McCormick messenger. (McCormick, S.C.) 1902-current, June 03, 1937, Image 3
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McCORMICK MESSENGER, McCORMICK, S. C.. THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 1937
GAMBUNG ODDS ARE AGAINST YOU
* * V _______________
You Get the Short End When You Woo Lady Luck, WTiether You Play
Poker, Bridge, Roulette, Dice or Horses.
By WILLIAM C. UTLEY
EADS or tails, what’ll you take?
»
There can’t be a
man or woman in America who hasn’t been asked
that question at least once. And there are mighty
few who will refuse to choose one or the other, in an attempt to
decide whether to go to the movies or the dance, or to determine
who. gets the extra pork chop on the platter.
It’s probably the simplest mani- <$>
testation of the inclination to gam
ble that seems to be born in most
of us. The toss of a coin looks
fair enough, but even on a “fifty-
fifty” break such as that you can’t
be sure that in a given number of
tosses, say 100, half the tosses will
be “heads” and half “tails.”
In all games of chance the prob
ability of winning is against the
player, even if he can be sure the
game is “on the level.” Yet man
has gambled from time immemo
rial. It makes little difference wheth
er his purpose was to relieve the
monotony of everyday existence or
to get something for nothing; he has
always been willing to take a
chance.
Gambling was popular, even fa
mous, in ancient Babylonia, China
and India many centuries before
the birth of Christ. History tells us
many tales of games of chance
among the Greeks and Romans.
Germans gambled in the first cen
tury of the Christian era.
Monte Carlo “Wide Open.”
Hundreds of years ago gambling
was recognized as a menace to so
ciety. In England the first law
against it was enacted in 1661. In
1698 lotteries were made illegal;
gambling was further curtailed by
acts of Parliament in 1845, 1853 and
1906. In 1838 France suppressed
gaming tables, and in 1872 Germany
closed gambling resorts, even the
world-famed ones at Baden-Baden
and Hamburg. Belgium clamped
down on gambling in 1902, and to
day the only spot in Europe where
the resorts “run wide open” is at
Monte Carlo, in the tiny principality
of Monaco.
Roulette wheels, gaming houses,
faro, “policy” rackets, bookmaking
lotteries and wheels of fortune are
pretty generally forbidden in civil
ized countries today. The laws of
the different countries vary, how
ever, as do even the laws among
the states of the United States.
Inside or outside the law, gam
bling flourishes in every section of
the country. Thousands upon thou
sands daily visit the race tracks.
Throngs invest in tickets on the
Irish sweepstakes. Crap games are
going on in big city alleys and in
the back rooms of stores. Apart
ment kitchens have their Saturday
night poker parties. Ladies gamble
at bridge in the afternoon.
Outside the Law.
It is impossible to say exactly or
even approximately, how big the
gambling industry is in the United
States, for most of it is conducted
outside the law, just as saloons were
conducted during the prohibitioh
era. But a few representative fig
ures are at hand to show that the
total must be an enormous one.
In the twenty-two states where
Nevada; slot machines, no matter
whether they operate on pennies,
nickels, dimes, quarters or half-dol
lars, are licensed for $30 a quarter.
Last year Reno gambling houses
paid taxes of $94,245.12. Of this the
city received $38,424.08, the state
and county $52,232.76, and the mu
nicipality of Sparks, three miles dis
tant, $3,588.30.
Gamblers fall into three main
types. There is, first of all, the
the first throw. But if “seven-elev
en” is missed, repetition of the first
throw is unlikely, and the seven is
now working against the player and
the net effect is against him.
Even chess, generally accepted as
the most intellectual of all games,
depends upon chance, says Prof.
Von Neumann. He points out that
“white,” which has the first move,
can always win, although if “black”
is wise to the theory, he can play
defensively and tie “white.”
In poker the chances are one in
300,000 to obtain any certain com
bination of five cards. Chance is
also introduced in this type of game
by the action of the opponent, and
intellectual reasoning is sometimes
needed. There is little chance of
improving the original hand in pok
er, so the most logical places for
the exercise of skill are in making
y.y .y. .
A Reno Gambling House Going Full Swing.
superstitious gambler. He believes
implicitly that Luck is a sort of
supernatural power, a god that can
decide his fate. He woos luck by
talking to his dice, or by carrying
a rabbit’s foot in his pocket. He
seldom thinks about the mathemat
ical possibilities of winning or los
ing; if he wins, Lady Luck is with
him; if he loses, he is suffering a
“jinx.”
