Chapter 1 – Part 2
Those few seconds felt like an eternity as I anxiously awaited the outcome . . . and when the die finally did come to a stop, the stickman, in a sullen and sympathetic voice, uttered, “Seven, out.”
“Oh . . . my God!” I shouted in disbelief.
I had lost every bet on the table—a table smothered in cash . . . two thousand one hundred and eighty $100 bills, to be exact—was gone. A swan dive from the Presidential Penthouse was sounding pretty appealing at that point.
Watching $218,000 in cold, hard, cash get swooped away felt like being shocked by a high-voltage taser gun; in reality, an immediate clash of adrenalin, serotonin, and dopamine had short-circuited my brain and caused a nanosecond blackout. The results were the same, though, and were followed by a blame game that featured my raging alter ego. “You idiot! You stupid, fucking idiot! What the hell kind of throw was that? Where was your arch? Why didn’t you set the dice before you shot them?”
Of course, the obvious culprit for such a huge loss was: loaded dice. I looked up at the security camera and yelled, “Bastards!” The fact that the outcome of each roll is purely random was not a plausible conclusion to a neurotic gambler. “You pushed the button, didn’t you? You couldn’t let me have one fucking number before the seven? Not one?” I’d always found it oddly suspicious that whenever I loaded the table with heavy artillery, more times than not the deadly seven would show up on the very next roll. I easily envisioned a button that, when tripped by the guys in the surveillance room could transmit a signal to a nano-receiver embedded in the dice and manipulate them to land on seven.
As security guards and spectators walked away in disbelief, I suffered a severe, colonic attack. A controlled scramble to the VIP bathroom resulted in a bowel movement that was reminiscent of food poisoning and so pungent the high-limit blackjack parlor had to be temporarily vacated. As a high roller, my nerves were in a constant state of confusion—forced to mutate from excitement to depression to joy to sorrow, often with no more than a few short minutes between each stage. I likened it to winning the lottery, losing a child, having a baby, and being diagnosed with cancer all in the same day.
After I unloaded my intestinal intrusions, I washed my hands, leaned into the mirror, looked myself squarely in the eyes, and said: “You can do this. You’re Kevin Lehmann, and you’ve been here before. You’re the best damn craps player in the world.” My alter ego even spoke up in support: “You still have $32,000 and you need $550,000 by morning. Break it down, big fella. That’s $46,000 an hour for the next twelve hours—a walk in the park.” “You can do this Kevin,” I told myself, “You can do this. A seventeen bagger—a 1700 percent return—is a piece of cake. Now, get your game on and go get your money!”
Psyched up and ready to rumble, I confidently approached the craps pit a second time—only this time I chose to go it alone with a private table. Win or lose, I had nobody to blame but me. My greatest challenge, having just suffered a crushing blow, was to not go for broke with my remaining $32,000. Like a boxer who had taken a beating the previous round, I wanted to come out swinging to prove I could take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’—a battle of balls versus brains.
“Welcome back,” the stickman said as I dropped $32,000 on the table. The pit boss picked up the phone to inform the higher-ups of my return, which prompted me to glance up at the security camera and pray that they leave the magnets off. Remember . . . only $46,000 an hour for the next twelve hours, I told myself. This is where legends are made, Kevin. Get in the zone . . . Concentrate. I stuck $2,000 on the pass line, then carefully avoided setting the dice on seven; to do so is a bad omen on any roll, even on the come-out roll when the seven is an automatic pass line winner.
To the non-gambler, the relevance of dice setting may seem inconsequential. Deluded craps players, though, make the entire process an exact science that involves decisions about dice sets, grip, pitch, trajectory, axis, rotation, and angle and even manipulating a soft landing.
The hypothesis: keep the dice on an axis of numbers whose two corresponding faces don’t add up to seven as they rotate through the air and bounce off the back wall. For the neurotic high-stakes gambler, no detail goes unnoticed.
I finally settled on two and two, a hard four, and my classic four-finger grip. My voice of reason concurred: You can do this, Kevin. You can do this.
As the dice bounced off the wall, the stickman shouted, “Five! Make your come bets, place bets, and hard ways.”
“Fuck it! No guts, no glory! Give me $15,000 each on the six and eight,” I shouted. I pretended not to notice when the table crew looked at me and cringed at my total lapse of discipline and prudent money management. Like Joe Frazier looking for the knockout punch against Muhammad Ali, I was betting the farm on the very first roll. Still devastated from dropping $218,000, I knew that playing scared was equivalent to death by crucifixion—slow and painful. If I was going broke, I would just as soon take a bullet to the brain early on.
As place bets, the six and eight paid seven to six odds, instead of the normal six to five behind the pass line. At $15,000 placed on each of them, that meant I would receive $17,500 every time the six or eight showed before the seven roared its ugly head. With ten possible combinations between them and only six ways to hit the seven, how could I go wrong? Simple—while the seven only had a 16.7 percent chance of showing up, after my earlier debacle, I didn’t take much comfort in the 83.3 percent chance it wouldn’t. Since each roll is independent of the one before it, seven is always the highest probable number on every single roll.
Prepared to throw, I chucked the dice in my usual, classic style, then held my breath until they came to rest on four and two.
“Six!” was the call and I pressed my eight to the maximum $24,000. After shooting from a hard four again, I heard, “Eight!” The next roll was another eight, and just like that, I was up $73,500.
Another roll . . .
“Three!” the stickman hollered.
No help, since I had no money on the horn.
“Take my bets off for just this roll,” I told the dealer in anticipation of the seven appearing. The dice tumbled down the table and came to a stop on four and three—”Seven, out!”
Thank God. Way to save your bets, big guy, my voice of reason cheered. With a one in six chance of the seven appearing, it had been a purely calculated call. My bankroll was now at $100,000 and I was back in business.
On a hunch that the seven would appear again on the new come-out roll, I bet the maximum $20,000 on the pass line. “Seven—winner!” was the call. I kept $20,000 on the pass line—”Seven, winner!” That was $40,000 in less than thirty seconds.
“How about a yo? One time!” I shouted for luck.
“Yo!” the stickman hollered as the dice bounced off the wall on the other side.
“Hell, yes!” Another $20,000. Keep it up, Kevin, my inner voice chimed in as my heart rate started to climb. Next roll . . . “Seven, winner!”
“Oh, hell, yeah!” I shouted even louder. “One more time. How about a yo?” I yelled.
“Yo!” the stickman hollered again.
“Yes, baby” I uttered in relief. I had just hit a streak of five come-out winning rolls and, most importantly, with the maximum $20,000 bet each time.
With my bankroll back up to $200,000, I was closing in on the $550,000 I needed by morning. There was light at the end of the tunnel. I kept $20,000 on the pass line and rolled again.
“Three . . . craps! Pay the don’ts and take the dos!” the stickman shouted.
Ouch! “Numbers, baby, give me numbers, anything but craps,” I yelled.