Las Vegas was a sleepy desert town before WW II, just a water stop for the Union Pacific Railroad and the few drivers willing to brave the Mojave Desert from southern California or the Rocky mountains. Casino gambling wasn't very big since most people really didn't know the games well. Craps was played very differently in the back alleys of Chicago, no one knew Roulette, which was a European game, the card game Faro was limited to casinos and Blackjack was fairly new. Old Fremont Street had a few small casinos with maybe one Roulette wheel, a crap game, a couple of Faro tables and a poker game now and then. There were a few slot machines; mostly nickel and penny machines that got occasional play. The players back then liked their gambling slow out here in the desert.

It was 1946, the war had just ended and the soldiers were coming back to a rebirth of a new country. The birth of the Hell's Angels in the '40s was just a bunch of motor pool and forward-position combat motorcycle riders that were bored with the pace of life back in California after the war. They would often ride up to Las Vegas, a ride that they could do back then in only 7-8 hours on the back of a Knucklehead. The ride up to Las Vegas wasn't the trip it is today. From Barstow to Las Vegas was a trek through the desert on old highway 6. There was no air conditioning in the cars and the top speed through the desert would often peak at 40 on the dirt road and coming up the hill from Barstow to Baker and again from Baker over Mountain Pass to the Nevada border could wreak havoc on the old cars back then, which were often lucky to top 15 mph with frequent stops needed to avoid overheating the radiator.

Places like Baker and Mountain Pass and Stateline were popular stops along route 6 with Stateline and Whiskey Pete's being famous for having the first casino at the California/Nevada border with flush toilets, plenty of water, plenty of cheap booze and plenty of gambling. In Vegas, the gambling was still limited to Fremont Street but drivers got a glimpse of the Flamingo Hotel being built just east of the highway out in the desert. That followed the Union Pacific line into Las Vegas. The popular clubs downtown surrounding the train station were the Union Plaza, the Las Vegas Club, the Golden Gate and the Apache Hotel. They made a modest living from Roulette and Faro but the big games were Craps and Poker. Slot machines were just an afterthought. The war was over and people were feeling positive since we kicked Hitler's ass and the pace of life was picking up and people were starting to hop the Union Pacific train in Los Angeles and heading for Las Vegas as a destination rather than just a stop-over on the way back east. In fact, the trains started to get so full the Union Pacific put a special run on the weekends called the Las Vegas Flyer that went non-stop from downtown Los Angeles to Las Vegas. When Howard Hughes took over the town, he bought a special luxury car for the train and although he would fly himself from L.A., he often sent his best friends who didn't like to fly his private Pullman car.

Although Bugsy's Flamingo didn't go over very well, it wasn't because there weren't gamblers in Las Vegas, but the gamblers that were here preferred wooden floors, cheap booze, 25 cent Craps, 10 cent Roulette and cheap rooms; often running $3 for a regular room and $7 for a room with a toilet and bath. The Flamingo had plush carpeting in the casino, $25 rooms, $1 Craps and 50 Cent Roulette. Steaks, often a buck elsewhere, were $8 at Bugsy's place, everything the Las Vegas gambler wasn't going for. So the Flamingo was doomed to fail, but other hotels sprung up in that area: the El Rancho, the Desert Inn, the Sahara, and the Thunderbird, followed by the Frontier. The point I'm trying to make here is that you can't tell the gamblers what they're going to like, they'll tell you that and either you listen up and do it right or they'll stay away in droves. It cost Bugsy a slug in the back of the head from a rifle to open his eyes, so to speak.

But in the early days on Fremont Street they realized they needed to speed things up because the crowds were getting bigger and bigger. The games of Roulette and Craps were fine. Poker was necessary although it didn't net much money for the casino; they had to have it for the old guys. But the game of Faro was slow and didn't make much money for the house either. The game of Blackjack wasn't really known but popular in the casinos in Europe. Since Nevada was the only state with legal gambling, it was up to the Nevada casino owners to set the standard. There were a few blackjack tables set up and the game was easy to play and the most important thing to the casino was it was an easy win for the house and it was a fast game. The better dealers were picked to learn and deal the game and in the right hands could get out as many as 300 hands an hour with seven spots going, if the players knew how to play. Back then although the tables were set up for seven spots, they would often let as many as ten players at a table. Faro, on the other hand, would only get out a round every few minutes and there weren't many losers or winners compared to Blackjack.

