Recreation: God Save the Ace

Outside, there was a chilly London night. Inside a Georgia accent interrupted the click of chips and slap of cards. “Hey, Doc, you got a winning pill?” Doc looked back across the table. His reply was short and savage: “I’d be taking it myself.” Then Doc turned back to the blackjack table. He lost $240 in the next four minutes.

Doc and his friend were two of 178 Americans who arrived in London last week from Atlanta on a gambling junket. They had come partly because they had never been to London and partly because, after Las Vegas, London has become the biggest gambling center in the world. So big, in fact, that a few clubs can now afford the Vegas gambit of flying in big gamblers, most expenses paid, and count on making a profit from the money their guests lose.

The Atlanta group got a week in London at a top hotel with all their meals, plus a round-trip jet charter flight. It cost them just $250 each. The Victoria Sporting Club picked up the rest of the tab. As with the three other Victoria-sponsored junkets this summer, that came to around $60,000, but the Americans have evidently been generous losers. “So far,” purrs one official, “we have managed to come out ahead.”

“The House Won.” Gambling on a large scale in London is less than five years old, dating from an act of Parliament in 1960 that made legal most forms of gambling for money—in a private club—for the first time in 100 years. The law specified that games played must not have odds favoring the house. So, paying at least lip service to the rule, the bank at roulette and craps and the deal at blackjack are offered to players (although in practice, few individuals feel rich enough to play against the whole table). The clubs, instead of taking a cut of winnings, charge membership fees that range from $1.40 to $115 (depending on how “exclusive” the club), and playing fees collected before a game begins. A single “shoe” at Chemin de Fer or Baccarat, for instance, costs a player from $1.40 on up to the whopping $1,680 charged for one high-stake game at Aspinall’s.

The arrival of the freewheeling, sports-shirted American is really what has put London into the international big time. Reports Victoria Owner George Wynberg: “This summer we had what I think was the biggest blackjack hand ever dealt in the world—$26,500. The dealer dealt himself a three, and all the Americans doubled and split their bets. None of them went bust, all pulling out between 17 and 20. The dealer dealt himself a seven and a ten; so the house won, thank God.”

The Bloody Game. To accommodate the Americans, craps have made their first appearance in London. At The Pair of Shoes club, one Texan was doing so well recently that he was finally riding $50,000. “You already own the second and third floors,” said the owner, covering the bet. “You might as well own the first too.” The Texan rolled an eight and took eleven tense flings before crapping out. Observed another American: “The dice get as cold here as they do anywhere else.”

But Americans like the idea of London, with its big, swanky clubs with ancient gaming names like Crockford’s, which first cut a deck in 1824. “We are looking for an elegance that does not exist in the States,” explained one. “Here bookmakers are rich, respected men. In the States, they are gangsters.” Agreed the doctor from Atlanta: “They’re better mannered about it, more cultured and genteel-like, but they’re really no different from Vegas. The aim of the game is still to bleed you as quickly as they can without actually spilling it on the floor.”