There is a joke among policy-players that the game is the best in the world, because so many can play it at once. Different players have various ways of picking out the numbers they think will come out. Some go by dreams exclusively, some play chance numbers they run across in the streets, or signs or express wagons, while others make a study of the game and play by fixed rules.
As we have already hinted, the business of policy-playing is insignificant in comparison to what it used to be. Still we are assured that New York City is still spending a good many thousand dollars a day in "policy," two-thirds of which professedly, and really more, goes to the managers and agents. If policy-players would stop awhile and think seriously of their ways, they would cease playing; or if they would keep an account of all the money spent on the game for a month or two, they would discover that they had chosen a wrong road to fortune.
Pool gambling at the various race-courses in the suburbs of New York is now under stern interdict of the law. This feature is greatly deplored by those who are in the habit of patronizing this exciting pastime. Of course the business is carried on sub rasa in the city, in a sort of sporadic form. No doubt, if we are to reason from analogy, the pool-fever, emboldened by being "winked at" and tolerated, will, by and by, assume its noisy, epidemic manifestations.
It is hardly necessary to dwell on the familiar auction pool, with its close, stifling, dingy room; its crowd of solemn, stupid, wide-awake gentlemen seated in chairs before a platform, backed with a blackboard, on which are inscribed the names of the horses expected to start; and its alert, chattering auctioneer, gay as a sparrow, and equally active, fishing for bids, with strident voice and reassuring manner. A few words, however, may be spared to touch lightly on what is designated the "Mutuel" system, which was invented by M. Joseph Oller, an ingenious Frenchman, about 1866. Those who had the good fortune to attend Paris in 1867 may remember that M. Oller's indicators were prominent race-course features during the Great Exposition. They are now familiar to all frequenters of our American race-courses, and their mode of operation needs no explanation. The pool-seller's profit is safe as in all big gambling schemes. He subtracts a commission of five per cent., and thus makes a handsome profit when business is at all brisk.
The "Paris Mutuel" would appear to be a pretty square arrangement, but, according to those acquainted with its true inwardness, it has been "easily manipulated by those in control." There are two ways of cheating, according to one authority, and "both are practicable during the last moments of the race, when the horses are coming up the home-stretch. At this time everybody is anxiously intent upon the contest and nothing else, so that it is an easy matter for the operator to see what horse is ahead, and then quietly add five or ten tickets to his record on the indicator; or, on the other hand, if the horse favored by the 'ring' is away behind, he can quietly take off some of his tickets and so save $50 or $100 out of the five. The former, however, is the easier method and can be with difficulty detected, for very few people keep transcripts of the French pools, more particularly that before they are closed everybody is off trying to secure a good place to see the race."
The prohibition placed upon pool selling naturally renders the book-maker's occupation to be at a premium. Book-making is reckoned a "science," and is based upon the principle of the operator betting up to a certain limit, "play or pay," against every horse entered.
Despite all statements, official or otherwise, to the contrary, there are a large number of "hells" or gambling houses in New York city, in which millions of dollars are lost every year by unwary persons. The New York Herald of June 14, 1886, contains a synopsis of the experiences of an educated and high-toned young man belonging to a good family, who had descended from gambling to the practices of a sneak thief. According to the story he told Inspector Byrnes, he was in love and at the same time
"became infatuated with the gambling craze. I wanted to make my sweetheart some presents, and hoped to make enough at the gaming table to purchase what I wanted. My game was rouge el noir—"red and black"—and the establishments that I visited were on Sixth avenue, between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth streets, and in Thirty-second street, near Jerry McAuley's Mission House. Instead of winning I lost. I bucked the game and it 'bucked' me. Then I was penniless and became desperate. By honest ways I knew it would take a long time to pay my debts, and as I was in desperate straits I determined to steal. As I did not associate with professional thieves I had no reason to fear betrayal, so I became a rogue again."
There is this insuperable difficulty with the born gambler that he is unteachable. The fool who ruins himself at Homburg or Monte Carlo belongs to the same type as the young man above, whose identity was betrayed by a love-letter. Gamblers are always discovering some infallible system of beating the bank. The first word in La Bruyére's famous work—"Tout est dit" "Everything has been said,"—is true of gambling against the bank's system, which is to take a positive advantage which must win in the long run. Not only has everything been said, but everything has been done to beat the bank. Every move has been tried, and the result is evident to all but those who are given over to "a reprobate mind" and will not be convinced. "To gamble against the bank," said an eminent authority, "whether recklessly or systematically, is to gamble against a rock."
If the odds are so much against the insane gambler who, secure in an infallible system, hastens to place his foot on the neck of chance in what is called a "square" game, how must he inevitably fare in a "skin" operation. And the stranger who comes within our gates, bent on backing his methods by a wager, is almost sure to be beguiled into the "skin" game; for he is likely to meet, lounging around his hotel, some fashionably dressed young man who spends money freely, and who, by and by, kindly offers to show him around. He has run across a "roper-in," as he is well named, whose business it is to track the footsteps of travelers visiting the metropolis for business or pleasure. It is the engaging mission of those suave and persuasive gentlemen to worm themselves into the confidence of strangers, with or without an infallible system of beating the game, and introduce them to their employers, the gambling-hell proprietors. And when the poor, misguided pigeon is plucked, the adroit "roper-in" receives his commission on the profits realized. This hunting after pecunious strangers is so systematically carried on that it might be dignified by the name of a science. Keepers of gambling-houses are necessarily particularly wide-awake. They take care to be regularly informed of everything transpiring in the city that may be of interest to their business, and their agents and emissaries leave nothing to chance. They are not impetuous. They never hurry up the conclusion of the transaction. When the unwary stranger is in a fit condition for the sacrifice he is led to the gaming-table with as much indifference and sang froid as butchers drive sheep to the shambles.