I can’t say that I was ever really serious about becoming a gambler, but I did fantasize along those lines when I was young. As a child in the late 1950s, I watched Maverick, a television western about a professional poker player, and the idea of making a living by playing rather than working sounded good to me. Furthermore, an entire constellation of glamorous character traits is suggested by the mere fact that a person is good at cards. In Gone With the Wind, for example, Scarlett’s father wins his valet and Tara playing poker, because he had a “steady head for whiskey,” an “aptitude for cards,” and “courage in a bluff.” In that same novel, the fact that Rhett Butler is also a skilled poker player is just what we would expect from a man who is a speculator and war profiteer, owns a brothel, and has a scandalous disdain for morality and religion. And while James Bond would never be seen in a backroom with a bunch of lowlifes, playing a game of five-card stud, we often see him in a casino, in formal attire, playing chemin-de-fer with consummate skill, which fits right in with all the other things that make him so cool.
Not all gambling games are equal when it comes to the character traits they bestow upon their participants, however. In addition to playing cards, tough guys in the movies also shoot craps and play the horses, as in Guys and Dolls (1955), because some degree of intelligence is implied in being able to compute the odds or handicap the horses. Women and weak men, on the other hand, are often seen playing mindless games of chance, like slot machines or roulette, where no thinking is required. In Out of the Past (1947), Robert Mitchum makes a disparaging remark about the way Jane Greer is losing money at the roulette table. “Don’t you like to gamble?” she asks him. “Not against a wheel,” he replies.
In Casablanca (1942), Humphrey Bogart is such a loner that he plays chess by himself, with no interest in having an opponent. Indifferent about the war, he is a cynic who cares only for himself. “I stick my neck out for nobody,” he says. And so it seems appropriate that he would own a casino. It just would not be the same if he were the owner of a bakery, and Ingrid Bergman walks in one day to buy a loaf of bread.
In short, the life of a movie gambler is that of a tough guy, a rugged individualist, a man who is shrewd, cynical, and cool.
“Well that’s for me,” I said to myself. Even though we always imagine that these movie gamblers acquire their skills simply by playing the games, I did the decidedly uncool thing of buying books and reading about them, especially poker. I played poker in high school and college, but as I won some and lost some, just how much the books helped is hard to say. In any event, one day I came across Scarne on Cards, and I bought it and took it home to read.
It started off telling about one particular trick that seemed to impress professional gamblers and magicians more than anything else they had ever seen. Someone would open a new deck of cards, shuffle it as much as he wanted, and then hand the deck to John Scarne, who would shuffle the deck one time, and then cut the Ace of Spades. And he would do this over and over again. When asked how he did it, he said that he would spot the Ace when he riffled the deck, and then count the cards that fell into place above it. If the Ace ended up being, say, the 32nd card in the deck, he would then cut it at the right place, owing to the fact that he knew what 32 cards felt like.
I knew that some people were good at manipulating a deck of cards, but that left me a bit stunned. Still, I thought, not many people can pull off that trick. However, much of the rest of the book was about various methods of cheating at cards, many of which were quite simple, well within the ability of even someone like me, which meant that anyone could use them. But while the book impressed upon me the fact that it was easy to cheat and get away with it, it also made me realize that there were lots of people out there who would not scruple to cheat in a game of cards given the chance.
Of course, I knew that some people cheated. There was always that guy in the westerns with the thin black mustache, who would get caught with an Ace up his sleeve, whereupon he would have to pull out his derringer and shoot the ruffian who had exposed him. And then there was that guy I caught sneaking a couple of chips out of the pot one night. I wanted to throw him out of the game, and it surprised me that no one else at the table seemed to care, other than to insist he put the chips back. Now I realize it was because the rest of them were probably cheating too, and they did not want to set a harsh precedent in case they got caught themselves. Looking back, it’s a wonder I didn’t lose my shirt.
This is one of the problems with empathy. When you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, your virtues and vices go right in there with you. As a result, an honest man like me will naturally be inclined to think that other people are honest too. And even though I have learned from experience (and Scarne’s book) that the world is full of cheaters, I invariably end up underestimating just how deceitful and underhanded some people can be.
After I finished the book, I stopped playing for money, which means I gave up poker, because without money being at stake, poker is a rather dull game. Not so with bridge, however. A friend of mine and I decided to take the game up, and we practiced bidding and playing the hand until we felt we were good enough to start playing for real. He knew a couple who wanted to play too, and it was not long before we were at the table every Friday night. And every Friday night, we lost. Adding to the frustration of losing, the couple was not shy about gloating, and we had to endure their raspberries. This went on for a year and a half, and then we drifted apart. Years later, the woman of the couple we played against admitted, in a weak moment, that when my partner and I would go into the kitchen to get a couple of cokes and a few more nachos, they would deal themselves all the Aces and Kings. When we got back to the table, and the hand was already “dealt,” we never suspected a thing, trusting souls that we were. Then they would bid and make a grand slam. I guess I don’t have to tell you that one undeserved grand slam at rubber bridge is enough to determine who wins for the night. When she told me about what she and her boyfriend had done, as if it were just a prank, I was appalled, and expressed my dismay. But she thought I was being overly melodramatic. “We didn’t cheat on every hand,” she said, “only when you left the room.”
I had forgotten that vanity can be just as powerful a motive for cheating as money. But what floored me was that she still took pride in her bridge-playing skills. In other words, pride is justified self-esteem, whereas vanity is the need to impress others with the appearance of superiority, specious and ill-founded though it may be. Therefore, a person can satisfy his vanity by cheating, but he can never take pride in what he cheated at, for he knows that the accomplishment is spurious.
What I didn’t realize is that when people cheat, their vanity slops over into their pride, for their memory does not preserve the nice distinction that seems so clear to me. When I was in high school, I sat a table in biology class with a friend of mine. During the final exam, I could see him looking at the answers I had put down on my paper. When we got the tests back, he had made an A, whereas I had made a B+. He was full of himself. “You studied hard for that test, while I didn’t study at all, and I ended up making a better grade,” he said with a smirk.
Now, he knew that I knew he had copied some of the answers off my paper, so I was amazed that he would be so brazen in his boast. After all, between the answers he knew himself, and the ones he gleaned from me, it was no mystery that he should have made a better grade. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “You copied half the answers off my paper.” He became quiet and sullen, and I could not help but think that he had completely repressed the fact that he had cheated, and cheated in such a way that I could not have helped but notice. He doubtlessly thought it was unkind of me to mention it.
Well, other than not playing for money anymore, I simply accept the fact that people cheat as just being part of the human comedy. Besides, I confess that I am not completely pure in this matter, for there was another couple we played bridge with I didn’t tell you about. One night, while I was trying to decide whether to open with a Heart, the wife pressed her leg against mine and kept it there. I felt myself turning as red as the suit I was planning to bid, and all I could do was silently stare at the cards in my hand. “What are you going to do?” her husband finally asked.
“I am going to bid 1 Heart,” I squeaked. But I knew that was not all I was going to do. So, you see, I sometimes cheat at cards too.