vegas a thousand times, no exaggeration, in
35:25
Speaker 1: my life, and I think that I've played slots zero times, Simon.
35:35
Speaker 1: Like when you go to the casinos, now, do you
35:39
Speaker 1: have any urge to do anything other than walk to
35:42
Speaker 1: the book, make your bet and get out? Or will
35:45
Speaker 1: you stay and play Parker? I know you love poker,
35:47
Speaker 1: Like will you play poker? Will you play blackjack?
35:49
Speaker 4: What is your menu?
35:52
Speaker 6: That's the running joke to a lot of professional sports
35:54
Speaker 6: better is it's like basketball players want to be rappers,
35:58
Speaker 6: sports betters want to be poker players, and vice versa
36:00
Speaker 6: poka players.
36:01
Speaker 2: I know some really high level poke players.
36:03
Speaker 6: I've seen when many tournaments in Vegas, especially in twenty fourteen,
36:07
Speaker 6: I mean twenty fifteen when I was really in Vegas
36:10
Speaker 6: a lot, and I would see these guys win one
36:12
Speaker 6: hundred K and then just go bet it on like
36:13
Speaker 6: a Lakers first half and lose it. And it's like
36:16
Speaker 6: that's also why these sportsbook exists, right, They're hitting these
36:19
Speaker 6: guys who are great at one thing, but something that
36:21
Speaker 6: great at and they have confidence in when they shouldn't
36:23
Speaker 6: have confidence in. So yeah, for me, slot machines, chat,
36:27
Speaker 6: I'm with you on that. The only time I've ever
36:28
Speaker 6: hit a slot machine is at the airport in Vegas,
36:31
Speaker 6: Like that's the one time they'll get me.
36:32
Speaker 2: If I got eight hours to kill and I got
36:34
Speaker 2: the itch, I'll hit the slot machines and things like that.
36:37
Speaker 2: But I'm with you. The big thing for me is blackjack.
36:39
Speaker 6: I told you, if I'm really nervous about a bet
36:41
Speaker 6: I made, I can't watch the game in the sports book,
36:44
Speaker 6: I can't be around all the people talk and anything
36:45
Speaker 6: like that.
36:46
Speaker 2: I'll go right across the blackjack table.
36:48
Speaker 3: You know it.
36:48
Speaker 6: Give me a twenty dollars limit. I don't even care.
36:50
Speaker 6: I'm just there to kill time while watching the game
36:53
Speaker 6: on one of the corner of TVs. So that's definitely
36:55
Speaker 6: my nervous hitter is. I just like to sit there
36:57
Speaker 6: play blackjack for a couple hours while watching games.
36:59
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38:16
Speaker 3: Dave. Do you gambed now? Having worked in the casino
38:19
Speaker 3: and having been awake at four thirty in the morning
38:21
Speaker 3: watching people gamble kind of kills all the romance. Yeah,
38:24
Speaker 3: what I'm hearing at four thirty.
38:25
Speaker 5: Is my business day. One day the volcano is coming
38:28
Speaker 5: for me. So that's yeah, more terms back, you know.
38:31
Speaker 3: It's just yeah, you see things doing surveillance, it's like, uh,
38:35
Speaker 3: you know, just like, well, I'm not in part of it.
38:37
Speaker 3: For me, it's like I'm no smarter or luckier than
38:40
Speaker 3: these people. So it's not it's got to be somebody.
38:43
Speaker 3: I don't think it's going to be me.
38:45
Speaker 5: Our audience will not be surprised that I absolutely adore gambling.
