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UNLV historian recounts the primeval urge to gamble

New book sees risk as inherent in the human condition

BY BOB SHEMELIGIAN

Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling by David G. Schwartz (Gotham Books, $30)

Adam had more than apples on his mind when he spoke about temptation.

The Old Testament ancient psalmist, whose work (according to Jewish tradition) would be rewritten by King David, prophesied the scene thousands of years later when Roman soldiers would cast dice for Christ's undergarment as the Savior was dying on the cross.

Courtesy David Schwartz
David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Studies at UNLV, has traced man's gambling jones back to the Paleolithic Era.

"They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing," Psalms 22:18.

That biblical passage is duly noted in David G. Schwartz's exhaustive, 570-page chronicle of gambling. But while history has recorded the scene of Roman soldiers gambling for Jesus' only earthly possession at the site of his execution as a metaphor for despair, Schwartz expounds that gambling has been going on since cave dwellers first began to devise tools from stone, wood and bone.

"These were the first gambling tools," writes Schwartz, the director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He explains that, while man's first ventures into chance were usually more religious than recreational -- such as using coconut shells to tell the future -- ample evidence throughout recorded and unrecorded history proves that our innate need for risk is responsible for much more than the development of gaming throughout modern history: It has fueled man's development through excursions to previously unknown regions of the world.

"Whatever the secret gambling lives of our primate ancestors, humans have long been apt gamblers," Schwartz writes. "The hunter-gatherer lifestyle of early cultures was like mining or fishing today, predicated on risk. On any given day, one might find lunch or become lunch."

AS MAN EVOLVED, SO DID HIS GAMBLING TECHNIQUES

The first dice thrown by an "inventive Paleolithic rounder" were actually animal bones. Since then, gambling with six-sided cubes of some sort has occurred in virtually every civilization throughout history. Romans loved the game. The word "fortune" comes from Roman goddess Fortuna. Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor, believed he was actually Fortuna's favorite adopted son because he always beat Marc Antony at dice.

Among the more intriguing passages in Roll the Bones are accounts of early bad gamblers, compulsive gamblers and even advantage gamblers. Two thousand years before the formation of the National Council on Problem Gaming, the emperor Caligula, in the midst of a ferocious losing streak, reportedly left a game, went into the streets where several rich citizens were passing, had them arrested and then confiscated their estates to use as a fresh gambling stake.

In more recent history, according to an old gambling legend recounted by Schwartz, a French naval captain, after losing 50,000 francs that had been entrusted to him by the Admiralty, at the casino at Monte Carlo, demanded to see the casino manager. The captain demanded his money back. The manager politely refused. "He had said the same to hundreds, if not thousands, of ruined gamblers before."

Still, the captain had an ace up his sleeve. He threatened to bring his ship to the Bay of Monaco and open fire on the casino. The casino manager paid.

FROM CALIGULA TO BILLY WALTERS

Today, anyone in gaming is familiar with advantage gamblers such as Billy Walters, who turned his proceeds from sports betting into Las Vegas real estate development, or Stanford Wong, a mathematician who is among the world's best card counters.

But these two are pikers compared with Voltaire, the 18th century French author and rationalist. In 1729, he organized a team that devised a way to strike it rich in the French lottery. In a method eerily similar to today's slot teams, who descend on a bank of machines with an unusually high jackpot, Voltaire concluded that if he and his teammates could swamp the drawing with one-franc tickets, they would, in all likelihood, strike it rich.

Over the next few months, the team won most of the prize money that was awarded. By the time the lottery ended, in mid-1730, Voltaire won at least 1 million francs ... enough to allow him to live comfortably the rest of his life.

But Schwartz also notes other advantage gamblers who didn't fare so well. Among them: Arnold Rothstein, master gambler who fixed the 1919 World Series but was shot to death in 1928, following his refusal to pay a $320,000 poker debt; and Nick "the Greek" Dandolos, who claimed to have won and lost more than $500 million during his lifetime, and who died broke in 1966.

"People who gamble for recreation often come out ahead," Schwartz told the Business Press. "People who stake their livelihoods on gambling generally don't end up well. The key is balancing the risk."

Schwartz, who previously authored Cutting the Wire: Gaming Prohibition and the Internet and Suburban Xanadu: The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond, ends his saga with an account of the opening of Wynn Las Vegas and a tribute to the city's resiliency amidst ever-increasing competition.

It is no easy feat. In comparison, Schwartz points to the 18th century Belgian gambling mecca -- the town of Spa, nestled in the hills of the Ardennes. The first casinos in Spa were built in the 1760s and the town soon drew vacationers from throughout Europe. But political changes sparked by the French Revolution, and increased competition in other jurisdictions, spelled disaster for the Belgian vacation spot. By the early 1800s Spa was little more than a ghost town.

"What might be surprising to most people is that during the 1980s and the 1990s Atlantic City actually had greater visitation -- although most of it was in daily traffic -- and higher gaming revenues than Las Vegas," said Schwartz, a native of the Jersey resort. "The important thing is Las Vegas, which no longer had a monopoly on gaming, had to re-invent itself to survive and it did so, evolving into an entertainment destination."

But the main theme of "Roll the Bones" is not the success of one particular gaming jurisdiction. It's not about how to win at gaming, or how to formulate gaming systems or theories. It's about the ways our culture handles risk and how risk-taking is part of what it means to be human.

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