“When I called, the guy told me they really didn’t want a dealer. They wanted someone to come in and just play cards."

Recently, a friend was jolted by an unexpected discovery. She had lived in San Diego most of her life and thought she was familiar with its attractions, both famous and obscure. For years she had passed by modest little store fronts labelled card rooms, with small groups of men sitting around tables inside. She had always assumed old men gathered there to play cards or pinochle.

“The people who play over a long period of time have developed mechanisms for surviving."

“And then I met this guy who said he’d just won two hundred dollars playing poker. I thought he meant at a friend’s house or something, but he said it was at a card room. I couldn’t believe it! They play for money in those card rooms!” The thought of it left her slightly bewildered. Gambing in San Diego?

“Normally, I can spot a mechanical card thief the minute he walks in the door."

Lin Jakary

Indeed, one of the most peculiar things about San Diego’s card rooms is the fact that they exist at all. In a town noted for its conservative temperament, one can only marvel at such benign tolerance. Only a handful of California cities have exercised their right under state law to permit certain forms of poker, and San Diego is the largest. It also boasts a history as long and colorful as any.

Horton’s Legacy

When Alonzo E. Horton arrived here in 1867, two things quickly became evident: he had the instincts of a gambler, and San Diego would never be the same. After a cursory inspection of of the Old Town settlement, he is purported to have grandly announced that the whole place wasn’t worth five dollars. With that, he set about building a city where he wanted it.

His legacies abound to this day. For starters, there is downtown San Diego’s present location. With the big move to the waterfront, the town was well on its way as a shipping port. Shipping meant sailors. And they brought with them all of the bawdy habits associated with old tars and rowdy salts. Up sprung innumerable saloons, bordellos, and gaming rooms.

Before long, the harbor area at the end of Fifth Street had assumed a character and a name all its own. It was wild and boisterous, and affectionately known as the Stingaree. Origins of the name are clouded, but several sources attribute it to the resulting financial loss suffered by those who roamed its streets.

By 1880, the boom town atmosphere had attracted scores of professional gamblers, naughty ladies, and real estate developers. San Diego was on the map. Such was the reputation of the Stingaree that it brought to our shores a notorious lawman by the name of Wyatt Earp. He listed himself in the city directory as “Capitalist,” and lived up to it by opening three lively gambling rooms.

For twenty years the area prospered from a steady influx of newcomers. But the bonanza began to pale, and with it, some of the commotion which characterized the Stingaree. The final blow came when plans were announced for San Diego’s hosting the 1915 Pan American Exposition.

Under pressure from citizens’ groups, the police somewhat reluctantly moved in and deported over 130 prostitutes. With their abrupt departure, the area’s popularity diminished, and within ten years it was merely a slum.

One interesting footnote to the episode is that most of the Los Angeles-bound prostitutes purchased round-trip tickets. The ladies of the evening soon returned, and began operating in other areas of town, although much more discreetly.

Gambling, like prostitution, proved thick-skinned. The poker parlors, although not outlawed, found it necessary to adapt themselves to the changing times. They persisted on a smaller scale in the corners of neighborhood stores. But thanks to the pioneering efforts of some anonymous entrepreneurs, they slowly began to take shape as legitimate businesses.

The owners of the new “card rooms” charged customers by the game or by the clock. In the years preceding World War II, all that was needed to run such an enterprise was a business license, a couple of tables, and several decks of cards.

In June, 1941; the San Diego City Council passed its first ordinance regulating the card room business, and all owners subsequently had to meet with the approval of the Chief of Police. Certain other guidelines were included to keep the whole affair clean and make police inspections easier. It was an official act of recognition, but not much more.

The situation changed rapidly, however, when the country began to gear for war in the Pacific. As the number of soldiers passing through town grew, so did the card rooms. In 1944. the estimate of active rooms ranged from 120 to 150, most of them concentrated in the downtown area. Old hands who were present at the time also report that a number of traveling professionals moved in to take advantage of the innocent soldiers and mild winters.

The fact that more than a few young recruits were losing their hard-earned pay to the evils of gambling caught the attention of some of the city’s moral guardians. The Christian Business Men’s Committee wrote the City Council in 1944, urging a ban on the rooms.

