Excerpts
Maybe Tim knew it was going to be like this. I had no idea it would get this personal. But then, I’d never even seen what a hundred dollar bill looked like before I went to college.
I stood in the security room with my arms crossed staring up at a wall filled with 50 flat-screened monitors. My eyes honed like lasers on Mr. Royalty’s table. The security director, Randy, could maneuver the cameras so that Ed and I could see the action from four angles on different screens. No way could there be any funny business. Our cameras could zoom in and read the time off Mr. Royalty’s watch.
Johnny D., our Vice President of Marketing, went to watch the monitors in his office. I didn’t know where Tim was. But I knew he was watching. Not only were there monitors in his office, he’d had them installed in his home.
Maybe it was better that we were in different places. When we were side by side in front of the screens when a player like Mr. Royalty was winning, the tension crackled between us.
Craps can look a little complicated if you’re approaching the table for the first time – especially if there are twenty people around it screaming their lungs out. But the game was stripped down at Mr. Royalty’s table. He was the only one rolling.
The rules are fairly simple. If Mr. Royalty bets the pass line and his first roll of the two dice totals 7 or 11, he’s a winner. There’s only a 22 percent chance of that happening.
If Mr. Royalty’s first roll totals a 2, 3 or 12, then we take Mr. Royalty’s money. That will do him in 11 percent of the time.
If Mr. Royalty’s first roll is 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 or 10, then that number will be Mr. Royalty’s point. He’ll have to roll his point again before he rolls a 7 in order to win. If he rolls a 7 before he rolls his point, he loses.
After Mr. Royalty makes a point, the odds are only slightly in our favor that he won’t make his number: 51.3 percent. But once he begins to roll, the odds climb in our favor.
- 67 percent of the time, he’ll roll a 7 and lose before rolling another 4.
- 60 percent of the time, he’ll roll a 7 and lose before rolling another 5.
- 54 percent of the time, he’ll roll a 7 and lose before rolling another 6.
- 54 percent of the time, he’ll roll a 7 and lose before rolling another 8.
- 60 percent, he’ll roll a 7 and lose before rolling another 9.
- 67 percent, he’ll roll a 7 and lose before rolling another 10.
There are plenty of ways to bet. The roller can have up to a dozen bets going at one time. But the more he picks up the dice, the more the odds grind against him. Eventually, he’ll be crushed.
Mr. Royalty scooped up the dice and shook them as if he could confuse them into forgetting that fact.
You know the feeling you get when a fighter you’ve bet on gets knocked down ten seconds into the fight? That ominous feeling? That the fates are against you, that the fight is already over before it even started?
Well then, you know the tension that spread through my gut when Mr. Royalty made his first point. He pumped his fists, and his entourage pumped with him. Then he reached out, swept in his winnings and pushed out his bets. Right from the start, he was betting on himself in almost every possible way.
Mr. Royalty won his second roll, the third and the fourth. A mountain of chips began to rise in front of his belly. He reached for the dice and won again.
I looked down at the floor. When you’re in a fight, it’s no good to look down.
“Call Johnny D,” I said to Randy. “See how much he’s winning.”