The Queen of Chance

By Jackie Shirley

Mary Brown was the wallflower of her high school graduating class, a shy young woman who eventually enrolls in a charm school. Mary moves to Las Vegas in the 1970s and becomes a skilled blackjack player, a fierce high stakes poker player, and an accomplished slot hustler. To her close friends, she’s the Queen of Chance because she’s in a class by herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jackie Shirley
• Release date: Jan 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311592217

Jackie Shirley

Jackie Shirley grew up in St. Joseph, Michigan and moved to Las Vegas in the 1980s. Jackie has been a professional drum instructor, a pool room owner, an automotive and aerospace tool designer, a blackjack instructor, and a professional 7-Card Stud poker player. Jackie can be reached at [e-mail]

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

What was the best kept secret in Las Vegas in the 1970s and 1980s? The Queen of Chance reveals how a small number of slot hustlers won millions of dollars without cheating or winning large jackpots. These slot hustlers had mastered the Rhythm System, an intricate technique that allowed them to manipulate the reels.

The Rhythm System was thought to be obsolete when the slot manufactures installed the Variator in 1951. As it turned out, the Variator was only a temporary fix because a new breed of slot hustlers eventually came into existence. The new rhythm player had to be extremely talented. Each machine had its own intricate timing cycle and no two machines played exactly alike.

The Queen of Chance is a fictional novel, but the techniques outlined to decipher a slot machine’s timing cycles are based on fact.

CHAPTER 1

The dazzling neon lights are losing their luster as the morning sun inches its way across the Las Vegas Strip. It’s the start of another day and the casino check-in counters will soon be filled with lines of eager tourists. Mythical Lady Luck is always working overtime, spreading her dreams of hitting it big in the famous city that never sleeps.

When the tourists enter a casino, there is an undeniable smell of money in the air. A hot streak on the craps tables, or a once in a lifetime pull on a slot machine, and the lucky player can kiss his problems goodbye. The fantasy of a quick trip to Easy Street keeps the tourists coming back year after year.

It was April 8th, a pleasant Tuesday afternoon when Mary Brown pulled her shiny new 1980 Buick into the parking lot at the rear of the Westward Ho Casino. After parking the car, she took one final minute to check her hair and makeup. Mary’s workday was about to begin.

When the car door swung open, her flowing skirt concealed her shapely legs as she stepped out of the car. Her attire is plain and simple, a style that matches her name. A twenty-six-year-old redhead with shoulder length hair and a remarkably pleasant smile, Mary has always made it a point to blend in with the crowd. Underneath her reserved demeanor is a woman with a raging ambition, combined with a fierce determination.

Mary walked briskly through the rear entrance of the Westward Ho. The small Strip casino was packed with tourists and the familiar sound of slot machines dominated the atmosphere. Unlike the women who play the machines for entertainment, the unassuming redhead with a pleasant smile plays only for profit. Mary Brown is a professional slot machine hustler.

In Mary’s profession, it’s not wise to leave a lasting impression with the casino personnel. She had four slot machines in the Westward Ho Casino that she plays regularly. She rotates from machine to machine and from casino to casino. She carries out this pattern day in and day out to avoid drawing attention to herself.

She also avoids taking too much money out of any one machine over a short period of time. If the casino’s records showed a particular machine was losing on a regular basis, that machine would most likely be replaced. It’s also possible that the casino personnel might spot a customer who cashes out a winner with remarkable regularity. Make yourself scarce is one of the golden rules she applies to hustling the casinos. One of her methods to adapt to the make yourself scarce rule is to alter her appearance occasionally. An assortment of wigs, eyeglasses, and a variety of hats went a long way toward changing her appearance.

Mary smiled when she saw that her chosen machine for the afternoon shift was not being played. She placed two empty coin racks next to her machine and then purchased a rack of $1 Westward coins from the carousel attendant. She sat the rack of coins to one side.

Mary hustled slot machines that are commonly referred to as fruit machines. The term fruit comes from the pictures of plums, cherries, and oranges on each reel. The biggest payoff is one hundred coins for one coin played when lining up a 7-7-7. You can play a maximum of three coins, so the largest payoff for a single pull of the handle is three hundred coins.

Mary inserted her first coin into the machine and then listened as the coin dropped into the coin hopper. The hopper is a large container that collects the coins inside the machine. The next sound she heard was the coin as it tumbled from the hopper into the overflow container. The overflow container is located at the base of the machine in front of the player’s feet. The coins from the overflow containers (plastic tubs) are always collected in the early morning hours by the casino personnel. The hopper is never emptied, so the belief that a machine is ready to pay off because it’s full of coins is a common fallacy.