“Many men, who have gone forth to battlefronts in the defense of our sacred liberties and have returned for a brief rest with the accumulated earnings which could not be spent in the jungle war fronts, have (in many cases being merely boys) entered into these card rooms and lost hundreds of dollars to professional card sharks.” The San Diego Union got into the act that same year, calling the card room situation “ the number one unsettled problem facing the City Council.”

The growing threat that the Council would take action against such hot spots as Mooneyhan’s, The Bomber, and Monte Carlo, moved Benny Gordon, articulate owner of Benny’s, to philosophize, “It’s a joke. Who ever heard of anyone stopping a person if that individual was hell-bent on gambling? No! Mister, it just isn’t done in this enlightened age. Supposing they do close us up, what happens? Well, the moochers move in and they start hustling the boys up to apartments.

They’ll clip them plenty, sell them stinko booze, and if they put up a beef—they’ll get bopped. Me? I think it’s a bum rap.”

After much heated debate in the council chambers, a decision was made to shut down all poker parlors in the city. Only the desperate, heroic efforts of several card room operators spared young GI’s from dented heads and stinko booze. They gathered enough signatures on a recall petition to halt the closure one day before it was to take effect.

In response, the city fathers enacted an amended set of regulations, most of which are still in effect today. There has been no effort to reconsider matters recently, and today about 75 card rooms remain active. Most of them are only marginally profitable, but a few are very healthy.

Gamblers vs. Card Players

“Hell, you want to know what flat broke is? Flat broke is when I had to walk seven miles home because I didn’t have a penny left. Lost every cent. Didn’t even have a dime to call for a ride. There was a time when I’d rather raise the pot than eat.”

Rod DeWald sits behind the counter at Benjie’s Card Room, one of the busiest in town. As a floorman, it’s > his job to handle the chips and cash, r eep track of table openings, and generally see that everyone is comfortable. He’s been a card player for 32 years. It’s what he knows best and enjoys most. But he’s long since contained the demon that drove him nearly bankrupt more than once, content now to remain on the sidelines.

In those active years, though, he claims to have seen it all. He’s been clipped in “flat joints,” has seen every kind of cheater, and frequented the once popular after-hours games at places like the Comanche Bowl and Doc’s in La Mesa. Summing up his vast experience, he says, “I’d gladly give back every dollar I won for every dollar I lost.”

During a lull at the cash register, he ponders a question. There’s an important distinction to be made, and he wants to get it right. “There are gamblers, and there are card players.” The difference, he feels, is significant. Gambers are troubled souls. What they need is help, not a hot tip on the sixth at Caliente.

Card players could care less about football odds or daily doubles. They enjoy sitting down with a group of friends and flirting with lady luck over a felt-covered table. They don’t need any help, unless it’s in the form of that elusive ace. Card players can lose some money now and then. Gamblers can lose it all.

DeWald believes most of the regulars who play cards at Benjie’s are sensible. Even though some may play cards five or six times a week, they aren’t hooked the way he once way. But he concedes that there are lots of people he calls “pigeons.” They come in every Friday night with a paycheck and go home broke. “Their problem is that they are lousy card players, but just won’t admit it.”

He says there are quite a few men who try to make a living at poker. “They’ll hit a lucky streak, quit their job, get all puffed up, and turn professional. But when that streak breaks, they go down the tubes.” Such dismal failures do not deter the masses, however.

As an indication of Benjie’s popularity, DeWard notes that people frequently call in an hour before the doors open to reserve a spot. Most players prefer sitting down to a full table, and phoning early assures them of that.

The clientele, like that of most rooms, is almost entirely male. They range in age from early twenties to senior citizens, and represent everything from welfare cases to professionals. The atmosphere, enhanced by the presence of a grill and fountain, is much like a friendly, down-home cafe. There seems to be a lot of chatter and mingling.

Many of the players know each other, although DeWald points out that it’s often only by a nickname. They may sit across the table for years and not know a last name. “Somebody ties a nickname on ’em and that’s that. It sticks. There’s Pegleg Pete, Lo Ball Johnny, Taxi Cab Jack, Slippery Jim, Big Red, Bicycle Bill. That’s how they know each other.”