Back then it wasn't unusual for one player at the table who knew the game well to play the hands for the other players that didn't know the game as well and it also wasn't unusual for that player to get tips from the other players if he helped them win, which is what got the dealers involved. When they found they could make tips by helping the players beat the house, they did their best to screw the house and work with the players. In the days before surveillance, and even before the catwalks, it was up to the floorman to survey the games and when his back was turned anything went.

The train ride on the Union Pacific's' Las Vegas Flyer from L.A. was known as the "gambling train" The riders brought cards for the eight hour ride and would practice playing Blackjack between each other, often losing their stake on the ride up to slick dealers who would work the train. But the crowds were fairly tame back then until the early '60s when a singer/actor from Hollywood whose career was stagnant since the '40s decided to try a comeback in Las Vegas. From the first time he took the stage at the Sands, Las Vegas would never be the same.

THE RAT PACK

The story behind the Rat Pack was formed back then in the lounge at the Sands. The original Rat Pack was Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart, Loren Bacall, Judy Garland and her husband Vincent Minnelli, who would get together to gamble and watch the shows. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were a popular act in Las Vegas, as was Joey Bishop. Sammy Davis, Jr. was a big hit with the lounge crowds that were mesmerized by his dancing and singing. They had their own private booth and would often play poker while sitting at the table. Hedda Hopper, who was a well-known and well-feared Hollywood gossip columnist in the '40s and '50s, famous for her outrageous flower hats, was snubbed one night at the Sands while watching a Sinatra show and not invited to sit at his private table. The next day in her column she wrote about the incident saying, "Those people that call themselves Hollywood are nothing more than a pack of rats." The next day Sinatra had a jeweler in Beverly Hills make stickpins of rats with ruby eyes, he went on stage that night and handed them out to Bogart and Bacall and Garland and the others and said, "If she wants to call us a pack of rats ladies and gentlemen, let's show her everyone who's in the Rat Pack." And when he was quoted in the Las Vegas paper the next day, the name stuck. Then one night Dean came on stage with Frank and at the end of the show announced they were both headed to the Desert Inn to catch Joey Bishop. Hundreds walked down the strip with the performers to walk into Bishops' show and together with Bishop went to catch Sammy at the Sahara, which, with the exception of the Moulin Rouge, was the only casino to let blacks play their lounges. (Only the Moulin Rouge would let Sammy stay in the hotel.) Hundreds jammed the showroom and Sammy brought them on stage and the Rat Pack was born. To this day there are still three existing gold rats, one in the Sinatra family, one that Judy Garland kept and Liza Minnelli still has, and one that Lauren Bacall still has and shows proudly.

