Gambling News by Gambling Headquarters

People will gamble even if you don't let them. And if you want to earn a living off other people's wagers, the odds are in your favor. The world never lacks for corrupt public officials and clueless gamblers, both of whom will help you toward your goal. Those are three of the lessons of Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling, David G. Schwartz's remarkably detailed but unremarkably written history of games of chance. This book covers thousands of years and a large chunk of the globe in its pursuit of morsels of information. The locales are exotic, with extended stays in places such as Monte Carlo. Schwartz starts with the ancients and works his way to Atlantic City (his birthplace) and beyond. Famous characters - from Augustus Caesar and Mark Antony to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy to Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley - wander on and off the stage. There's also a colorful supporting cast. "Honest" John Kelly, for example, was a small-time gambler/grifter from Iowa who left a diary that followed his up-and-down adventures, which never quite led to the wealth or respectability he sought. At his dying moment, after collapsing at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, he said to his wife: "I almost was a big shot." Schwartz, a University of Pennsylvania graduate now at the Center for Gaming Research in Las Vegas, doesn't neglect the big picture. Ambivalence toward gambling is a theme that runs through Roll the Bones. The pattern is a common one: Community (or state or nation) embraces gambling, then shuns it, taking steps to ban it before letting it crawl back in. Even when the debate finally seemed to be over, it rarely is. Schwartz perceives that the current tide is toward a full embrace of casinos, lotteries, horse racing and other gambling. Governments might not like them, but they can't afford to discard the revenue from taxes and tourism. The path toward acceptance has been smoothed by those who have turned betting from a seedy vice into a solidly American pastime. "Harrah," Schwartz writes of casino operator William Fisk Harrah, "had a simple philosophy: Provide a pleasant atmosphere for middle-income gamblers, and let the house advantage take care of the rest." Steve Wynn is saluted for trying to be innovative, attracting gamblers by making his casinos spectacular. The book concludes with the opening of Wynn Las Vegas last year, and the author treats that event as if it were meant to give his book an appropriate ending. "A perceptive visitor," he writes, "walking through the property, could see the resort as the culmination of 7,000 years of gambling history."

That's a bit over the top, and it stands out because Schwartz is generally restrained, probably too much so. Roll the Bones certainly didn't need to read like The Green Felt Jungle, the brutal and breathless 1963 expose of Las Vegas, but there's a sameness to Schwartz's writing that weighs it down at times.

That's particularly true near the end of the book when the author is bouncing from nation to nation, writing about the recent worldwide boom in gambling by talking about casino after casino. At that point, switching gears and going off on some interesting tangents - there's little or nothing on Gamblers Anonymous, portrayals of gambling in American culture, or the universality of NCAA basketball office pools every March - might have made the book more readable.