The tinkling sound of the coin falling into the overflow container brought a smile to Mary’s face. This meant that the hopper was full, allowing her to hit a three hundred-dollar payoff without the machine running out of coins. When a hopper runs out of coins, the machine automatically shuts down. This is commonly referred to as a blackout. A blackout is the only time Mary has any personal contact with the floor personal. When the floor personnel are seen pouring coins into a machine from a large bag, they are refilling the hopper.

Mary pulled the lever, concentrating intensely on the small window with the pay-line. Her focus of attention is only on the center reel, which contains a single plum. By maneuvering the plum toward the pay-line, she can actually change the payoff odds. The eleven symbols on the plum side (front side) of the center reel have higher payoff combinations than the eleven symbols on the backside of the reel. Her ultimate goal is to position the plum on the pay-line with each pull of the handle. Each machine has its own timing cycle, so it would take her several pulls to figure out which part of the cycle she was in.

She becomes one hundred percent focused, dropping in a single coin to begin her quest to maneuver the plum toward the pay-line. When the plum dropped one symbol below the pay-line, she went into high gear. Her thousands of hours of experience suddenly surfaced with a vengeance. With an extremely quick wrist action, three coins were rapidly dropped into the coin slot. The third coin had no sooner registered before her right hand was on the handle to begin the downward pull. The entire sequence was done in one fluid motion and looked natural to anyone passing by.

By the time the third reel had come to a stop, her right hand was in position to quickly drop three more coins into the coin slot. After she pulled the handle, her left hand acted like an assembly line as she fed the coins to her right hand. Her movements were so smooth it was impossible to detect that she was working the machine at such an incredibly fast pace. Her relaxed fluid coordination would have been appreciated by a concert pianist because she made it look so easy.

When Mary lined up three plums, she sat back and smiled as the coins fell into the tray below. Three coins was a sixty-dollar pay. She started the whole process over again by placing a single coin into the coin slot to maneuver the plum toward the pay-line.

Several pulls later, her next pay was a bar-plum-plum combination for a pay of forty-two coins. How sweet it is, she thought, filling an empty rack with the coins from the machine’s tray. If all the machines played like this, I could eventually buy my own casino.

After playing at a record pace for forty-five minutes, she had won just under two hundred dollars, an extremely large win for such a short period of time.

She made it a point to never get greedy because it would draw too much attention from the casino personal. If she did hit a big win by lining up the bars or the sevens with maximum coins played, she’d raised both arms over her head and let out a scream, beaming from ear to ear. She always let the other players know how thrilled she was to win because it was the natural thing to do. Whoever heard of a slot player who wasn’t happy when he or she made a big score on a machine?

Mary’s next casino was the Dunes. If she had time she’d play at the Silver Slipper and the Frontier. She planned to go to bed early because her girlfriend, Cookie, was due to arrive on the three o’clock flight tomorrow afternoon from Chicago. Cookie had divorced her husband and was moving to Las Vegas to live with Mary.

She made an on the spot decision to have dinner at the Stardust buffet, a short walk from the Westward Ho. She usually had her main meal later in the evening, but she felt like taking a break to savor her first win of the day. This is what she loved about being independent. She could come and go as she pleased because she was her own boss.

* * *

The Stardust buffet was crowded during the dinner hour. To the casual viewer the smiles on the faces of the hungry people resembled children standing in line to see Santa Claus. Plates are piled high and the most common remark is, I’m going to go on a diet as soon as I get home. The remarks are accompanied by laughter as tourists continue to pile their plates with foods that are sure to add extra inches to their waistlines.

Sitting at a table in the corner of the buffet, Mary chuckled to herself as she watched the tourists work their way through the buffet line. She loved to see people enjoying themselves and Las Vegas had a lot to offer a vacationing tourist. On the dark side, she also knew that this city in the middle of the desert had destroyed the lives of more than one visitor. From the players who had lost large sums of money playing worthless gambling systems, to the girls who walk the streets at night, it’s a fact that Las Vegas is the city of a thousand broken dreams.

The waitress made her way around the room, filling the empty coffee cups. More coffee? the waitress asked Mary.

Please, she answered, smiling as she pushed her coffee cup forward. She had been overweight most of her life, but she had changed her eating habits. Mealtime beverages were now limited to coffee and diet drinks.

After a trip to the dessert bar, she took a moment to delight in the slice of pecan pie in front of her. Mmmm, she murmured, savoring the first small bite that allowed her taste buds to come to life. She ran her tongue over her lips, taking great care not to waste a single crumb. For Mary Brown, pecan pie was Food of the Gods. It was her ritual offering to the God of Obesity, who constantly tried to resurface and dominate her eating patterns.

After taking the last bite of her pecan pie, she spotted one small crumb and used her finger to clean it from the plate. It would have been sacrilegious to leave anything on her plate.

