Keno

Keno is the most diabolical game ever to gain popularity. The Atlantic City Gaming Commission bans it and Las Vegas limits house take to 25% (It takes over 90% otherwise.) It is simple to play--just choose from 1 to 10 numbers from a field of 80. There are 3,535,316,142,000,000,000 possible arrays of 20 in a field of 80...three quintillion (!). An array of 20 of the 80 numbers shows up on a screen. If you play the favorite "4-Spot" game for $1 or $2 or $5 or $10 and those 4 numbers come up on the screen you win $72. for a $1. bet and exactly proportionate amounts for a $2., $5., or $10-dollar bet. The card plainly states what the probability of winning, say, the 4-spot game is--but it gives the probability of matching 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 numbers, never stating what the probability of winning one of them is. If you play a '10 spot' game and they all come up among the 20, you win $100,000, regardless of how much you bet. You can sit and watch all night and you might see a $72. win or two. And if it's a bar, Keno players are so goofy, they immediately buy a round for the house and a pack of smokes. With what's leftover, they play more Keno. And go to bed drunk and broke with a half pack of smokes.
You can have a lot more fun lighting your smokes with dollar bills than you can playing Keno. Keno is a losing proposition. However, it has a very strong appeal in a social settings. An appealing, but fruitless pastime. You never see a loner playing Keno. Maybe it's an entirely social pastime. At least once in a while someone wins a few bucks and fellow players win with them--drinks for the house--can I bum a cigarette?

There is an even worse game, never played in casinos etc., only on the street: ''Three-Card Monty,'' a red card, to follow and bet on, and two black cards. The house takes 100%. The trick is not in the mixing of cards, though a clever over-throw and under-through is important. It is in the fact that the 'dealer' takes bets only on the wrong cards, while stalling those with bets on the right card. If you think the dealer gives away a hand once in a while to spur business, you're as much a sucker as the losers. To show there is money flowing out, you can be sure it's to a shill. Nobody, but nobody, wins The Monty.. It's not that difficult to follow the right card--but try to make a bet on it!

And there's the old ''Nutshell Trick." Again it is easy enough to follow the shell with the pea under it--but when you bet on it you find there is no pea. That dealer can put the pea under any shell he wants during the shuffle, without your seeing the slightest indication of the switch.

Gold-Filled: Fancy or Farce

The Federal Trade Commission has banned the sale of anything less than 9Kt. gold, as karat gold. Otherwise you'd be buying 1Kt. 0r .1Kt. gold junk jewelry.
The worst of gold jewelry is electroplated gold, but that depends on the thickness of the plate, which is low to begin with and must be polished, making the gold by weight and volume less. Quite better is so-called 'gold filled,' a source confusion among buyers and of profit among jewelers.To be sold as 'gold-filled,' the gold must be physically applied, and that is done thusly: A one-inch thick gold rectangle of, say, 12Kt. gold of any dimensions, is rolled out thinly, and soldered to the base metal, usually copper, (or nickel) with a thin sheet of about .0025" thick solder. After melting the solder and sealing the gold to the copper you have 'gold filled.' But only on the top! Some work has to be yellow-plated to cover up irregularities at the interface of top and sides, called the 'edge effect.' If you want 1/20 12Kt. (1/40 24 Kt.) 'gold-filled,' commonly called "12/20," you roll a one-inch thick rectangle of 12Kt. gold so it is 1/20 of 12 Kt. gold by weight in proportion to the base of 19/20 parts copper by weight. Gold is heavier than copper, so that proportion can be misleading. The lighter/heavier the base, the thicker/thinner the rolled gold by volume must be. 'Gold-filled' anything is cheap jewelry with some notable redeeming qualities: It looks good, and it makes good chain, because the gold/solder/copper can be wrapped around itself so there is no 'edge effect' to cover up. And now there is 'double gold-filled' with a layer of gold on both top and bottom, but there is still, an 'edge effect' to deal with. As far as pure gold goes, there is little practical application, except in things like .999 fine 'gold leaf ' that woodworkers use to accent carved letters in wooden signs or plaques. It is so soft it is applied by deftly painting it on with an artist's paint brush.
Pure gold is also made into coins for collectors and bricks for alloying with other metals, or for a store of value like Fort Knox at first had 'backing' the dollar. (Economist Paul Samuelson suggests it is now the dollar that backs the gold, not vice versa.)
Finally, the base for any gold content item is copper or nickel, and never brass--that's an alloy itself containing zinc, which is a troublesome metal to do anything with.

Palindromes

There are word-for-word (WW) and letter-for-letter (LL) palindromes.
Here are a few:

Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron.---LL
Women understand men; few men understand women.---WW
You can cage a swallow, can't you, but you can't swallow a cage, can you. ---WW
A man, a plan a canal, Panama.--- LL
Dog as a devil deified; deified lived as a God.---LL--(John Barth)
Dennis Krats and Edna Stark sinned.--- LL
Bores are people that say that people are bores.---WW
God knows man. What is doubtful is what man knows God.--- WW

Single words:
Racecar, noon, radar, toot, kook, deified, etc.

Palindromic statements that make any sense at all are very hard to come up with in our language (with its 600.000 words!)

Bookies and Bookmaking

This is about betting on horseraces, specifically through a bookmaker. You get paid a bit less if you win, but you don't need to go to the track. Bookmaking is therefor a 'service,' and we all have to pay for services. Making a book (Yes, it's actually a 'book') is a little bit involved, but any kid with a high school education or a penchant for numbers and a lot of experience in and around tracks can do it. The enticement is that the bookmaker seldom loses--he sets up his book so losing is improbable. Also, it is illegal--the taxman gets nothing. In fact gambling at poker in your home or in a bar is illegal. That's what poker chips are all about.
Bookmaking is based on a kind of arithmetical shorthand called 'percentage.' An even money horse is said to be 50 percent; a 2-to-1 horse is 33 percent; a 3-to-1 horse 25; and a 4-to-1 horse 20. If there were two horses in a race, both at even money, the book would be 100 percent: if a bookmaker bet $1000 against each, he would break exactly even. If there were three horses and he laid $1000 at even money against each, he would win $1000 no matter what happened. This would be a 150% book. Bookmakers aim at an arrangement of odds that will work out to about 115%
A typical book on an eight-horse race, with the bookmaker laying $1000 against each horse would look like this:

Entry.	Odds.	Percentage.	Risk $1000 to win:
1	2-1	33	$500.
2	5-2	28	$400.
3	4-1	20	$250.
4	6-1	14	$167.
5	10-1	9	$100.
6	10-1	9	$100.
7	30-1	3	$33.
8	50-1	2	$20.
		118	=$1570.

If the favorite should win, the book would have to pay out $1000. of the $1070. it took in from bettors on the other horses. If the second should win, the profit would be $100. more. A victory for the extreme outsider, # 8, would mean a profit of $550. for the book.
The problem is filling the book. Customers always want to bet more than he wants to cover on certain horses, and want to ignore others--so his system is wrecked. He lowers odds against horses most in demand, but often this doesn't suffice. He cannot afford to turn away trade so he tries to place some money with other bookmakers. This is called "laying off." At the same time other bookmakers lay off on him. Bookmakers bet against bookmakers. Odds sometimes change so radically in response to the market that by post time the book's percentage has been erased and the bookmaker becomes a bettor on a large scale. So bookies can lose. But rarely because of a bookmakers's laying off network. Example By A. J. Liebling, "Liebling at Home."


Note: 'Place' and 'show' bets are not mentioned. Bookmakers seldom take 'show' bets, and small payoff for 'place' bets are handled by the same bookmaking procedures.