At Benjie’s, the games go on six day a week. Its prominent downtown location, moderate betting stakes, and 35 years of operation have made it a very profitable enterprise. But it is unusual among card rooms. Most are small, with less than the legal limit of seven tables. As the city charges twenty dollars per table each month, an unused one can be costly. The smaller rooms generally rely on local residents who stop by as much for the social contact as for the poker. In that sense, they serve a purpose somewhat like the park benches in Horton Plaza, or downtown hotel lobbies. They are places for lonely men to gather and chat.

Unfortunately, the owners of card rooms cannot survive on talk alone. To make money, they’ve got to have a game going. The law stipulates a maximum charge of two dollars an hour per person, but many of the smaller rooms charge less in order to keep play within the limits of restricted budgets. Cutting corners so tightly creates problems. The pressure to get a game going can sometimes lead to rather questionable practices.

The Shill Game

Tim is a student at San Diego State. He had never set foot inside a card room until he answered an ad posted at the school’s student job board. A local room was looking for someone to deal cards a few hours each morning.

“When I called, the guy told me they really didn’t want a dealer. They wanted someone to come in and just play cards. It sounded interesting, so I went over. The owner thought I’d come by to play, but when I said I was there about the job he got real nervous and told me to get out. I didn’t know what was going on, so I went around the corner to a pay phone and called him back. He told me to come in the next morning.”

Tim sat down the following day with the two owners who explained that they would pay him $2.50 an hour in cash to play the role of a regular customer. He would be given twenty dollars for chips, and then simply wait for a “live” customer. The room was having trouble starting a game before one or two in the afternoon, but with Tim and the three house employees present, a person could walk in and the five of them would get things moving. He was to be a shill, a confederate.

“They, told me everything was going to be aboveboard. No cheating. No signals. Nothing funny. But they had these rules about playing with house money. For example, I couldn’t bet at all unless I was dealt a pair of aces or better. They didn't want me just throwing their money away. It gave them an advantage, though, since they would know I had aces if I did bet.” His first day on the job, Tim lost seventeen dollars, but the owners didn’t mind. He wasn’t expected to win. just to he a good actor. If their regular customers discovered the hoax, they would never come back.

Under existing San Diego law, the use of shills is completely legal. Speaking for the Police Department’s Vice Squad, Lieutenant John Gregory says that playing with house money is a common way for small rooms to keep their heads above water. He’s quick to point out, however, that cheating is another thing. But with the limited number of officers assigned to Vice, it’s nearly impossible to spend the time necessary to uncover the occasional fraud. The manpower devoted to card rooms is used mainly in an effort to crack down on major violations like backroom bookmaking and prostitution.

Gregory feels certain that the great majority of rooms are absolutely clean. Owners, he says, realize it’s in their best interest to run a straight game. If they don’t, sooner or later someone is going to blow the whistle. The grapevine works as well as any costly surveillance the police might undertake.

The judgment of various card room employees and patrons seems to bear him out. One experienced floor-man says it’s common knowledge that shills are used in smaller operations. Usually they are trusted and skillful players who keep half the winnings above the house stake. He thought paying a shill an hourly wage was a bad idea and rarely done. As long as there is no cheating, few seem to mind. One card room owner has recently gone so far as advertising in the San Diego Union for “game starters.”

Mechanics

With thousands of dollars changing hands every night in the city’s card rooms, one might think the situation ripe for card sharks. Professional cheats are a problem, but apparently not a critical one. For various reasons life has been made rather difficult for those known as “mechanics.”

Years ago, when card rooms were more numerous than bars, open-ended games and the huge volume of soldiers made it easier for a cheat to move in, make a killing, and shuffle down the street before anyone was the wiser. Strange faces were the rule rather than the exception. Today, a new face in an old game is apt to elicit close scrutiny. If he starts winning big with disturbing regularity, chances are someone will make it a point to keep an eye on him.

There are numerous ways a mechanic can work. He can simply hold onto a card which he’ll put to good use later, sometimes utilizing a machine which pulls a card up his sleeve. Or he might deal in a fancy way, from the bottom of the deck, for example.

