_Few Gamblers Perceive "the Psychological Moment" For Quitting Play and
Retiring Rich._
An old man whose mind is still alert, and the movements of whose tall,
somewhat stooped body are as free and spry as those of many a man fifty
years his junior, is Cole Martin, once the most famous faro dealer in
this country. He slipped the cards out of the box for the statesmen with
a penchant for gaming who lived in Washington fifty, forty, and thirty
years ago, when it was deemed no disgrace for the strong men of the land
to try an occasional buck at the tiger, openly and above board. Martin
is now verging upon 80 years of age, and even to the present generation
of Washingtonians his white-bearded countenance is very familiar. His
age does not tell upon him, and his commerce among men is about as wide
now, he says, as it was back in the fifties. He had a great deal of
money at one time in his career, but most of it went by the board. He
had the caution to purchase an annuity for himself a good many years
ago, and upon this he lives comfortably. He has passed most of his life
in Washington, but before and after the war of the rebellion he had
adventures in many parts of the United States where gaming was at its
highest. He is a mine of curious, first-hand information about the
statesmen-gamesters who were great figures in the national life of the
country before the war, and the local newspaper have published many of
his reminiscences of this sort. He is not garrulous, but once he gets
into his stride and the company is congenial he talks well and
entertainingly. He was speaking recently of the case of the well-known
young American turf plunger who, after having beaten the English racing
game to the tune of $150,000 a few weeks ago, waded in so recklessly
that, only a short time later, he quit $90,000 to the bad.
"Another example of the chance taker who has not mastered the fine
science of quitting," was his way of summing it up. "That seems to be
the most difficult point in the gambling business--to know just the
right time to quit. Few men master it. I never did, myself. I wish I
had. Any fool can go on playing when he is away ahead of his game, but
it takes a man of unusual strength of character, perception and
foresight to knock off when, after riding a high tide, he notices that
it begins to ebb. The scientists, I believe, talk of a 'psychological
moment.' I don't know of any business in life in which the psychological
moment plays a greater part than it does in gambling. Most of this
country's old-time gamesters have died, as you know, very poor, or,
worse, poverty-stricken. I never hear of the death of one of them
leaving not enough money behind to have his body put into the ground
that I don't recall the time when he had tens or hundreds of thousands.
The gambler by profession has many a psychological moment in the course
of his career, but he rarely takes advantages of them. He goes on
dabbling at a percentage that his common-sense tells him is against him,
and that he has only temporarily beaten, and after a while he finds
himself broke; then he asks himself remorsefully why he didn't break off
when he was on top of the wave. I have known a few professional gamblers
who knew just when to quit. Some of them are still alive, old men like
myself, and they are well fixed. Those of them who are dead left good
sums of money behind them.
"I once saw George Plantagenet, one of the best known of the New Orleans
gamblers before the war, win $60,000 in an afternoon's play at faro.
This was in Memphis. He cashed in and left the bank. After supper he
returned with all of the money and he began to buck the king. He played
it open every time and the king lost eight straight times in two deals.
That cost Plantagenet $20,000 of his winnings. The lid had been taken
off the game for him. When the dealer pulled out the eighth straight
losing king Plantagenet cashed in. He was frank enough to admit that he
had cold feet.
"'While freely acknowledging that I am more or less of a d--d fool,' he
said coolly, 'I strive for the reputation of knowing when I've got
enough, even of a good thing. I quit. This is just my time to quit. If
the box were only depleting me gradually but surely I don't doubt that
I'd go until I was all up. But I can see legible handwriting on the wall
from as considerable a distance as my neighbors, and when I'm on top, as
I am now, well and comfortably, and eight straight kings range
themselves against me on the left hand side of the layout, that's the
kind of a signal I'm waiting for, and I pass. I'll bet any man on the
side, just for a flyer, $5,000 that the next king out of the box wins,
but no more faro.
"Frank Wooton, the proprietor of the layout, was standing by when
Plantagenet made this little talk.
"'You are wise in your generation, George,' said he. 'Now, it is about a
10 to 1 shot against the king losing again. Consequently you can afford
to give me at least 2 to 1 on that proposition. I'll bet you $2,500 to
$5,000 that the king does lose the next time out.'
"'Taken,' said Plantagenet, covering Wooton's money, and the crowd
gathered round to watch the dealer riffle the cards. The box was fully
half out before a king showed, and it showed on the losing side--nine
straight. Wooton pulled down the side bet.
