Most gamblers, especially bosses, are superstitious, but sometimes it gets a little ridiculous. The boss of one big Strip hotel keeps a salt shaker in the desk in the crap pit. When the dice start passing, he grabs the salt shaker, walks over to the shooter, and sprinklces salt all around him and on the player's shoes, if he's wearing any. This boss has been doing this for years and the only result has been a dirty carpet. To the dcalell his nickname is Salts.
The superstitious nature of one casino boss cost him about S50, 000 a year. A high roller who often came into the club started shooting the dice one evening and they were passing. He would strike or click his chips with the dice just before shooting and it so happened he was making numbers. A boss standing there said, "You can't do that."
"Well, I am superstitious," the player replied. "It doesn't hurt anyone." He clicked the dice on his chips again and rolled another number. "Well, I am superstitious also," the boss said. "You can't do that." "You are being superstitious with my money," the player mapped.
He picked up his money and 'walked out and has never, returned to that club. Yet he had been losing about $50,000 a year shooting craps in that online casino.
Australian gambling
In the early days of Australian gambling some of the clubs weren't doing very well. One casino was going very bad in the dice and 21 pits so the boss went to a fortune-teller. She read the cards and told him to erect a large light in front of the hotel, and that would change his luck. He did and two new partners bought in a few days later for two million dollars.
The superstitious boss of a hotel on the Strip was famous for changing dealers when the dice were passing. Sometimes he would change whole crews all at once to try to change his luck. One morning a fire broke out in one of the hotel's room sections. The boss's partner called him at 4:30 a.m. to tell him there was a fire in the hotel and the fire was burning real bad. The superstitious boss called back about fifteen minutes later to ask about the fire. His partner told him it was still burning fiercely. "Change the firemen on the hose," the superstitious boss suggested.
Dealers and Club
We'll never know if it would have helped; the section of rooms burnt to the ground. When one of the newer clubs opened recently, one of the point men (a point man owns a small percentage of a club) had the casino help scratching their heads over his actions. He would walk around the 21 and crap pits muttering and grumbling and staring at certain dealers. One day he came over to a shift boss and said, "I want you to take .down the names of all the unlucky 21 and crap dealers."
Bewildered, the shift boss replied, "I don't know what you mean by 'unlucky' crap and 21 dealers."
"Well," the point man explained, "as I walk around this club I see some stick men on these tables calling winners and some don't."
"We must have winners and losers," said the shift boss. "If the club won all the time, we would be out of business."
The point man insisted, saying "We don't want those type of dealers working here."
But the shift boss went to the major casino owner and told him the story. The owner assigned the point man to watch the food checkers in the kitchen.