Another type is the seeker after
thrills. Usually this is a person of
some means. It is largely this type
which frequents the fashionable
gambling houses of Palm Beach, or
those in the large cities where the
turnover may be half a million
dollars a week for a single “club.”
Craps Not Fair.
The third classification embraces
the professionals. They make their
living at gambling, and they know
the ropes. Usually they are figures
on the fringe of the underworld, and
not infrequently they become mixed
up in scrapes which have only a
minor relation to their gambling ac
tivities. The professional, more like
ly than not, is fully capable of cheat
ing with marked cards, loaded dice
and other implements beyond the
palo, and will do so if he thinks
HUMIDOR COUNTER MAGNET
T HE illustration shows the eutfit
As you receive it end to operate
the humidor, it to aupplied with
chain*' at each end. which allow it
to hang in full view of customerr
in the cigar case. The hatteriee are
concealed in any convenient loca
tion. Connection* between batter re*
and humidor cannot b# *een when
installed^ according to simple in
structions that accompany each or
der A space eight Inches square
at each end is under the operator - *
control. In appearance this magnet
acmble* any ordinary cig*r coun
humidor.
No. 622. Humidor Counter Mag
net. with switch. 4 Hot Shots. JO
feet of connecting wire, instrue-
ind 5 White Dice. Com-
lions ar
plcte ...........
.$50.00
Title p a g e f r om a catalog of a manufacturer of gambling parapher
nalia illustrates one of the reasons why the odds are against you.
betting on the races is conducted
with the use of pari-mutuel ma
chines there has been $224,000 000
wagered in a single year; this does
not include the five tracks m New
York state, where the “take is
enormous. . ,
Four Irish Sweepstakes drew
about $19,500,000 in American mon
ey, for which the Yanks received
in return some $11,500,000 in prize
money. In England the wagering
on sweepstakes, horses, greyhounds,
pools and the like totals m0 J e ,A ha "
$25,000,000 a year; Scotland Yard
and the British Home Office are
helping the churches to fight them.
Types of Gamblers.
Probably the most wide-open town
in the United States is Reno, Ne
vada, where state, city and county
realize a sizable revenue in taxes
upon the gambling houses. The lat
ter live off the idle hours and loose
purses of the hundreds who
to Reno to live for a few weeks that
they may obtain divorces; most o
such persons are pretty well to do,
and fond of gambling.
All banking games—faro, roulette,
«tc.—are taxed $165 a quarter m
he can get away with it. He sel
dom dies a natural death.
Whatever class to which a gam
bler belongs, he will sooner or later
make a bad risk in the anticipation
of feeling the emotional stimulation
of seeing a “long shot” come in.
He knows there is such a thing as
“loaded” dice, but thinks he is too
smart to be fooled with them. What
he forgets is that dice are mathe
matically loaded against him, even
if they are perfect dice.
Prof. John Von Neumann, mathe
matician of the Institute for Ad
vanced Study at Princeton, warns
students in his lectures that it is
impossible to win over a long period
in a crap game. The magic “seven-
eleven” combination is by far the
most frequent throw, he says, but
if it doesn’t turn up on the first cast
the chances are reversed. “That
leaves a .490 winning average, so
the game is not fair,” he explains.
In dice explicit hazards are in
troduced by the rules. Seven can
be thrown in six ways and 11 in
two, while 2, 3 and 12 result from
only one or two combinations. The
conditions are favorable to win on
the discards, and in deciding wheth
er or not opponents are “bluffing”
in their bets.
Poker and Bridge Chances.
Here are some of the most sougnt-
after hands in poker*
and the pos-
sibilities of their being obtained.
One pair
1-1
Two pairs
1-21
Three of a kind
1-47
Flush
1-509
Full house
1-694
Four of a kind
1-4,lev
Straight flush
1-72,193
Royal flush
1-649,739
In a game of bridge there are
635,013,559,600 possible combina
tions of hands. You have four
chances out of that many of getting
a “perfect” hand—thirteen of one
suit. Here are the chances on some
other distributions:
12-1 2,028 hands
11-2 • 73,008 hands
11-1-1 158,184 hands
After your cards have been ob
tained there is still the element of
chance that those your partner
holds will not “go well” with them.
In gambling houses it is healthy
to remember that the odds are al
ways in favor of the house. If it
were not they could not afford to
stay in business very long. As it
is, they make a profit and pay enor
mous taxes or, if they are operat
ing illegally, they are forced to
“kick in” handsomely to the “syn
dicate” or gang which usually op
erates them as units in a chain, or
to politicians and police for “pro
tection.”
