Read Online Hef's Little Black Book by Hugh M. Hefner - Free Book Online

that the orange properties are the most valuable. You can’t win with the Baltic and the Mediterranean; you can with most of the others. But it’s the orange that is most valuable—it’s a middle ground between the high-priced Boardwalk and the lower-priced properties. Mathematically, orange will usually prevail.

    Monopoly, like Hef, was created during the Depression to give Americans big dreams to ponder, dreams that weren’t yet exactly within one’s grasp—kind of like the Life Philosophy that imbued him. Naturally, he played this game with insight. He also played it maniacally—the forty-hour marathons (Pepsi, Dexie, Pepsi, Dexie, Pepsi, Dexie, you get the picture) that would later be replaced only by forty-hour backgammon marathons.
    Monopoly, though: cartoon capitalism and dice and play money, with play money whose bills bore his likeness where Mr. Monopoly’s face used to be, with pictures of both Mansions emblazoned on the back, eventually with even an Atlantic City Playboy Casino Hotel figurine to place on the Boardwalk (like in life, in that very moment)—a personal personalized game for the Luckiest Monopolist of One Culture’s Craziest Yearnings. This was the official game of the Chicago Mansion, circa early seventies, with blonde, buxom Special Lady on the side, Karen Christy, presiding. She surprised him with game tokens molded and hand-painted to represent the core players—as seen here, from left—longtime friend John Dante, secretary Bobbie Arnstein, Karen herself, Hef himself, poet/artist/contributor in residence Shel Silverstein, and fledging Chicago Tribune film critic Gene Siskel, whom Hef persuaded during one such faux real estate contest into becoming a film critic rather than just one more beat reporter; they shared a love of film, it turned out—who knew?
    He moved the game west eventually—it was the one game that allowed him pause for conversation, which he enjoyed—and after Karen had gone, and Barbi, too, new likenesses were molded for Californians in the mix, includingone for new Special Lady Sondra Theodore, who saw her man differently during these matches: “He was great with games and fun with games. That’s when his personality really came out. The tension of real life flew out of him. He relaxed. Those were the times I found that I wanted to reach out and hug him, because he’s just so wonderful and witty and funny and loving—and it all came out when you sat down and played a game with Hef.”

    T he Tao of Backgammon and
Its Cunning Secrets
    Of all the games we play, the one I most enjoy and that I’m best at is backgammon. It’s a natural game for me and I was fortunate enough to learn from world-class players. It’s all a combination of skill and luck. But more than anything, it is a running and blocking game.
    And understanding the blocking portion of it is the most sophisticated form of strategy. Many players get their pieces out of play by moving them around and into their own home prematurely. The key is blocking. Of course, the other half of the game is the cube. The cube is the betting device, which makes the game particularly exciting. Knowing when to accept—or give—a double is really as important as the game itself.

    There would be no meaningful conversation during backgammon—just fine, acrid, sparkling bluster. With this pursuit, his mind was buried deep into the argyle board, into the game, like with Pacman but without the bloop sounds. He loved the utter gentlemanly brutality of it: brain matter aswirl, hands flying, neurons snapping, and yet the constant movement, of fingers and of ego, the unending back-and-forth brag, of studious guesswork. Barbi, who had the sweetest noggin to date, who was damned good at it, who had tourneys named for her, claimed they discovered the game maybe in Africa, on the big tour of the world? “Actually,” she said, “Hef was responsible for bringing backgammon to this country.” He, of course, had been puzzling