But I digress on the story at hand. The game of Blackjack was always the same. A natural blackjack paid 1 ½ to 1, everything else paid even money. That's the way the game was made and that's the way it stayed for years. It wasn't until the late '70s that anyone had the balls to screw with the game. Bob Stupak, often called "The Polish Maverick" (by himself) opened his casino on the Strip called Vegas World. Its gaudiness, mirrored walls, a huge Big Six wheel thirty feet high in the lobby, a real space capsule adorning the inside of the casino and even a huge mural of a space walk painted on the outside, and neon everywhere made for poor reviews by everyone but the thousands of locals that flocked there to play in his casino. He had a new way of dealing Blackjack and everyone had to take a shot at it, so they lined up to play. The game was called "Double Exposure" and had the dealer turn both cards face up in front of him. The catch was that all ties lost, so if the dealer had a 20 and you had 20, you had to hit the hand to try to catch the ace, and all natural blackjacks only paid even money. He also had "Bottomless 21", which offered single-deck blackjack that was dealt to the bottom of the deck for anyone that thought they could count down a full deck. Few won at either game and after the thrill of the dealers' hole card exposed; he was lowered to a couple of Blackjack and Poker tournaments a year. For a couple years he had a big poker tournament where he would give the winner a new Rolls Royce with the understanding that he had to win it from Stupak in a one-on-one poker game. Stupak never gave one Rolls away. He was a great poker player. Not until now has anyone had the balls to screw with the game of Blackjack again. A mainstay in the casino, without Blackjack the casinos would literally be empty. Although slot machines are the meat, Blackjack is the bone. It's the game everyone knows. Most people that don't play Roulette or Craps are intimidated by the different odds and different bets, but they know they can sit down in a Blackjack game and just add up the cards and hope for the best. They know when they win, whatever they have bet they're going to win the same amount. They also know that if they're lucky to catch a natural blackjack, they're going to get one and a half times their original bet. This is what makes the game. You rarely hear much more than a small "yay" when they win a hand, but when they catch a snapper, people three tables away know someone caught a blackjack by the cheer that goes up. Regardless of whether they're new to the game or old players from years back, everyone cheers when they paint an ace. A few weeks ago, a Strip dealer told me that he heard there was going to be a change in his casino. A couple days later the memo came out and I went to the casino to see if it was true and sadly it was.

Many Strip casinos are now paying 6 to 5 on a natural blackjack on their single and double deck games. Now, on a $10 bet, you're going to get paid $12 rather than the traditional $15. But imagine you're a big player, you like to play $2,000 to $5,000 a hand, so rather than getting $3,000 for that two-grand bet you're going to get $2,400, a loss of $600! On a $5,000 hand it's a loss of $1,500, a loss of around 30%. Or you can look at it like those Strip casinos are now charging all their Blackjack players an additional 30% "privileged gambling" tax. Could you see making a $20 bet, hitting a blackjack and having the dealer take $6 off your $30 winnings telling you, "Uh, it's a tax sir, for sitting here in our casino"?

Well that's what they're doing right now at some of the Strip casinos on the single and double deck games. The excuse they give is to discourage card counters, whatever that means. What it really means is that they're going to phase out all the single and double deck games when players refuse to play them and stick to the shoes. The more experienced players that will refuse to play their stupid games will just go to the casinos that stick to the old game. Maybe the downtown casinos, particularly the Horseshoe, might make a comeback, thanks to the fact that they still stick to the single decks on most of their tables and still have high limits. The next jump the casinos are going to make is to the shuffle machines. All I can tell you about theses machines is just STAY AWAY. They don't "shuffle" the cards; they distribute the cards in various shelves and puke them back out in different orders. They're unyielding by breaking up any runs on the table and can't be beat. The fact that dealers have a tendency to shuffle cards in slugs, whether small or large, these clumps re-appear in the next shoe and a good player recognizes and uses it to their advantage, this will never happen on the shuffle machines. I have one at work and I can tell you I've never had a big winner on that table, EVER. The dealers hate dealing from the machine. It's repetitive and a pain in the ass, but worse, we don't drop any tokes since we never have any winners on the game. Take my word IT'S A FUCKING EVIL MACHINE!!

If you want to play Blackjack on the Strip and you like the old familiar face-down game of single or double-deck Blackjack, be prepared to pay the big casinos' new 30% "privileged casino" tax. What's to come on the other games? No more odds on craps? 25 to 1 on Roulette? A 10% vig on Pai Gow and Baccarat? The new monopolies on the Strip are flexing their power. When the MGM has all their casinos start, Park Place will follow and that represents 80% of all the Blackjack on the Strip and when they find a formula that soaks another dime out of each player they'll jump on it. It's an out-of-control machine and they're at it again, like I said in the last paragraph "IT'S A FUCKING EVIL MACHINE!!!" and I'm not referring to just the shuffle machines.

-Ken Pearlman