guys didn’t like the bar twelve, so we took it out. We made millions of dollars year after year dealing the game just like that.”
The heart of the game was the “boxes,” which displayed the point numbers 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10. You could “place” or “lay” the numbers at any time and this is where most of the action was. Here, too, the deal was better for the player than in standard casino craps. For example, laying against the numbers in a legal casino yields a casino edge of between 2.4% and 4%, while in New York craps, the edges ranged between 1.64% and 2.44%. Why play in Vegas?
Another variation was that hardway bets were only good for one roll. A one-roll hardway, known as a “hop,” carries ahigher house edge than a standard hardway. And since the outcome is determined in a single roll, this policy induced the gamblers to make more bets at a higher vig, thus earning the house more profit.
But other than hardway hops, the odds in New York craps were better for the players. They had to be, because of the general level of sophistication and mathematical competence of their customers. The mob’s crap customers weren’t dummies.
And the games were generally clean. Andrew knows of instances where a dealer switched in gaffed dice, but that was rare. Math and human nature were enough to get the money at dice and there was a certain reverence for craps that didn’t exist for cards and other games.
“These players wanted to shoot craps,” Andrew says. “They didn’t play blackjack or poker on the side. They were there to bet on dice the way they had all their lives, so for the most part, we had to keep the games pure.”
The dealers came from everywhere and the talent pool was surprisingly rich. Some had dealt craps in the legal casinos of Atlantic City or Vegas, but most had simply grown up around the game and could deal it in their sleep.
If a player tapped out and needed money to get back in the game, no problem. The operator was responsible for having a shylock on site to make loans. Call it the Gambinos’ version of today’s ATM machines.
Interestingly, booze was never available during the game. A lunch was served before play started and a waitress was on hand to deliver beverages, but it was strictly non-alcoholic.
The daughter of a man who owned one of the buildings the Gambinos rented to run their games became a federal prosecutor years later. In an ironic side note, she vigorously went after the very men whose money her father probably used to put her through law school.
CARDS
Another good money maker for the Gambinos was running card games. Card gatherings were different from craps. These games targeted outsiders and how they got the money was less of an issue than simply getting it.
In poker, the house made its profit the traditional way, by raking the pot. They took 5% of the money bet on every hand and the earn from just one big-money game could reach several thousand dollars.
Although raking a percentage from poker didn’t involve cheating, blackjack was a different story. Blackjack games were much more like what you might expect (fear) from mob-run gambling. The games were dealt from 4- or 6-deck shoes and employed Vegas rules for the most part. But the rules didn’t really matter—the shoes the Gambino operators used to deal their blackjack games weren’t designed with the players’ best interests in mind.
One was called a “mirrored shoe.” As the name implies, this gizmo allowed the dealer to see what cards were about to be dealt before they came out, knowledge that was clearly beneficial to a master card manipulator.
The “tap 5” shoe was a man-made miracle for a dealer prone to getting the dreaded 16 hand on the deal. It could also be the death knell for a player who’d doubled down. A simple tap on the shoe automatically caused a 5 to appear as the next card. Players with a 19 or 20, or those who’d doubled or split pairs based on the dealer having a 6 up,
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