Sunday night was tournament night. There was a group of about 20 regulars who would show up, and the entry fee was 10 or 20 dollars. One of those regulars was a soft spoken man named John Anderson. John was a strong intermediate player. I never knew much about him other than that he was always very well dressed, played a lot of golf, and drank a lot of scotch. He had a girlfriend who also played backgammon, golf, and was a dealer at the Sahara. One day I opened the morning paper to find that John and his girlfriend had been busted at the Sahara for putting in a cooler. For those not familiar with the term, a cooler is a deck that has been prearranged so the player will win every hand. In this case I believe it was a 4-deck shoe that was switched. I was relating this story to a friend recently, and he said, "Oh yeah. He wrote a book." I immediately whipped out my phone, and ordered it.
Ace - Deuce: The Life and Times of a Gambling Man
Ryan travels around the country, and meets legendary figures like Titanic Thompson, and mobster Santo Trafficante. He cheats, and often gets cheated. But when he is cheated he seems to just shrug it off as part of the cost of being a road gambler. One story I liked was him going into a one table casino. While he is having drinks at the bar he notices the count sky-rocketing at the one blackjack table. He jumps into the shoe and gets beat for a few thousand dollars. He realizes that there is something odd about the way the dealer is looking at the shoe, and figures out there is a prism in the shoe, and the dealer is busting him out dealing seconds. Does he throw a fit, threaten to call Gaming? No, remember this is the 60s when cheating was common, and Gaming Control a joke. He goes back to the bar as the dealer closes up the table, waits for an opportunity, and then just walks out of the joint snagging the gaffed shoe off the table as he goes. That is one of the reasons that dealing shoes are now chained to the tables. He later uses the gaffed shoe in an underground game he dealt at a California racetrack winning many tens of thousands.
There is a lot of golf hustling and scamming in the book. He uses grease on his clubs, deepens the grooves in his wedge, and has a magnet in the bottom of his putter. He uses a fake penny as a ball marker that is magnetic. This allows him to pick up the ball marker with the magnet, and move it closer to the hole under the guise of tamping down divots in the green. Ryan eventually settles down in Vegas, and for 8 years had a daily golf game with Jay Sarno. Sarno built Caesar's Palace, and Circus Circus, and dumped off millions of dollars at golf and other vices.
Ultimately Ryan's downfall is cocaine. It's hard for young people to imagine, but cocaine was everywhere in the early 80s. It was so prevalent that people wore gold coke spoons around their necks as jewelry. There were gold crucifixes that were coke spoons! It wasn't just people on the fringes, and the bigger the gambler, the more they seemed to be doing it. Ryan takes to dealing enough to support his own habit, and eventually gets busted. That is where his story ends, and no year is given.
I really enjoy this type of book, and this one was no exception, but it does point out the major problem with self-publishing. The book really screams out for a good editor. This is the 3rd self-published book I read in the last month, and every one of them could have been miles better with professional editing. My big disappointment with the book was this: the back cover states,
"Mr. Anderson went to Las Vegas in 1958 to shoot some dice. He went on to work as a dealer, became a floor man, pit-boss, Casino Manager, and eventually a Casino Consultant. During the same time period he played poker, golf, and any game you could gamble on. A few lapses in judgment, described in the book Ace-Deuce, led to his becoming an author rather than a player."
None of that is in the book! Not a peep about working in a casino, and nothing about the cooler. So John, if you're out there you should write a second book. I know you have the material. If you are like me, and you like the tales of the old crossroad gamblers, pick up Ace - Deuce: The Life and Times of a Gambling Man. You won't be disappointed.