Tag: crapshooters

Cindy Tackles Craps

It is no longer the 1950s or 60s or 70s or 80s. We are in a new century now. It is truly the modern age.

But is it the modern age in the game of craps? Have women broken the stranglehold that men have had on that game since forever?

Is craps still a male domain?

Indeed, it still is but, as Bob Dylan wrote long ago, “The times they are a-changin.” He should have just added the word “slowly.” Maybe, very slowly.

If you go to the craps tables today, while men still dominate, it is not completely unheard of to see women playing the game – and playing the game not attached to some fellow.

Yes, it has been slow progress but it has been progress nevertheless. One such female craps player is Cindy, a 65-year-old product of New Jersey who “cut her teeth” (as she says) in Atlantic City in “the early days.”

I’ll let her tell her story:

CINDY: “When I first went to the casinos, it was Resorts, and you actually had to wait in line to play. I was a kid and this would be my first trips to the casino. My mother and father thought I was making a big mistake.

“I guess like any novice I went to the slot machines. They were the easiest to play and it didn’t take any knowledge to put your coins in and spin the reels. But I got bored with the slots; there was no strategy and it became somewhat humdrum. What next?

“I tried blackjack and I liked it but still, it was missing something. I tried roulette too. I just wasn’t getting the thrill I thought the casino games should give me.

“Look, I know other players loved all these games and they satisfied many of them. Not me. I always heard cheering and moaning coming from the craps tables – all male voices by the way. What was it about that game that thrilled all those guys? Or made them miserable? Loud miserable too. I didn’t hear any massive cheering at blackjack or roulette. Maybe one voice at a slot machine.

“At craps it could be the whole table!

“I strolled by the craps tables one evening and watched the game. The layout looked imposing. There were so many bets I couldn’t keep track of them. I had just started my career as a teacher and I had a little money, very little. The minimum for the table was five dollars. I could afford that if I decided to play

“Did I want to just push my way into the game without knowing anything about it? I’d be pushing a bunch of men back. I decided that the better part of bravery was caution. I just spent that evening watching a few tables.

“What does a teacher do when confronted with a mystery and craps was a mystery. I bought several books from the Gamblers Book Club in Las Vegas. These were elementary books that explained the game and the various betting choices players could make. Those betting choices were huge.

“I made a very simple plan. I would make the best bets at the table, the Pass and the Come and put double odds on them. I’d go up on three numbers and cross my fingers.

“I did know that the game was dominated by men. I had not seen a single woman playing it when I spent that evening watching it. Would the men mind a woman entering their game? Well, I was going to play it no matter what. I can be stubborn and I was a feminist. No male world was closed to me. I hoped I was as strong as I pretended to be!

“I guessed I’d have two thrills. One would be playing the game and the other would be how I would be treated when I played the game. Okay, my next trip would let me know if I could handle it all.

“My parents asked me if I really wanted to go to the casino this often. It was once a month. It wasn’t a long drive from our house. My sister Abby, who was in law school during this time, came with me many times in the future but my first trip to the craps table to play meant I was all alone.

“I cashed in for a hundred dollars and I heard it right away. One older guy shook his head and said loudly, ‘Oh, look who is here!’ I guess that was supposed to scare me.

“I got my chips and I placed a come bet. ’Stupid bet,’ he said. Evidently, he hadn’t read the two books I had read. When my bet went on the number, I placed two times odds on it.

“Most of the men just ignored me. One guy told me not to worry about ‘the idiot’ who was making remarks. Have fun playing. That’s why we were all here. We married two years later.

“I guess you could say, I really won at the craps table!”

All the best in and out of the casinos!

 

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, e-books, libraries and at bookstores.   

Female Crapshooters

In post war America in the 1950s, men were the crapshooters. You rarely saw a woman at a craps table – at least one who was not accompanied by a man; probably she was not his wife or his beloved girlfriend.

The same was true right up until the 1980s. Women just didn’t take to craps. They dominated the slot machine world. Indeed, their husbands and boyfriends would usher them off to the land of bells and whistles so that the men could play the man’s game.

Most men learned to play craps in the military. It was a city game but the country boys took to it with delight. With the soaring attendance in Las Vegas, craps became the number one game until the mid-1960s when blackjack jumped ahead of it.

It is now 2021. Has anything changed?

Kind of; sort of; well, maybe; somewhat.

Check out the craps tables in the casinos across the country and you can still see clearly that the game is heavily dominated by men; most of whom have never spent time in a war. Their game was probably learned inside the casinos’ walls.

Yet, you will on occasion see females playing the game. They are the trailblazers.

In the 1980s I wrote an article where I described how the men, mostly World War II and the Korean War vets, looked upon the precious few women who dared to come to the world of men.

But in those days, the way some of these men talked was frowned upon by some of the newspapers and magazines to which I sent this article. Long story short; my article was rejected by all of them.

I am now resurrecting some of the men’s “insights” so we can see how these fellas actually felt about women who dared stand at the tables with them. The reading public has become far more mature than it was so very long ago.

Joey D. from Brooklyn [WWII army vet]: “I do not want a woman at the tables with me. I won’t allow my wife to come near the craps tables. Craps is meant for men. It requires knowledge of the bets and how they are paid off. I think it is too complicated by the woman sex. Your head has to be into the game. I don’t think their heads are capable of understanding the game.

“They belong at the slot machines. That is their place when they are in the casino. Craps ain’t for them.”

Paulie M. from New Jersey [Korean War vet]: “I am not a man who hates women. I have three daughters and a beautiful wife. But I have told all of them that when they are in the casino to not play craps. Craps players look at the game as their domain – meaning a man’s domain. It is men only!

“Do you see women at the craps tables? No, you don’t. They know they don’t belong there and we men know they don’t belong there. That’s the way it is and that is the way it will always be. Some things change in this world and some things don’t. Craps will stay the same at least for my lifetime. I am sure of that.”

David P. from Long Island, New York [WWII vet]: “I like a good cigar. When there are only men at the table, I can take out my stogie and light up. Remember when stogies were bad cigars? Yeah. Well, not anymore.

“I have never had a man tell me to put out my cigar. Never. But twice I had ladies at the table with me and the nerve of them! They told me to put out the cigar. I gave them a look that said, ‘Go jump in the ocean.’ And then they told the box man who told me we couldn’t smoke cigars at the table. You have to be kidding me?

“Craps is a man’s game and we men, most of us, like to smoke. Ladies, go away. You only cause problems at the game. You are slow to take the dice. You do the little girl routine so we feel sorry for you. All of this is a royal waste of everyone’s time.

“Learn your lesson. Okay? Craps belongs to men.”

Marty V. from Pennsylvania [Korean War vet]: “I played in the streets as a kid and I played in the army. I love the game. I’d bank the game in the army and that made me some cash. The casino game is fun too.

“I go to Vegas three times a year and all I want to do is play the game I love. Women at the tables? Nah, you don’t see many of them. Maybe here and there and they don’t stay long. Craps is the only game in the casino that is all men all the time.

“And that’s the way it should be.”

There you have it. Voices from another generation.

All the best in and out of the casinos!

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, e-books and at bookstores and libraries.