38:49
Speaker 5: I can think of the two casinos where I was
38:51
Speaker 5: made to move because they were shampooing the carpet while
38:54
Speaker 5: I was playing, which, as you know, like they're doing
38:57
Speaker 5: that at like four am, Christmas morning or whatever when
39:00
Speaker 5: they're like no one, no one will be here, which
39:02
Speaker 5: is never going to make anybody move. I proposed at
39:05
Speaker 5: the roulette wheel of the Old Barbary Coast then Bill's
39:09
Speaker 5: Gambling Hall. Yeah no, yeah, they I did not know
39:14
Speaker 5: that she hit her number and they pushed the chips
39:18
Speaker 5: out with the ring on top. I had had to
39:20
Speaker 5: take the ring because I was traveling for business and
39:23
Speaker 5: it was around Thanksgiving from Milwaukee to Denver to my
39:26
Speaker 5: family's Thanksgiving in Baltimore to Las Vegas, so I hit
39:30
Speaker 5: every time zone, which made me want to puke my
39:32
Speaker 5: guts out. Don't travel with a diamond ring, uh And
39:35
Speaker 5: then yeah, I just assumed that the uh Bill's Gammon
39:38
Speaker 5: Hall would be fine with it. They were like, what
39:40
Speaker 5: the fuck are you talking about. I was like, oh right,
39:42
Speaker 5: I forgot to like clue you in on this. I
39:45
Speaker 5: had lost enough money at Bill's historically that the pit
39:48
Speaker 5: boss was like, oh dude, no problem, no problem, and
39:50
Speaker 5: he showed the ring to the camera, placed it on
39:52
Speaker 5: the chips and said, I'll clear this table out and
39:55
Speaker 5: then you have to get you have to fill it.
39:56
Speaker 5: So I got my my family who would come with me,
39:59
Speaker 5: and we sat down and she lost every spinch. She
40:02
Speaker 5: played ten numbers at a time, so you're gonna win
40:04
Speaker 5: about one in every four spins. She lost twelve spins.
40:08
Speaker 3: In a row.
40:09
Speaker 5: It was absolutely excruciating, sweating through my clothes. By now,
40:13
Speaker 5: the pit boss has told every other table in the
40:15
Speaker 5: vicinity of what's happening. So every time she lost. There
40:18
Speaker 5: were audible groans coming from the other tables, which she
40:22
Speaker 5: thought she was being mocked. But yeah, it was great,
40:24
Speaker 5: and we're November twenty ten, so still going strong, she said, yes,
40:28
Speaker 5: still going strong. Yeah, it's great, dude, put.
40:31
Speaker 3: Out another edition because that's the best gambling story I've heard.
40:34
Speaker 5: Oh, I remember when I told the Bill sports Book,
40:36
Speaker 5: Because of course, she says, yes, we hug and I'm like,
40:38
Speaker 5: I got to go make some more bets, and I said, hey,
40:41
Speaker 5: I just got engaged, and the guy's like, sounds good.
40:43
Speaker 5: I go, no, I got engaged. Here the reaction of
40:46
Speaker 5: the Bill's Gaming Gold sports Book employees to that I
40:49
Speaker 5: had chosen to get in that casino at that time,
40:52
Speaker 5: I've never seen people ask more clarifying questions. They would
40:56
Speaker 5: have been less incredulous if I told them I arrived
40:59
Speaker 5: there on a dragon, But to their credit, they gave
41:02
Speaker 5: me the whole book of drink tickets. So shout out
41:05
Speaker 5: to the now defunct Bill's Gambling Hall corner of Flamingo
41:09
Speaker 5: in the Strip.
41:10
Speaker 4: That is legendary.
41:11
Speaker 1: Matt. I don't know how we've known each other for
41:13
Speaker 1: as long as we have and you've never told me
41:16
Speaker 1: that story.
41:17
Speaker 5: This is my total coincidence. I'm drinking from a Bill's
41:19
Speaker 5: gambling home mug as you think, which I bought that day.
41:22
Speaker 1: You've told me every boring, long gambling story of your
41:26
Speaker 1: entire life, and you've never told me that story.
41:29
Speaker 5: I'm just full of surprises, Chad. You know, we all
41:31
Speaker 5: contain multitudes.
41:33
Speaker 1: Dave, you just said something that I wanted to follow
41:35
Speaker 1: up on. You worked surveillance at casinos.
41:39
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, back when that was my postgraduate work.
41:42
Speaker 3: So when I was in undergrad, I worked security. After
41:46
Speaker 3: I went and got a PhD, I came back, moved
41:48
Speaker 3: back to Atlantic City and went in a surveillance Well did.
41:51
Speaker 2: You guys take out to the loading docks?
41:53
Speaker 6: Were you out there with them or you were still
41:54
Speaker 6: in the back room just in their earpiece, And yeah,
41:57
Speaker 6: take them out the back door.
