1.
EASY MONEY

At the gambling table, there are no fathers and sons.
—Chinese proverb

First card game I ever played was bridge. Took to it pretty quick, to hear my grandmother tell the story. Said I had a real knack for it, and I guess I did, although, to tell the truth, I had a good feeling for any kind of card game. Whatever I was playing, I saw the cards better than most, read my opponents better than most, and knew what was coming better than most. I'll say this: me and cards, we got along.

Bridge was my grandmother's game, and she passed it on to me and my younger brother, Jeff, as soon as we could count and fan out our own cards. We were six or seven years old and struggling to hold and play our hands, but otherwise doing a good job of it with her seventy-year-old friends. Every weekend we'd drive to my grandparents' house on the other side of Knoxville, and before long my grandmother or my grandfather would bring out a deck of cards. I was usually my grandmother's partner, which I took as a high compliment, because in cards, as in most everything else, we Moneymakers liked to win. Hearts, spades, gin, cribbage —my grandmother taught me a whole bunch of card games, but we kept coming back to bridge. Everything else was what you played until you could get a good game going —and the good game was only as good as your partner.

My father's games were craps and blackjack, and I took to the latter soon enough, almost by osmosis. Craps was mostly a mystery to me as a kid, but blackjack made a kind of perfect sense; it seemed winnable, doable, even with the edge given the dealer. Dad played blackjack whenever he could —and talked about it sometimes when he couldn't —and I learned by watching and listening and later on by playing head-to-head with him in low-stakes or fun-stakes tutorial sessions. I learned the game in theory, and I learned it in practice, and here again it came easy. The nuances of betting would come over time, along with the ability to count and track cards without really counting and tracking cards, and the humility to realize that all this theory wouldn't mean squat at a real table, but I understood the odds and basic betting principles right out of the gate. That's how it was with most card games. Teach me a game and there was a good chance I'd get it in just a couple hands, and it was better than even money that I'd beat you at it before long. I don't set this out to brag —but hey, like I said, me and cards, we got along just fine.

Dad didn't have a regular neighborhood blackjack game or anything like that, but he found a whole bunch of ways to get himself out to Vegas or Atlantic City or some other casino —most times on someone else's dime. He ran the motor fleet at the University of Tennessee, but back as far as I can remember, he also ran a small travel agency as a sideline, and one of the great benefits to the travel business is the windfall of complimentary or agent-rate trips from cruise lines, resorts, and hotels looking to promote various packages. My father did a lot of cruise-line business, and I recall going on a lot of cruises during our school vacations. Every school break, or just about, we were off on another adventure. We went to Panama City often, and to Orlando, but the cruises stand out. We lived fairly modestly —my mother was a homemaker for most of my growing up, and we kids wore each other's hand-me-downs, and our house wasn't the biggest or fanciest by any stretch —but we took full advantage of these vacation deals, and some of my earliest memories were of my father, off in the ship's casino while my brother and I and soon enough our younger sister, Brandy, were skulking around the entrance, scheming our way inside. Security was usually tight on those cruise lines, and I don't think any of us ever made it onto the casino floor except to breeze by a slot machine and pull the handle on the fly, but that seemed to us the ultimate rite of passage. To be welcomed into those casinos, to drink and smoke and gamble —man, that was just the ultimate, and we held it out there as some far-off goal.

As vices go, my family had things pretty much covered, and in such a way that everything seemed to go hand in hand. My mother's family ran a liquor store —they still do, as a matter of fact, and we've all taken turns helping out at the store over the years —so I guess you don't have to look too hard to find the source of my lifelong hobbies and extracurricular activities. Kids are drawn to what they know, and, growing up in my household, I knew about cards and gambling and drinking. Taken together, these hobbies can be a dangerous mix, and there were times when I was stupidly determined to take them together and prove it, but each one on its own was mostly manageable, and I mostly managed to keep out of trouble.

For a good, long while anyway.

Outside of those weekend trips to my grandparents' house in Knoxville, and those frequent vacation perks courtesy of my dad's travel agency, our basement was the center of my universe. It was a real magnet for me and my brother and our ever-changing group of friends. It's where I learned to shoot pool and roll dice and play foosball, and to pit my skills against the other neighborhood kids'. I quickly realized that it wasn't enough to merely outshoot, out-think, outroll, or otherwise outplay my opponents. There had to be money involved —pennies at first, nickels and dimes soon after, and up and up. It was boring without a bet going. I couldn't see the point, and my friends seemed to hold to the same opinion, because we figured a way to build some action into almost anything.

At nine or ten years old, we'd invented our own game of dice. I guess craps was a little too complicated for us, or maybe it lacked the kind of head-to-head drama we seemed to crave, so we came up with a watered-down version. Three dice, one roller. The roller would bet on a specific number, one through six. If that number came up on one die, he'd get paid; if it came up on two, he'd get paid twice; if it came up on all three, he'd get three times his money; and, if it didn't come up at all, he didn't get paid. It wasn't all that sophisticated, but it was a decent game of chance, and it didn't take a genius to realize that, over time, the house tended to win. This was a small, dinky game of dice, and we were small, dinky kids, but even we could see how the odds tilted one way. And because it was my house, I made sure that those odds were tilted in my favor more often than not.

