Fools of Fortune, or Gambling and Gamblers
John Philip Quinn, 1890
Why does it feel like your luck is about to turn? John Quinn spent twenty-five years running gambling tables, turning rigged wheels at fairs and dealing marked cards, then ended up in prison and wrote a confession. He shows the game from the other side of the table: where the house's cut is hidden, who wins in front of your eyes, and why the first win is more dangerous than a loss.
Who it is for
For people who buy lottery tickets, play for small stakes with friends or hear from an acquaintance about a sure thing, and for anyone curious how a game works in which you lose before the first bet.
It would be much better, far better, for a man walking into a gambling house that his first bet lose.
The boy who was sure he could see the cheat's hands
Around 1860, a fourteen-year-old boy from Missouri secretly took his father's horse, sold it in Kansas and went to a street player of three-card monte. He watched for a long time as the man dealt the cards, until he decided he could see every move. Then he bet everything he had got for the horse, and lost it all. He had to ask his father for money for the way home.
That boy was John Philip Quinn, the author of this book. For the next twenty-five years he lived by gambling. He ran faro and roulette, turned rigged wheels at fairs, dealt marked cards and took a cut for every sucker he brought in. In 1887 he was convicted in Indiana of fraud, which, by his own account and by a letter from his lawyer, he did not commit, and a year later he was pardoned. In prison he decided to break with gambling and tell everything he knew.
The book came out in Chicago in 1890. It is huge: a history of games from India to London, an account of cheating methods, reports from the gambling dens of two dozen American cities. But it rests on one idea from its preface. Gambling houses live on newcomers, and if a person is shown that what lies before them is not a chance to win but a sure loss, they will not place the bet. Quinn hoped this way to make partial amends for his past.
Next come six chapters on how it works. The cut hidden even in an honest game. The winner who is staged for you. Doubling your stakes, which looks like a reliable system. The first win, which is more dangerous than a loss. The hook of the sure thing. And the reason why the decision to quit falls apart so easily. This is the view of a man who stood on the other side of the table for many years.
The house wins even when it plays fair
In 1872, a Parisian bronze manufacturer walked into a gambling club for the first time. He did not play himself, and out of boredom he watched the croupier. Every ten minutes the croupier dropped a few chips into a slot in the table called the cagnotte: that was the house's share. In one hour, twenty-nine louis d'or went into it. The manufacturer obtained permission from the prefecture and opened his own club. On the first evening the cagnotte brought in twelve thousand francs, and over the first year his share came to three hundred thousand.
After that, as he admitted himself, he had to play in order to keep the game going, and luck was against him the whole time. Over four years he lost nearly a million francs, sold his share and became an employee of a similar club. He lost his salary of a few guineas on the same evening he received it.
He knew the secret better than anyone: the money comes not from luck, but from the slot in the table. Quinn shows that this slot exists in every game against a bank. In Monte Carlo, Quinn writes, the roulette wheel has thirty-seven numbers, including the zero, and a bet on a single number pays thirty-five to one. Let us count it ourselves, since Quinn gives no such calculation: if you put one coin on every number, the winning coin comes back with thirty-five more, so thirty-six coins come back out of thirty-seven, and one stays with the bank. This is not cheating; it is how the game is built. In poker clubs the host takes a chip from every big hand and tosses it into a hole in the middle of the table. According to Quinn, all of a player's chips end up there sooner or later: it is only a matter of time, and a promissory note at compound interest takes money just as surely.
It is like a tap that keeps dripping. One deal shows nothing, but over an evening a bucket fills up. The mistake is to look at a single bet, where the odds look almost even, instead of at the whole evening, in which the bank always has its share.
Quinn's conclusion is harsh: do not sit down at all. For everyday life a simpler rule follows from it. Before any game, ask who takes their share, and from what. If there is a bank, a host or a percentage in the game, over the long run it is you who pays them, however many wins come along the way.
About the author
John Philip Quinn was born in 1846 in Missouri and spent a quarter of a century living by gambling and cheating. After prison and a pardon he lectured against gambling, and in 1890 he published this book.
All books by this author: John Philip Quinn
Terms from the book
- Johnson
- promissory note
- Moses
- three-card monte: A street game, also called monte: the cheat shows three cards, quickly lays them face down and offers you to guess the right one. Sleight of hand makes winning almost impossible.
- faro: A card game against the bank, the most popular in American gambling houses of the nineteenth century. The banker takes cards out of a box, and players bet on their value.
- marked cards: Marked cards carry tiny marks on the back that let a cheat recognize a card without seeing its face.
- cagnotte: In French gambling clubs, a slot in the table into which the croupier dropped the house's share from every game.
- croupier: A casino employee who runs the game at the table: takes bets, pays out winnings and collects losses.
- zero: The zero pocket of a roulette wheel. When the ball lands on zero, most bets go to the bank, and this is its constant advantage.
- capper: What Quinn calls a planted player, an accomplice of the game's host. He wins in front of the crowd to win back its trust.
- tipster: Slang for a racetrack adviser who sells players supposedly sure tips for a cut. In Quinn's account, such people work for the bookmaker.
- hazard: An old dice game in which players bet on the numbers that came up. It was the main game of London gambling dens in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- rouge-et-noir: A card game against the bank in which players bet on red or black. Quinn describes its American version with jacks.
- policy: A number game with daily lottery drawings in nineteenth-century America. The player bought a combination of numbers for a small sum.
- Houlditch: The London carriage firm Houlditch, whose traveling salesman lost his employers' money in gambling houses. Quinn quotes his letter in the book.
- Lawler: John Lawler, a gambler and barker from St. Louis, later a co-owner of gambling houses in Chicago. Quinn tells his story as an example of money that does not stay with the player.
- full house: A poker hand: three cards of one rank and two of another.
- four of a kind: A poker hand of four cards of one rank. It ranks above a full house.
- Brummell: George Brummell, the famous London dandy of the early nineteenth century. He lost all his money, fell into debt to moneylenders and fled to France.
- Mills: Pemberton Mills, a member of a London club who offered Brummell a wager to keep him from gambling.
- Aubrey: Major Aubrey, an English player of earlier days. By Quinn's account, he three times won and lost fortunes, but had secured in advance an income that gambling could not reach.
- Pitt: William Pitt the Younger, British prime minister at the end of the eighteenth century. In his youth he played in London clubs, and later he gave gambling up.
All terms
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