41:58
Speaker 3: Just to mean, yeah, I was kind of was thinking
42:00
Speaker 3: about this. I really like doing security because you're out there,
42:04
Speaker 3: you know, you're just out with people, You're you're interacting,
42:08
Speaker 3: you're you're on the floor. You got all that excitement
42:10
Speaker 3: in surveillance, you're just up in the room and it's
42:12
Speaker 3: like sometimes it was kind of fun, kind of like
42:15
Speaker 3: mystery science theater three thousand, just like watching TV and
42:18
Speaker 3: like making jokes and stuff. Other times it was just
42:21
Speaker 3: there's a lot of tedium. There's a lot of tedium
42:23
Speaker 3: just watching people doing repetitive motions again and again and again,
42:28
Speaker 3: and you kind of pick up like when someone's gambling,
42:30
Speaker 3: like they're very focused and they're gambling. So if somebody's
42:32
Speaker 3: gambling and they're looking around, well maybe I gotta watch
42:35
Speaker 3: them because they shouldn't be doing that. They should be folks.
42:38
Speaker 3: I remember one time there's this guy playing slots and
42:41
Speaker 3: I'm like, he's really nervous. He's gambling. He's like really nervous,
42:45
Speaker 3: and like he's rubbernecking. Okay, I'm pretty sure he's doing
42:48
Speaker 3: a sort thing with slugs. I'm like all zoomed in,
42:51
Speaker 3: like yeah, man, he's I'm gonna get him. This is great.
42:55
Speaker 3: Then I assume it was his wife comes down and
42:57
Speaker 3: it's like and that's why he was nervous because he
43:00
Speaker 3: was waiting for his Maybe he was going to propose.
43:02
Speaker 3: I don't know. Yeah, it's so funny, Like I thought
43:04
Speaker 3: I had it. I was so excited, like, yeah, I
43:07
Speaker 3: got finally got one. I got a slot scam. Here
43:10
Speaker 3: didn't didn't have a slot scam. Mostly I think I had,
43:13
Speaker 3: you know, just a couple of per snatching kind of things.
43:16
Speaker 3: Those kinds of things did you.
43:18
Speaker 1: Get pretty good though, at being able to tell if
43:21
Speaker 1: someone was trying to count cards or cheat at the
43:25
Speaker 1: table at all.
43:26
Speaker 3: Now they had account team for that, so that was
43:28
Speaker 3: kind of beyond what what I did. Then, you know,
43:31
Speaker 3: it was more just which basically watching the money, and
43:34
Speaker 3: again it is very a lot of tedium just watching
43:37
Speaker 3: the money. Let's say there's an overage or an underage.
43:42
Speaker 3: Underage is worse at a cash window. You've got to
43:45
Speaker 3: go back and watch that cashier's whole shift, and basically
43:48
Speaker 3: they're shooting it from the top down, so you're watching
43:50
Speaker 3: it slow motion, then putting out the money, proving the chips,
43:54
Speaker 3: stacking the chips. Okay, I know it's two hundred and
43:56
Speaker 3: seventy dollars and we're met, we're one hundred dollars short,
44:00
Speaker 3: so boom boom boom. Oh wow, now I've seen a
44:02
Speaker 3: transaction where the cashier was eighty dollars short. So now
44:06
Speaker 3: I've got to look for eighty dollars transactions too, not
44:09
Speaker 3: just the big ones. That was like, yeah, my soul
44:12
Speaker 3: left my body. I remember I spent like three shifts
44:16
Speaker 3: scrutinizing this one thing, and then Super I was like, eh,
44:20
Speaker 3: it probably happened during tape change, because back then they
44:23
Speaker 3: had tapes, and I was like, oh God. Never felt
44:25
Speaker 3: so defeated like that.
44:27
Speaker 5: A lot like batting, it feels like you're in the
44:29
Speaker 5: middle of the basketball.
44:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because I'm like, yeah, I know I'm gonna
44:33
Speaker 3: find this, and you know they're yeah, So that's yeah,
44:37
Speaker 3: that was quite a thing, Dave.