One of the more common and devious methods is to work with a partner. The two players get together before entering a card room and work out signals which will permit them to communicate surreptitiously. They can telegraph a “pat” hand, one which 4s sure to win. Or they may bet heavily, pretending to be in competition, and thus force other players to fold in favor of what appears to be a strong hand.

Card room owners approach the problem of cheaters much like harried retail managers deal with shoplifters. Everyone agrees a certain amount of it goes on, but one must be very careful when pointing the accusing finger. A suspect must move beyond reasonable doubt before an owner will throw him out.

Ralph Brown, who has operated card rooms in San Diego since 1940, says cheaters are “something you have to watch for every day.” Although he’s hdd to deal with them many times, he’s called the police on only three occasions. Official help is not often needed. If a man is caught cheating, he usually wastes no time finding the nearest exit.

Another long time owner says he relies on a sixth sense. “Normally, I can spot a mechanical card thief the minute he walks in the door. But sometimes they get by. If I don’t catch them, someone else will. And you’d better believe there are places in this city where a card thief gets his justice due in the back alley.”

The greatest single deterrent to cheating, though, is the honest players. There is nothing quite like the wrath of a clean player who’s been robbed. Besides, there is plenty of money to be won playing it fair and square.

The Cadillac of Card Rooms

There are perhaps a half-dozen card rooms in San Diego where the stakes are very high. In these rooms moderate games are also played, but certain tables are set aside where players can change the betting by mutual consent so that a thousand dollars or more may be riding on one hand.

Nearly all the big-money rooms play low ball, a form of draw poker in which the lowest hand wins. Because there is considerably more luck than skill involved, the game was outlawed in San Diego until 1973 when, at the urging of card room operators, the City Council amended the code. The result was a noticeable increase in business.

Those who have tried both regular high draw and low ball say there is no comparison. Where high draw requires some calculation to make a winning hand, low ball is lean and easy. It is a very fast game. Several of the rooms employ the services of dealers who are capable of passing out up to 50 hands an hour. The faster the cards come, the quicker the betting, the more opportunity to take that next gamble.

If Benjie’s Card Room downtown is the trusty old Volkswagen of poker parlors, then the Lucky Lady, on El Cajon Boulevard, must be the Cadillac. One is immediately struck by the decor: thick carpets, wood panelling, heavy stuffed furniture. Instead of Benjie’s in-house grill, a bespectacled little man wanders in regularly, taking orders for anything from cheeseburgers to steak. And there’s something else, somehow missing at Benjie’s. It’s the sound of poker chips being plinked down on poker chips. Like the crash of pins at a bowling alley, the muffled tinkle of chips never stops.

Most of the dealers in the Lucky Lady are women. They work with a quiet fury, shuffling, dealing, arid calling for bets. The pressure is relentless. Pressure to deal good cards, to keep up the fast pace, to avoid mistakes, and to gracefully accept the loser’s ill temper. They rotate tables every half hour to relieve the tension.

Cathy is an attractive woman with stylishly short hair, alert eyes, and an easygoing manner. She’s been a dealer at Lucky Lady for only a few weeks. A friend who knew she was looking for a job suggested she stop by and talk with owner Larry Barry. She had never been in a card room and knew little of poker. “At first I thought it was pretty weird, the jargon and money and all. But it turned out to be quite friendly. It’s really a homey place.”

She began by watching experienced dealers go through their moves in the afternoon when the pace is slower. Soon she was dealing some herself and quickly got the hang of it. The money is good, although she won’t say how good. Dealing a winning hand, for example, can mean a large tip, as if she had done it intentionally. As for the infrequent verbal abuse and frayed nerves occasioned by a big loss, she says it’s part of the game.

Suddenly across the room there is a commotion. A very large man named Joe raises his voice. He’s drunk. Several players at the table pick up their chips and leave, muttering out loud about his belligerence. Before anything can be done, Joe erupts with wild rage. He shouts across the table at a diminutive man with long, thinning hair. “I want your ass, buster!”