"'Which I may remark,' said Plantagenet with the greatest coolness,
'that this ninth consecutive lose of the king simply confirms and makes
good the hunch I had to quit when it lost the eighth time. But I will go
a bit further to prove that my inspiration to quit is a proper and
sensible one. I will bet you $1,000 that I can buck your bank now with
dummy chips representing all of my winnings and the roll I originally
started with, and that, although I shall play as carefully and as
cautiously and as earnestly as I would did the dummy chips really
represent money, I shall lose every stack within two hours.'
"Plantagenet and Wooton were old friends, and the latter knew that
Plantagenet would try to win with the dummy chips even though he would
be $1,000 loser if he did.
"'Go ahead and prove your case,' said Wooton, and a dealer who was off
duty was called upon to deal. Plantagenet kept cases himself and played
his own particular system with all manner of care and effort. Wooton
stood by and saw that Plantagenet was playing his regular game.
Plantagenet's luck had deserted him, and he lost two bets out of every
three. It seemed impossible for him to get down right, and he lost
steadily. He had played in his last stack in an hour and forty minutes
and Wooton hand him the $1,000.
"'That's the way it would have been had I been playing with money,' said
Plantagenet, and Wooton agreed with him. Plantagenet was one of the men
who knew when to quit, and when he died, with his grandchildren around
him, in the early seventies, he left more than $500,000 to be
distributed among his heirs.
"Edmund Baker of Louisville, who was not a professional gambler, but who
outdid most of the famous professional gamblers of the South in the late
fifties in the heaviness of his play when he felt in a winning humor,
was another man who knew when to quit. I saw him win $32,000 in one
night at bank in the rooms of the old Crescent City Club. Then he curled
up all of a sudden and cashed in. He wasn't a quitter in the ungenerous
sense, but he used to say that the little angel, supposed by the sailors
to sit aloft and watch out for Jack Tar, had a habit of informing him,
when he was bucking another man's game, just the proper time to pass it
up and quit. It was a matter of pure hunch with him. On this occasion
Joe Randolph, a heavy player from Virginia, twitted Baker a bit for not
pressing his luck--for quitting when he seemed to be winning four bets
out of five.
"'All right, Randolph,' said Baker after he had cashed in. 'I'll let you
make five $10 bets in my behalf on the deal now running and I'll bet you
an even $2,000 that I (or you) lose four out of the five; this, just to
show you that my intuition about the proper time to lay off is good.'
"Randolph took that bet, which was a good one, with more than an even
chance in his favor, and he lost, for every one of the five bets lost.
Baker would quit when he was loser just as suddenly as he would when he
was away ahead of the game. I saw him lose over $3,000 in a four-handed
poker game with friends in one of the parlors of the old St. Charles
Hotel between the hours of 6 and 9 o'clock one evening. He had
practically an unlimited amount of money at his disposal, considering
the size of the game--$200 limit--but he yawned and pushed his chair
back with the simple statement that it wasn't his night. The next night
he lost $2,000 more to the same three friends, and again he resumed his
seat. On the following night he was $4,000 loser after four hours' play,
but he gave no sign of quitting.
"'Isn't it pretty near time for you to stretch your arms and forsake us
again, Baker?' asked one of his friends in the game, jokingly.
"'No,' said Baker, 'I'm going to stay along to-night. I'll begin to win
soon, and then you can all stand by.'
"He began to win on the very next deal and at 2 o'clock in the morning
he had not only retrieved his losses on the week's play, but he had all
the money in the crowd. Baker was possessed of a species of intuition
that was something extraordinary. I don't know what else to call it but
intuition. I never saw him take a daring chance that he did not win out
on it--chances that no professional gambler would dream of taking, and
diametrically opposed to all of the rules of percentage in games of
hazard. One night he walked into 'Don' Haskell's Madrid Club in St.
Louis--this was in the fall of '59--and stood and watched a few deals
out of the box at the $500-limit faro table. Then he reached over and
bought five yellow--$100--chips from the dealer. He put them all on the
ace and coppered the card. The ace lost, and the dealer put five yellow
chips on the top of the original five on the ace, and waited for Baker
to haul them down. Baker absent-mindedly made no move, to take the chips
until the dealer reminded him of them.
"'Let them stand, with the ace coppered,' said Baker.
"'But it's $500 limit, Mr. Baker,' said the dealer.