My buddy Troy Anderson and I were the ringleaders. I'm still close to Troy —he's the assistant chef at one of the restaurants where I work —and we're always reminding ourselves of the scams we used to pull when we were kids. Other kids collected baseball cards or played video games, but we hustled. Anyway, we tried. We were constantly inventing games and then trolling the neighborhood for our marks —a couple girls who lived on the street behind ours, four or five guys who lived on the other side of the neighborhood, some new kid just moved into town. Whatever crazy contests we'd come up with, we'd find some way to lay some action on it —and, inevitably, we'd find someone to take the bet. There was one game, a hockeylike contest involving shin guards and baseball bats and soccer balls that for a stretch of a couple weeks ran as a particular favorite, although I can no longer recall how we handled the wagering on this one, or if we even bothered. Mostly we bet on dice and cards and pool. Pool was my version of a sure thing. I was the best shooter in the neighborhood. Here again, I don't set this out to brag, but that's just how it was, and I played it to advantage. I don't think I knew the first thing about hustling, but I gave it my best shot all the same. And my best shot was pretty damn good. My grandfather taught me how to play when I was five or six —with little sticks, between hands of bridge — and I learned about spin and mustard and English when the other kids were busy learning how to read. I couldn't really hustle my friends, though —not because I had any great moral difficulty with taking money from them but because they knew they had no chance against me —so when it was just me and Troy or me and another good buddy, we'd come up with other contests to make things interesting. We'd hover over our bar-size pool table and come up with all these silly, convoluted ways to lag, and we'd bet on that; we'd bet on who could roll the cue ball against four rails and have it come to a stop closest to a mark we'd set out on the felt, and we'd keep at it until one of us was tapped out.

I was the best card player, too, only the cards didn't always fall your way, so pool seemed a better bet. I was also a kick-butt foosball player, but here again the ball didn't always roll the way you wanted it to, and every now and then even the best players can be beaten by a lucky opponent. I quickly realized that it paid to cut the odds in your favor in what ways you could. And so, more often than not, we played pool, where a strong player could essentially control the table. Ask any of my poker buddies and the folks I come up against online and they'll likely tell you I play poker the same way: I like to control the table, to set the tone, dictate the flow of the game. Otherwise, what the hell's the point?

I like to win, is what it comes down to, and I like to back that up with a little bit of money, and it goes to how I was when I was a kid. There was action in everything we did, even if it never really amounted to much. It kept things interesting, and it kept us on the edge of our little seats. On a good night, I'd pocket four or five dollars and I'd be on cloud nine. Then the next night, I'd give it all back. One night I took $80 off a kid from the neighborhood named Mike Cada, in dice and pool. I was twelve years old, and $80 was all the money in the world. Hell, I could get anything I wanted for $80, and I walked up the steps from my basement that night thinking life was pretty damn good. Eighty bucks! Naturally, I gave that money back over the course of the next week, but it was an impressive bankroll while it held out. That's how it worked with us, most of the time. We traded money more than we really gambled it. Or we took turns holding it for each other. We never really spent it on anything, just set it down in the pot until it was our turn to win it back again. Every so often, when we'd get a bump in our allowance or earn some small amount doing odd jobs, the stakes would get a little higher for the next while, but until we were teenagers, there was never much more on the line than bragging rights.

Gambling aside, our house was a real neighborhood hang. My brother and I were close enough in age that we had many of the same friends and many of the same interests, and when there were no other kids around, we had each other. There was always something happening. And my mom was always at home when we were kids (later on, she started working at her parents' liquor store), except I don't think she had any real idea what was going on downstairs. Oh, she definitely would not have approved of any gambling. No way. She'd have grounded us big time, and punished us a few ways more besides, so we were careful not to mention it. It wasn't like we were sneaking around behind her back or anything, but I don't think it would ever have occurred to her that her boys were shaking down their friends for their allowances and pocket change —because, generally speaking, me and Jeff tended to come out ahead. My father knew what was going on, and these days I'm guessing he was secretly proud, but he looked away from it. I imagine he thought it was healthy, a natural part of growing up, or maybe he just didn't think much about it either way. Maybe he thought it was harmless, which it mostly was. Remember, this was small-stakes, penny-ante stuff. No kid was ever down more than a couple bucks, and, with just a few exceptions, no kid was ever up more than ten or twenty. Every now and then, my dad would pull me and Jeff aside and remind us to be careful, not to bet over our heads. You know, standard Gamblers Anonymous advice, and we listened respectfully and then went about our business.

Trouble was, Dad was betting right alongside us, so I don't know that we could hear him through his actions. And it wasn't just an occasional run at the blackjack tables on our family vacations, or a Vegas junket every now and then. Each night, for the longest time, we'd go down to the basement to shoot pool. Me and my brother and my dad. My sister never really got involved, and my mom certainly never got involved. But every night there'd be some cash flying back and forth among the Moneymaker men. My brother was a very good shot, too, and we were supercompetitive. We always had a line of credit going with each other. Whoever was up one night would usually let the debt ride until the next night. Double or nothing —or some other way to win it back. It got to where I couldn't shoot a game of pool unless I was betting on it. It was no fun to me. It was just wasting time. I had to have some money on it to make it worth my while to even try. When I got older and started dating, I'd bring girls back to the house, and if we got around to shooting pool, I'd want to bet on it. I mean, how crazy was that?

Copyright © 2005 by Chris Moneymaker