I used to enjoy gambling. Poker, craps, sports betting, the horses - I played them all. You'll notice I didn't say I was a good gambler. The sad fact is that I lost a lot more money than I won.
There was a group of us who hung out at a tavern on Lincoln Avenue near Dickens Street and we liked to shoot craps. The group consisted of my good friend Bruce, Dino, Wayne, Carlos, Mike the Drag, Brooks, Dirty George, Roy, Irwin, and Pope Carl, a truly devout man who muttered a prayer every time he tossed the dice.
Hail Mary, full of grace, first the six and then the ace.
Once or twice a week, after a few hours of social drinking, we'd all head out to the gangway behind the bar and get a crap game going. I remember one time when Wayne made seven straight passes. What are the odds of that happening?
One idiot, we'll call him Milo to save him any embarrassment, bet against Wayne every time. When Wayne made the seventh pass, busting Milo in the process, Milo angrily hurled his beer bottle across the alley. Living across the alley at the time was the great film critic Roger Ebert. The bottle landed on Ebert's deck and shattered noisily. It may have even broken a window. We didn't stick around to find out.
We also used to have some hellacious all-night poker games. Except for Bruce, it was a different cast of characters than the crapshooting crowd. There were three or four attorneys, Pat the Math Professor, Joe, who preferred to be called Monte when he played poker, and Bruce's Uncle Morrie, who was in his 80s at the time and recently passed away at the biblical age of 101.
The attorneys were a pain in the ass. Whenever a question of rules or procedure came up, each attorney had to have his say, interrupting the game for ten minutes at a time. The attorneys argued, brought up precedent, cross-examined, rebutted, and made closing arguments. I'm surprised they didn't try to call witnesses. I suspect that the copious amounts of booze and reefer might also have had something to do with the lengthy delays. To this day I refuse to play in a poker game that includes more than two lawyers.
Pat the Math Professor was a degenerate gambler. He played in as many as five poker games a week. He claimed it was his wife's fault. He hated her and she despised him. He said the only reason he played so much poker was that he couldn't stand being around his wife.
"I don't even know why I gamble," he once told the table. "I've got the worst luck in the world. I fucked my wife twice in 10 years and she got pregnant both times. What are the odds of that happening?"
The attorneys immediately began debating the odds.
My favorite gambling activity, however, was betting on thoroughbred race horses. Bruce and I and our friend Dino spent a lot of time at the local ovals, Arlington Park, Hawthorne and Sportsman's. Bruce would usually drive. He always drove clunkers that would be eyesores at demolition derbies. I doubt he ever paid more than $200 for one of his rust buckets. Still, somehow those cars always got us to the track. Getting back was another matter.
"Damn, Bruce, you got any gas in this thing?
"Plenty of gas, my man."
"Looks like it's on empty to me."
"Don't worry about it. The gauge is just fucked up."
(The car finally starts on the eighth or ninth try.)
"What's that rattle? It doesn't sound good."
"Nothing to worry about. It always does that."
"Jesus fucking Christ! What was that?"
"Backfire, I think."
"You oil light is on."
"Fuck it. Pass me the joint."
My luck wasn't much better at the track than in my other gambling ventures. But every once on a while I'd get hot and win a few hundred dollars. That's the thing about gamblers. They tend to forget their losses fairly quickly but they remember their wins forever.
I recall one day at the track vividly. Both Bruce and I won a decent amount of money and were heading back to the city to celebrate. Bruce's dog, Rocky, was in the car with us. We were on the Eisenhower, a few miles from downtown, when there was a loud explosion and smoke began billowing from under the hood of his clunker. I looked back and saw that most of the engine was scattered across across the highway behind us. Bruce managed to wrestle the car to the side of the road. Acting quickly, Bruce grabbed all of his documentation out of the glove compartment, then went to the back of the car and tore off the license plate. We abandoned the car to the mercy of the towing companies and wreckers and started walking toward the exit ramp. We walked about 25 yards when a cab pulled up. The driver rolled down his window and said, "You boys look like you need a ride. The dog does, too."
Later, in a bar on Lincoln Avenue, I said to Bruce, "Good thing that cab came along."
"Yeah," he replied. "What are the odds of that happening?"
Want more gambling literature from the fecund pen of Milo Samardzija? Buy his book, "Schoolboy," right now. Hurry, you fool!
