An Antidote for Hard Work

BOOKS about winning are a dime a dozen these days. Everyone's got some program for winning through positive thought or effective management or life/stress maintenance programs. But read the whole collection of Donald Trump/Lee lacocca/Ed Koch "How-I-Did-It" books, and you'll end up with only one piece of solid advice: hard work is the only way to achieve success.

Fast Company

Jon Bradshaw

Vintage Departures; pp 239; $6.95.

But is it? Not according to the six gamblers in Jon Bradsaw's Fast Company. Pool hustler Minnesota Fats says, "The only way anybody'd get me to work was to make the hours from one to two, with an hour off for lunch."

While Fast Company is not going to make anyone a Vegas-class card-shark overnight, it does provide a refreshing antidote to the self-congratulatory tales of honest, hard-working corporate and political "gamblers."

Winning, whether it's in poker and craps or stocks and bonds, is simply a matter of coming out ahead of the other guy. Not exactly screwing him over, but, well, luring him into a situation he just can't win. And letting him screw himself.

Luck? There's no such thing, according to these gamblers. Almost all of them have ascended from poverty to wealth, but none particularly feel that fortune has smiled on them. As Minnesota Fats says, "When you're poor you don't expect nothin' from life, and when you don't expect nothin', everything that happens is a picnic."

LUCK is the thing losers believe in. It provides hope to keep them in games they can't win. Real gamblers may leave nothing to chance themselves, but they don't hesitate to take advantage of those who do. "Only suckers gamble," says Titanic Thompson.

Thompson, who has repeatedly lured people into betting him that he can't do the undoable, shows how real gamblers leave nothing to luck.

Coming upon a city slicker at his favorite fishing hole, Thompson picks up a rock, carves an X on it, and offers the man a "proposition." He claims that he can throw the rock in the deepest part of the pond and have his hunting dog retrieve it. The man takes the bet, and the dog comes up with the marked stone. The slicker pays up, muttering about dumb luck.

"That dog of mine was good at that trick," Titanic conceded later. "But I ain't one for taking chances. A few days before I'd covered the bottom of that hole with dozens of marked rocks. That slicker never had a prayer."

The gambling world is filled with--and lives off of--slickers who never had a prayer. But the gamblers never scorn them. "Losers are suppliers," says poker champ Pug Pearson. "When you beat a man, you don't rub his face in it. You shrug and agree that it was luck and give him another chance. At double or nothing."

Bradshaw's strong suit is keeping his theories of winners, losers, and gamblers to himself. Instead, he lets the gamblers themselves talk. And talk and talk and talk.

He recounts a lengthy monologue from Minnesota Fats, who harangued a pool opponent while clearing the table:

Tell you what I'm gonna do. They say you got eight of those hot dog stands up there in Washington. Nine ball.... That's where I'll put you to work after I win 'em tonight, You'll be the short-order cook in the dingiest and dirtiest of 'em all. On the midnight shift. Twelve ball. And after you've been workin' in there one night during the summer for about ten hours and figure it's time for you to go home for the night, I'm gonna come in and order 250 fried eggs. Fried over light. Four ball. Yeah, 250 of 'em. Fifteen ball. Then as you cook 'em, one by one, I'll eat all 250 of 'em. One ball. And my boy, I will then get up and walk out and leave you not one red cent tip. Seven ball.

THE BOOK is jam-packed with fascinating rules of thumb from a bygone age. Read Iacocca's book and you'll get nothing but attitude and abstraction. Iacocca would probably tell you to keep your money in real estate or mutual funds. But poker player Johnny Moss has more practical advice: keep your cash in a wad with a rubber band around it--"so's you can throw it in the bushes case you're hijacked."

And if you're entering a game in which you doubt the gentlemanliness of your fellow player, be sure to hide your money-wad well. Pug Pearson used to lay his bankroll on the ground and then drive his car over it so that it was buried under the tire.

The best thing about the book is the endless procession of anecdotes--some true, some apocryphal, and some obvious tall tales. Hear Bobby Riggs bitch and whine his way into psyching-out tennis champ Margaret Court. See Minnesota Fats make a winning pool shot a split-second before the floorboards buckle underneath him and he falls into his basement.

And best of all, watch Titanic Thompson repeatedly succeed against all odds. He tosses a walnut over a three-story building. He drives a golf ball 400 yards. He shoots a live rat in a pitch black basement. Of course, Thompson has things rigged so that none of his "propositions" were really against the odds.

So next time you've got a sure thing going, and you just know you're going to win, bear Damon Runyon's advice in mind. "Son, no matter how far you travel, or how smart you get, always remember this: Some day, somewhere, a guy is going to come to you and show you a deck of cards on which the seal is never broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that the jack of spades will jump out of this deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet him, for as sure as you do, you are going to get an ear full of cider."