ARE PITBOSSES SUPERSTICIOUS?

Here I was starting on the floor surrounded by people who dealt with numbers,statistics, no place for supersticions don't waste my time worrying about the player squeezing his Troll doll,hell,get him a drink and forget about it. But I also found myself having to deal with bosses with the same superstitions the most orthodox Voodoo Priests practiced in their daily rituals.(I swear I once caught Benny Binion shaking a chicken foot and spreading flour on the floor under a $100 table) The boss would walk into the pit backwards from the left side facing east. At first it was insisted on by my boss the night a player (who it's said is fertalizing cactus SOMEWHERE IN PAHRUMP) first won $3,000. Later that night AFTER walking into the pit backward from the left side facing east,he took an old penny,stuck it under the table pad (heads down of course) where the player was sitting when he took a break. After he came back, he lost another $9,500 He still insists the 10 or 12 shots of Jack Daniels in that last 2 hours made NO difference at all, and though I still maintain, to this day, there's no such thing al "luck" I do show up to work with an ample supply of pennies, and always insist on sweeping down the table in front of a winning player and ask him politely to stand back while I "clean" his spot.They always appreciate a clean spot, at least until the spot is "clean" of their chips too!

Gamblers can be superstitious,wearing that lucky hat or lucky shirt,but the really superstitious ones are the people running the places. It's not uncommon to change the cards on a 21 table that's loosing,thats understandable,so is taking dice off a loosing crap table if they "get out of line" but then it gets rediculous, Dice, in some casinos are placed in what is called a "penalty box" where they sit forlornly until a pit boss decides that they have mended their ways and are ready for another chance at life.

There was a crap table at the Horseshoe that always showed a steady profit.The table killed any human who came in touch with it.Than one day it began to rain (headline news here before EL NINO) and a leak developed over one of the dealers, dropping rusty raindrops all over his white shirt. So he suggested to the pitboss that the table only had to be moved over a few feet.The pitboss roared "Are you crazy, this table is lucky right where it is" well it only makes sense, if table one is winning, and table four is loosing, any idiot knows, just move table four to where table one is, and they'll both make money. Moving a table for any other reason is just plain stupid.

Another true story was a floorman that was fired at the El Cortez (or as we dealers here call it the "El Comode" for having his left foot on a stool while the rack went South. As the Shiftboss wrote out his termination slip he told him "When you want WINNERS you put your RIGHT foot up, not your left foot , any idiot knows that!" One dice dealer told me of a time he was taken off a game at the Frontier. He'd thought he did something terrible as the pitboss screamed at him"I saw what you did, and you had the nerve to do it right in front of me! What do you think I'm deaf dumb and blind!!?" The dealer asked what he did, and the boss replyed "What did you do? you called that winner RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME AND MY BOSS!!" 3/29/98.

Coming Soon; the trials and tribulations of a casino legend Benny Binion.