Roulette furnishes a good example
of the manner in which the bank
always enjoys an advantage over
the player. Suppose a wager is
made on any part of the board, ex
cept on a given number, and the
zero appears. The player is re
quired to give up half his stake or
let the wager stand for the next
play. The zero pays everything for
the house at Monte Carlo, if all the
wheels are in operation.
4,000,000 Sweepstakes Tickets.
Authorities consider lotteries or
sweepstakes, if they are conducted
honestly, as the fairest of all forms
of gambling. The losing player need
part with no more than the original
sum he invested. But the chances
of winning are mighty slim, because
there are usually millions of tickets
sold in the big lotteries.
In the Irish Sweepstakes, for in
stance, more than 4,000,000 tickets
are usually sold. For each ticket
held, the purchaser has one chance
in 133,333 to win one of the grand
prizes—$150,000, $75,000, or $50,000;
one chance in 6,667 to win a sec
ondary prize of $3,500, and one
chance in 4,000 to win a small prize
of $500.
The most vicious of all gambling
rackets is the “numbers” game
which flourishes in many of the big
cities, despite the honest efforts of
the law to stamp it out. In some
of these games the chance of win
ning is as small as one in 1 billion.
Slot machines may actually be set
so that the house takes in 80 per
cent of all the money played, and
they frequently are. Few slot ma
chines pay the house as little as 60
per cent.
In addition, the games in gam
bling houses are not always honest,
as has been proved in raid after
raid. It’s well to keep in mind that
the gambler’s rule since gambling
was invented has been: “Never giv«
a sucker an even break.”
© Western Newspaper Union.
UNCOMMON
AMERICANS
By Elmo
Scott Watson
© Western
Newspaper
Union
Earliest Rebel
IN FRONT of the statehouse in
^ Boston stands the statue of a
woman, with a Bible in her hand and
a child snuggled against her. The in
scription on the monument tells you
that this woman was a “Courageous
Exponent of Civil Liberty and Reli
gious Tolerance.” But 300 years ago
Massachusetts wasn’t calling her by
any such complimentary names. In
the year 1637 she was “that proud
dame, that Athaliah,” a “notorious
Imposter,” a “dayngerous Instru
ment of the Devell raysed up by
Sathan” and a “Breeder of Her
esies.” For she was Anne Hutchin
son, the earliest rebel in this coun
try.
She became a leader of a group
of people who fell under the dis
pleasure of the stern Puritans of
Massachusetts Bay colony. Because
these people held meetings in her
house to discuss and criticize the
sermons of the Puritan ministers,
they finally placed her on trial for
heresy, a trial that has been com
pared to that of Joan of Arc at
Rouen.
Under their questioning, she
proved herself more than a match
for her prosecutors. But just at the
moment when it seemed that she
had defeated her accusers, she burst
forth into a long speech describing
God’s revelations to her. Thus she
convicted herself and her penalty
was banishment from the colony.
But Anne Hutchinson was more
than the first defender of religious
freedom in America. She was our
earliest feminist. The meetings held
in her house, although primarily
for religious discussion, were the
forerunners of thousands of meet
ings since her day, wherever women
gather together to improve them
selves or the rest of the world. So
her house became the “birthplace
of the women’s clubs of America”
After her banishment from Mas
sachusetts Bay colony she went to
that haven of religious freedom, the
colony of Rhode Island, founded by
Roger Williams. There she lived un
til 1642 when, left a widow, she
took her brood of children (she
had borne 14) to the Dutch colony
of New York where later she and
all of her children were killed.
But she had not lived in vain for
“civil liberty and religious tolera
tion, the principles for which she
suffered exile and death are written
into the Constitution of the United
States.”
The Nation’s Jester
H E WAS baptized as Charles
Farrar Browne but the whole
nation once loved him and laughed
with him under the name of Arte-
mus Ward. Born in Maine in 1834,
Browne served an apprenticeship in
a print shop and then became a
journeyman printer. Finally he
wandered to Cleveland, Ohio, where
he became a local reporter for the
Cleveland Plain Dealer and invented
the character of “Artemus Ward,”
supposed to be a traveling show
man, writing to the paper to give
information and to ask for it. Read
ers of that paper roared over “Art-
emus Ward’s” bad spelling and
humorous descriptions of his ad
ventures and it was not long until
Browne got a call from New York
to become editor of Vanity Fair,
a comic paper.