"'Let it stand, Jack,' said 'Don' Haskell, coming up behind Jack and
addressing the dealer. 'Let it stand as long as Mr. Baker wants to make
play with the ace coppered, and we'll see if we can't commit assault and
battery on his "intuition."'
"Baker nodded good-naturedly to Haskell and then waited for the turns on
the ace. The ace was only half a dozen cards below, and it lost. The
dealer ranged ten more yellows beside Baker's pile.
"'Let them stand, ace coppered,' said Baker, scanning the cases for a
few deals back carelessly.
"'Don' Haskell nodded in the affirmative to the dealer and the other
players at the table neglected to put any bets down in their interest in
Baker's peculiar play. There was only one more ace left in the box and
it came out a loser. The dealer stacked up twenty more yellows beside
Baker's pile--$4000--and he and the proprietor waited for Baker to haul
them down. Baker leaned back and lit a cigar, leaving the $4000 in
yellows to stand.
"'I'll leave them there, with the ace coppered, if you're willing,
"Don,"' he said quietly to Haskell.
"'The longer the better,' said Haskell, and the dealer began to slip
them out. The first ace was way down in the center of the box, and
Haskell looked a bit chagrined when it came out a loser.
"'Eight thousand, eh?' he said, looking over the stack of yellows on the
coppered ace. 'One more whirl at it, Baker--that'll be about all I can
stand to-night if you take it down.'
"The ace came out on the losing side again--a thing that no professional
gambler would have bet on had he been offered 5 to 1 on the
proposition--and Baker cashed in $16,000. He would have let it run again
had Haskell been able to stand it, but the 'Don' had enough. Baker stood
by and watched the ace come out a loser twice again and then he put $500
on it to win. It won and he took the boat for New Orleans with $16,500
of Haskell's money. Three months later, when Frank Caxton, Ned Ripley
and Monk Terhune, a well-known New Orleans trio of tiger buckers, broke
the Madrid Club's bank roll wide open, to the tune of $100,000, Baker
was the man who started Haskell in business again.
"When I was dealing heavy games myself I used often to have a sudden
feeling that it was time for some strong bucker on the other side of the
table to cash in and quit, but of course it was no part of my business
to make any such suggestions. I was dealing a game once in Washington,
in the winter of '66, when the outcast son of a rich tobacco man of
Richmond came along and whacked my box for $12,000 in a single night's
play at $200 limit. I knew the young fellow pretty well, and I knew that
since his father had run him out of Richmond he had had more than his
share of hard luck. In fact, he had often been hungry, and I had often
given him a $5 or $10 bill, being pretty flush myself just then. He had
started in on my box with a shoestring--where he got it I don't
know--and, as I say, he got me to the tune of $12,000 before I turned
the box on him for the night. The man in whose interest I was dealing
was very wealthy and a generous man. He knew the young chap's father. He
came to me after the young man had left with his winnings and said:
"'You'd better hunt up that boy and tell him that he'd better not play
any more. He's had his run of luck, and he's got enough to give himself
a start. I don't want the money back. If he handles it right it'll do
him more good than it would me. Just try to pound a bit of sense into
the lads' head.'
"That was a pretty square talk to come from the throat of a man whose
bank had been raided. I hunted the young fellow up that morning and told
him about it. He was full of hifalutin' talk about wanting to give the
proprietor of the bank a chance and all that sort of thing.
"'He can take care of himself,' said I to the boy. 'He knows your
father, and I dare say he's clipped your father's bank roll for a good
deal more than $12,000 on occasions when your dad has visited Washington
and gone against the bank. Better array yourself in purple and fine
linen, keep sober, and go back to the Governor in Richmond with a high
head and a proper countenance. That'll be better than walking into
Richmond in need of a Russian bath.'
"The fever was on the boy, though, and he couldn't keep his promise to
me to stop. He came in that night, and in half an hour's play he ran his
$12,000 up to $15,000. I kicked him under the table then, as a sort of
final warning. He paid no attention to me, though. Then he began to
lose, and in three hours he was flat broke. He went out with a wild
light in his eye, and the next morning he was found dead in his little
boarding-house room, with a bullet in his brain.
"It may be true, in the ordinary sense, that Providence hates a quitter,
but that doesn't apply to gambling. The knowledge of when to get cold
feet, and the gentle art of doing the same, are valuable assets for any
man who tries to buck another man's game."