44:40
Speaker 5: One of the themes book books is the h everything
44:44
Speaker 5: that is old is new again, And one of my
44:46
Speaker 5: favorite examples is in the middle of the nineteenth century,
44:50
Speaker 5: you have Francois Blanc and he runs a bunch of
44:54
Speaker 5: incredibly successful casinos. He's the guy that made Monte Carlo
44:58
Speaker 5: luxurious gambling location, right, and he's visited by Napoleon's nephew
45:06
Speaker 5: and he's a big celebrity. They can't wait to have him.
45:09
Speaker 5: And he rolls up and bets only the table maximum
45:12
Speaker 5: for like three days, and he kicks the shit out
45:15
Speaker 5: of the casino. He wins an absolute fortune, and then
45:19
Speaker 5: before they can win it back, he just pee packs
45:21
Speaker 5: his stuff and leaves very abruptly. They could barely make
45:24
Speaker 5: make the payment he took like basically all their cash
45:26
Speaker 5: on hand. But in the all that is old is
45:29
Speaker 5: new again. They were like, what are we gonna do?
45:31
Speaker 5: He goes, here's what we're gonna do. Tell every person
45:34
Speaker 5: in every contact that we have across Europe that this
45:36
Speaker 5: guy cleaned us out. We are total dopes. Tell him
45:40
Speaker 5: exactly how much you want, tell him how easy it
45:43
Speaker 5: was for him. Let everybody know we are right for
45:46
Speaker 5: the picking looses slots in town kind of mentality.
45:49
Speaker 3: And it worked.
45:50
Speaker 5: The next year was their most profitable year on record.
45:53
Speaker 5: It feels like the sports book's helping to promote the
45:56
Speaker 5: long shot parlays that hit that like there's a universal
46:00
Speaker 5: there's a timelessness to all these tricks. I'm sure you
46:03
Speaker 5: have a million examples.
46:04
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. And it is just that basic psychology where
46:07
Speaker 3: people report the big wins but nobody reports the losses.
46:11
Speaker 3: We assume everyone else is winning but me, So I'm
46:13
Speaker 3: gonna win soon because that's all I hear about. And
46:15
Speaker 3: you know, in Vegas, when somebody wins at the airport slots,
46:19
Speaker 3: that makes local news, like somebody wins, you know, fifty
46:22
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in slots. It's like, what about all the
46:24
Speaker 3: people who didn't win today at the slots? How come
46:27
Speaker 3: that's not newsworthy? So, yeah, that is a that is
46:30
Speaker 3: a thing. I don't think that's ever going to go away.
46:33
Speaker 5: Yeah, people think all these things are new inventions. It's
46:35
Speaker 5: like they've been doing They've been following a playbook that
46:38
Speaker 5: is hundreds of years old.
46:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.
46:39
Speaker 1: All I heard from that Matt is that guy won
46:44
Speaker 1: a lot and the casino lost a lot, and the
46:47
Speaker 1: next year the casino made it back, which means Simon
46:51
Speaker 1: and I next year, we are freaking.
46:54
Speaker 5: Do I mean the advertising obviously would have worked on me,
46:57
Speaker 5: So I can also appreciate the universality of the advertise
47:00
Speaker 5: because I definitely would have been like, all right, pack
47:02
Speaker 5: our buggies or whatever, the get on the railroad. We
47:05
Speaker 5: got to hit this casino in France.
47:08
Speaker 1: Dave, I want to thank you for coming on Roll
47:11
Speaker 1: the Bones, which is a great book, a great reference book,
47:14
Speaker 1: full of amazing anecdotes. Something for your money, another fabulous book.
47:19
Speaker 1: Congrats on the release earlier this year. And that's not
47:24
Speaker 1: wrong when he tells me to say you are the
47:27
Speaker 1: pre eminent Vegas casino historian.
47:31
Speaker 4: You got it all. Thanks for providing so many good stories.
47:35
Speaker 3: Thanks. It means a lot coming from you guys too,
47:36
Speaker 3: you know, humbling and gratifying. Yeah, I'm glad, you know,
47:39
Speaker 3: And I hope people do like the books. It's just
47:41
Speaker 3: trying to share a little bit of that excitement and
47:43
Speaker 3: some of these cool stories that have happened.
47:46
Speaker 4: Everyone go buy the books.
47:47
Speaker 1: As a reminder, the Favorites podcast is presented by Bet
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