Casino Cheater's Blog

Richard Marcus claims to have been a professional casino cheat, scamming his way to wins at roulette tables in Las Vegas and other gambling venues. He's written a book about his exploits, American Roulette, and he promotes it through his weblog.

The narrative of such books tends to be about how the glamorous Byronic heroes, acting illicitly and perhaps illegally, beat both the games and the casino heat to take money from the soulless and exploitive casinos. Some of my best friends have run blackjack card-counting teams.

The stated purpose of Marcus' blog is to tell stories that had to be cut from the book for space reasons, and to keep tabs on the goings-on in the world of casino cheating. Promotion of the book is also a big motivation, as I've said.

I have glanced at the blog, not having seen his book, and while Marcus may seem to be a bit full of himself, his stories ring true, consistent with what other people with similar experiences have told me.

(via boingboing)

Bank Robber Apprehended at the Oaks Club

Larry Thomas, casino manager for the Oaks Club, was reading the news last week when a story caught his eye: a bank robber believed responsible for a rash of eight robberies in Northern California had had his picture taken by a bank's surveillance cameras. The robber wore a distinctive black Oakland Athletics baseball cap.

One of the essential skills of a casino manager is to recognize customers, old and new alike. Larry recognized the person in the bank photo as a player at the Oaks Club, one who had been playing $2-$4 and $3-$6 hold'em, but recently made the move up into the $15-$30 game.

Larry checked the video monitor of the camera covering Table 18. Yes, there he was, the same guy, wearing the same black A's cap. Larry called the Emeryville Police Department. The cops arrived, cuffed the suspect, and took him away. local television station KTVU identifies him as Tommy Joe Neal, arrested for a parole violation and wanted in connection with eight recent bank robberies.

Turns out, I've played with the guy. Not a very good player; took too many chances.

(via Spencer Sun)

Tabish & Murphy Acquitted in Binion Murder Case

The New York Times reports that Rick Tabish and Sandy Murphy were found not guilty of murdering Ted Binion in their second trial.

In Jim McManus's book Positively Fifth Street, Tabish and Murphy's first trial was the counterpoint to his first-person account of playing in the championship event at the 2000 World Series of Poker and making the final table. Tabish and Murphy were convicted of murder in that trial, but the Nevada State Supreme Court overturned the conviction.

Tabish and Murphy beat the murder charges, but they were convicted on three other charges: burglary, grand larceny, and conspiracy to commit burglary.

Court TV has more details.

(via TalkLeft)

Essay Question on Video-Game Violence

Fafnir may have put his finger on what's behind Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)'s concern about box-turtle miscegenation: Is Super Mario Brothers responsible for the recent escalation of plumber-on-turtle violence in America? Plumber-on-mushroom violence? Discuss.

(Aside: Does Fafnir have fingers?)

Inherit the Whirlwind

Have you ever wondered precisely why Biblical literalism is important to so many Americans, precisely why is it important to them to get the teaching of evolution out of the biology textbooks?

Bill Gibson has the answer:

Re Creationism, I must point out an unfortunate subtext that's no longer quite so obvious. Having grown up in the previous iteration of the rural American south, I know that what *really* smarted about Darwin, down there, was the logical implication that blacks and whites are descended from a common ancestor. Butt-ugly, but there it is. That was the first objection to evolutionary theory that I ever heard, and it was a very common one, in fact the most common. That it was counter to Genesis seemed merely convenient, in the face of an anthropoid grand-uncle in the woodpile. [Emphasis added – ALB]

Mr. Jones Wishes He Were the Lawyer of Someone Just a Little More Funky

I wish I were Bob Dylan's lawyer. Right now I could be racking up the billable hours by writing up the cease-and-desist letters – a separate letter for each offender, mind you – demanding that each and every newspaper, TV and radio station, wire service, and blogger who have quoted the final verse to his song "Masters of War" without paying the licensing fee. Writing up all those letters would take hours and hours and hours, and I could then present Dylan with a hefty bill for my services.

Here's the story: A group of students in Boulder, Colorado, put together a band for a high-school talent show. They call themselves the Coalition of the Willing, and the song they intend to play in this show is "Masters of War". The last verse of the song expresses the singers wish that the unnamed and unidentified masters of war were dead, and the singer's intention to follow the masters' casket to the grave to be sure of it.

Some other students heard the band rehearsing, and were upset by this. Someone complained to a (presumably right-wing) radio talk show about the band's rehearsing a song that finished with a death-threat to President Bush.