But this editorship did not last
long for the wandering foot of the
former journeyman printer soon be
gan to assert itself. He published
“Artemus Ward, His Book” which
had a phenomenal sale. Then he
took to the lecture platform and
“Artemus Ward,” until now a ficti
tious character, became a living
reality to thousands of Americans.
One of Ward’s devoted readers
was President Lincoln and his book
played a role in an historic scene
at the White House during the Civil
war. In September, 1862, Lincoln
called a meeting of his cabinet
members whom he astonished by
reading excerpts from Ward’s book.
When they failed to join in his
laughter, Lincoln threw down the
book and said“Gentlemen, why don’t
you laugh? With the fearful strain
that is upon me night and day, if
I didn’t laugh, I should die and you
need the medicine as much as I do.”
He then told them the real pur
pose of the meeting which was to
read to them a paper he had pre
pared and which he proposed to
issue when the time was ripe. That
paper was the Emancipation Proc
lamation. When he had finished
reading it. Secretary Stanton ex
claimed “Mr. President, if reading
chapters of Artemus Ward is a pre
lude to such a deed as this, the book
should be filed among the archives
of the nation, and the author can
onized.”
The author was never canonized
but before he died in 1867, Artemus
Ward had not only become Ameri
ca’s favorite jester but he had won
fame as a humorist in England such
as no other American before him
had ever known.
AROUND
the HOUSE
Items of Interest
to the Housewife
Season Lightly — Be .careful
when doubling a recipe not to
double the seasoning. Use it spar
ingly at first, then add more if
needed.
* • e
Eggs in Potatoes—Bake pota
toes. Cut off tops, scoop out cen
ters and season with butter, salt
and a little pepper, mashing thor
oughly. Half fill shells with pota
to mixture and drop a raw egg,
salt, pepper, a little grated cheese
and one teaspoon butter in each.
Put back in hot oven for four
minutes to set egg.
• • •
Eliminating Food Odors — A
small quantity of charcoal in a
container on the top shelf will help
eliminate food odors from the re
frigerator.
• * •
Hole in Tablecloth—If a small
hole is burnt or worn in an other
wise good white tablecloth, it can
be “mended” most effectively by
stitching a motif in fine crochet
over it and cutting away the
spoiled fabric underneath. Add
one or two more motifs so that the
necessary one does not look odd.
This is certainly more decorative
than an obvious darn!
* * *
Keeps Cauliflower White—A ta
blespoon of sugar in the water in
which cauliflower is cooked will
keep it white.
* * •
Glazing Liquid for Cookies—A
mixture of two tablespoons of sug
ar and one-fourth cup of milk
makes a good glazing liquid for
cookies. Apply on the surface of
the dough with a pastry brush be
fore baking the cookies.
* • •
Rhubarb and Figs — To one
pound rhubarb, after peeling and
cutting, add half pound good figs,
cut into smallish pieces. Place in
Messages by Kite
The Chinese are much given to
ihe pastime of kite flying and
some of the constructions are
marvelous to behold. The Chinese
kites often have two strings and
these enable the operator to make
the kite do some wonderful things.
It becomes an aerial messenger,
as it is possible to make the kite
form letters and characters by
which messages may be ex
changed.
a saucepan with a very little wa
ter and about a dessertspoon gold
en syrup or sugar and gently stew
till tender. Serve with a rice or
sago mold or hot milk pudding.
• * *
Shaping Knitting Needle—Before
using a circular knitting needle,
immerse it in hot water for a few
minutes to make ft pliable. Be
fore it cools, and hardens, hold it
in knitting position, and make any
desired adjustments such as
straightening the ends. This dis
penses with a long breaking-in pe
riod.
• * •
Unwrap Food—Food should not
be stored in the refrigerator while
wrapped in paper because the pa
per prevents the cold air from
circulating freely over it.
• • •
To Keep Frosting From Run
ning—A half teaspoonful of bak
ing soda added to boiling frosting
will keep it from running.
WNU Service.
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Pleasure of Life
Take away affection and good
will and all the pleasure is taken
away from life.—Cicero.
KEEPj
§9
'WITH
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Source of Pleasure
Pleasure is the reflex of unim
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Danger in Words ‘
Wise men say nothing in daiv
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CHEW LONG BILL NAVY TOBACCO
LIFE’S LIKE THAT
By Fred Neher
WU.L-YUM
(Copyright 1*37. by Fr«d Neherf
gr* &
“Mom said to run up and see how old Mrs. Krutz was, and she
said it was none of Mom’s business how old she is!”
-H
ti