Everyone is on their feet, and a circle forms. The manager steps in trying to mediate the dispute but is bodily shoved aside. Joe is at least a foot taller than the small man, who now heads for a phone, calling out that he’s going to get the police. No one is sure what to do. Joe lets loose with a long string of expletives, flailing his arms every which way. Someone shouts, “The cops are here!” Miraculously, a patrol car has pulled up to the curb and two young officers, considerably smaller than Joe, step out to inspect the trouble.

Their passing at that moment may have been coincidence. The fact that they could clearly see the problem was not. Since 1944, the laws regulating card rooms have required that they be located on the ground floor and have windows facing the street. It was a precaution well taken.

The officers and Joe step outside with the manager to talk things over. No one was punched. No real harm done. The patrons buzz with excitement. Cathy says such incidents are very unusual and, anyway, Joe has a reputation for getting a little rowdy when he drinks.

On the sidewalk, handshakes are exchanged, the officers amble back to their car, and Joe moves on down the block. Cathy looks at her clock. It’s nearing 11 p.m. “Things move faster here at night. There’s more real betting the closer it gets to midnight. They try to make up their losses, and it can get pretty strange sometimes.”

Fundamental Questions

Any effort to ascribe motivations to the variety of people who frequent San Diego’s card rooms is bound to be risky. Still, the question is an intriguing one.

Nicos Mouratides has given the subject considerable thought. He is a professor of sociology at San Diego State, specializing in the sociology of mental illness. Since his days as a Greek patriot and resistance leader, he’s been drawn to people and situations that hover close to life’s extremes. His experiences in the underground, battling both Nazis and British, have given him a close look at great risks and death. After fleeing Greece in forced exile, he studied in the United States and came to San Diego State in 1960. He’s been playing poker in card rooms for five years.

He is a handsome, energetic man fond of physical exercise (former Greek decathalon champion) and poker. As for the severe hardships he suffered leading Greek resistance efforts, he says, “When you come back from death, life is a bonus. You cannot be very intense. I take one day at a time.”

He’s always enjoyed gambling, and overcame his own reluctance to visit local card rooms when he decided he was perpetuating inaccurate stereotypes.

“Poker is one of the few authentic experiences left in this world. There’s nothing phony about it. It’s for keeps. You see, this society is a technical society, and the fundamental questions are always pushed to the back. We don’t want to think about them.

“Poker involves a confrontation with a paramount issue: Am I a winner or a loser? Ultimately, so many of the serious questions of existence boil down to that. The whole idea is to find out if you’re a winner or a loser.”

He brushes aside the question of his own winning and losing. Sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses. In the long run, he has calculated, one is lucky to break even. Losing to cheats, though, turns his easy smile to a scowl. “I think the safest place to play is a card room. That’s a big point in their favor.” He referred to the time in his own home when he “lost” a great deal of money to a rogue he had considered a friend.

He doubts people who say they’re hooked on gambling. “I get suspicious of people who claim there are those who can’t help themselves. Even the nuttiest nut can help some things under certain conditions. This notion of addiction is a dangerous one. First of all, it absolves this person from the responsibility for his acts. And second, I think it impoverishes the complexity of being human. It evades the real questions.”

The real questions, in Mouratides’ view, have more to do with survival. The poor fellow who habitually loses his paycheck at the card table just doesn’t last.

“The people who play over a long period of time have developed mechanisms for surviving. They cannot write a book about it. They cannot speak about it. But they sense it. So, who is left are the ones who have survived the struggle. And anybody who thinks his skill is the decisive factor, he is a fool.”

Whether or not Mouratides is correct may be something of a moot point, as he himself acknowledges. “Poker is not definitive. It offers no pat answers. That’s why it keeps going. You’ll never get your answers. Am I a loser or a winner? On your death bed you’ll still be wondering about it. Poker, you see, addresses itself to the question that has no earthly answer.”

Meanwhile, at card rooms throughout the city, men continue to gather in the haze of cigar smoke day after day. Are they restless skeptics testing their earthly limits? Does a painfully big loss represent metaphorical death?

Cathy, the Lucky Lady dealer, recounts a story she swears she believes, whether it actually happened or not. ‘These guys were playing low ball, and one man picked up his cards and looked at them. All of a sudden he slumped over and fell on the floor. One of the other guys jumped up and yelled at the floorman, ‘Come on, we need a live one here!’ ”