Enter the Secret Service, whose solemn duty it is to investigate every known presidential death threat. SS officers appeared at the school to find out more. A teacher gave them a copy of the song lyrics, and the officers went home.

Now the story of how the SS is investigating high school students who sing protest songs is all over the Web, and most every version of the story quotes the last verse of Dylan's song.

The scary thing here is not that the SS investigated – it's the SS's job to investigate identified threats to the President – but that someone thought that calling in the heavy artillery was an appropriate thing to do in the first place. That's what the civil libertarians refer to as a "chilling effect": wingnuts' provoking over-the-top official responses to dissent is intended to harass dissenters ... and give them investigation (if not actual arrest) records.

What's next? Are the wingers going to sic ASCAP on the bloggers who report this story and quote Dylan?

The Watch on the Rhine

Quoth Brad DeLong:

It is now 59 years and 9 months since an army crossed the Rhine River bearing fire and sword. This is the longest period of peace on the Rhine since the second century B.C.E., before the Cimbri and the Teutones appeared to challenge the armies of the consul Gaius Marius in the Rhone Valley.

For all that's going wrong in the world, it's good to know that something has gone right.

Eyewitness in Fallujah

The BBC has published a report from Fadhil Badrani, their stringer in Fallujah:

A row of palm trees used to run along the street outside my house - now only the trunks are left. The upper half of each tree has vanished, blown away by mortar fire. From my window, I can also make out that the minarets of several mosques have been toppled. There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable....

I tried to flee the city last night but I could not get very far. It was too dangerous....

It is hard to know how much people outside Falluja are aware of what is going on here. I want them to know about conditions inside this city - there are dead women and children lying on the streets. People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens.

(via Scratchings)

Off the Bus

Included in SF Gate's New Flicks newsletter today is this little squib:

Go Further

In this documentary, actor Woody Harrelson pilots a hemp- fueled bus down the Pacific Coast Highway to raise eco-consciousness. Directed by Ron Mann. Not rated. 80 minutes.

Oh, puh-LEASE.... It sure sounds like someone wants to be Ken Kesey when he grows up (if doing so can be called "growing up," which is open to discussion).

Unable to resist, I checked out Walter Addiego's review:

Actor Woody Harrelson is in his full activist mode in this low-key and loose documentary about the bike-and-bus tour he led in 2001 to extol the virtues of simple, organic living. Accompanied by a brightly painted support bus running on hemp-derived fuel, Harrelson and friends cycled from Seattle to Southern California, stopping at college campuses and other friendly venues to spread the word that individuals can change the world by being kind to the environment....

The carnival atmosphere of the whole affair isn't surprising, since Harrelson and company were inspired by the adventures of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and early in the movie visit the grand old man of the counterculture at his Oregon farm. (Kesey died several months after the filming.) The visitors even get to see the original bus used by the Pranksters for their psychedelic-laced wanderings.

I am reminded of nothing so much as Marie Antoinette and her ladies-in-waiting going off to their country cottage to pretend to be milkmaids.

This Age Wanted Heroes

Shut up. Listen. There is something calling, Paulinka. If you still retain a shred of decency you can hear it – it's a dim terrible voice that's calling – a bass howl, like a cow in a slaughterhouse, but far, far off... It is calling us to action, calling us to stand against the calamity, to spare nothing, not our blood, nor our happiness, nor our lives in the struggle to stop the dreadful day that's burning now in oil flames on the horizon. What makes the voice pathetic is that it doesn't know what kind of people it's reaching. Us. No one hears it, except us. This Age wanted heroes. It got us instead: carefully constructed, but immobile. Subtle, but unfit to take up the burden of the times. It happens. A whole generation of washouts. History says stand up, and we totter and collapse, weeping, moved, but not sufficient. The best of us, lacking. The most decent, not decent enough. The kindest, too cruel, the most loving too full of hate, the wisest, too stupid, the fittest unfit to take up the burden of the times. The Enemy has a voice like seven thunders. What chance did that dim voice ever have? Marvel that anyone heard it instead of wondering why nobody did anything, marvel that we heard it, we who have no right to hear it – NO RIGHT! And it would be a mercy not to. But mercy ... is a thing ... no one remembers its face anymore. The best would be that time would stop right now, in this middling moment of awfulness, before the very worst arrives. We'd all be spared more than telling. That would be best.

(Tony Kushner, A Bright Room Called Day)

America

America.
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they're all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Ameter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.

The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers' Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

– Allen Ginsberg

(Thanks to Lori Selke)