A smile crossed her face as she recalled how much her life had changed in the last four years. She knew absolutely nothing about casino gambling when she arrived in Las Vegas in 1976 to pursue a career as a casino cage employee. Like all the newcomers who worked in the gaming industry, she was fascinated at the prospect of making money playing the casino games. Fortunately for her, she had made the right connections. She had been tutored by a married couple who were professional gamblers.

She had originally started out hustling blackjack and small limit Stud poker. She eventually became a rhythm player, a little known term used for slot machine hustlers who could determine a machine’s timing sequences. Rhythm players considered themselves artists because they had developed their playing skills to a high degree of efficiency. For slot hustlers of Mary’s ability, the state of Nevada was one big piggy bank to make daily withdrawals from.

Mary dropped a toke on the table and walked out of the Stardust buffet. Walking passed the blackjack tables; she paused momentarily to watch a single deck blackjack game in progress.

What caught her interest was a young man with a small stack of $5 chips in front of him. Unlike the other players at the table, he stared at the other player’s cards when they were turned over. Most players will look at the other player’s cards with casual interest, but they don’t stare at them as if they’re doing mental calculations in their head. She knew instantly that the man was an amateur card-counter, a person who tracks the cards as they are being played out of the deck.

When the remaining deck contained a surplus of A’s and 10s, a counter will increase the size of his bet because the odds have swung to his favor. Mary was aware that the multiple deck games were becoming more and more prevalent on the Las Vegas Strip. Multiple deck blackjack was extremely difficult for the inexperienced card counter to handle.

As Mary had been taught, any counting system for blackjack is useless if the pit boss in aware that you are tracking the cards. If you are playing with a single deck and your play looks suspicious, the dealer can simply shuffle when you place a large bet. In some instances, the casino will bar you from playing blackjack in their establishment if they think you’re a successful counter.

Mary counted the deck down at the beginning of each shuffle, keeping a curious eye on the amateur card-counter. The card-counter was losing and he was making a lot of mistakes. The amateur card-counter continued to lose, giving him some unwanted, but necessary camouflage. A pit boss rarely pays any attention to a player who’s losing.

Change a hundred, the dealer announced after the car-counter pulled another hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet.

Mary knew that the casinos were filled with amateur card-counters who had come to Las Vegas to strike it rich. She also knew that most of them weren’t capable of winning in the long run, so they were money in the bank for the casinos. She decided it was time to get back to work.

The sun had begun to set when Mary walked out of the Stardust. If she lived to be a thousand, she would never tire of the view when the sun disappears behind the mountains and the Las Vegas Strip comes to life. For Mary Brown, the Las Vegas Strip with its millions of brightly colored lights was mankind’s equal to nature’s rainbow.

As she walked to her car, she found it hard to believe that her life had changed so much in such a short period of time. It seemed like only yesterday that she was working at a bank in her hometown of Elkhart, Indiana and her life was going nowhere.

She opened the door to her car and chuckled, recalling the homely girl who was once afraid of her own shadow. Her memories of high school left a lot to be desired, but those days were a thing of the past. She might have been the wallflower of her high school class, but that girl no longer existed. The new Mary Brown didn’t take a step backward for anyone, male or female. As far as she was concerned, there wasn’t a woman in the entire country who could compete with her combined skills at blackjack, slots and high stakes poker. As a close friend had told her one afternoon while having lunch, Mary Brown, you are a female superstar in the world of casino gambling.

Mary took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She didn’t have a worry in the world and she was feeling extremely good about herself. Her smile widened as her thoughts drifted back in time to when she was a shy young girl growing up in Indiana.

CHAPTER 2

Elkhart, Indiana, a city of 40,000 population is about twenty miles East of South Bend, Indiana. Originally a farming community, Elkhart developed a light industrial base, manufacturing mobile homes and musical instruments. When Mary Brown was born in 1954, Elkhart was a typical Midwestern city filled with hardworking people who placed a high value on family and community. For a glimpse into the past, it wasn’t uncommon to see the Amish in horse drawn buggies mingling with the Elkhart traffic.

Mary’s memories of growing up in Elkhart did not paint a rosy picture. She was blessed with wonderful parents, but that was the only bright spot in her childhood. She was overweight and she wasn’t attractive by any stretch of the imagination. She was rarely invited to parties and she shied away from dating. She was extremely bashful and that made her personality about as exciting as her name. She had one close girlfriend named Shirley Stanton, but Shirley had moved to Chicago in her junior year of high school. Mary was the class wallflower, keeping to herself most of the time with few acquaintances.

Mary’s one strength was her uncanny ability to read people’s emotions. When there was a family poker game in the Brown home, she always knew when someone was bluffing. Being a clairvoyant with a sixth sense wasn’t always pleasant. If a boy flirted with her on a dare, she knew instantly that he wasn’t sincere, and she was so bashful, she’d just walk away without saying a word. She often wished she had the courage to stand up for herself and tell people off. That was out of the question. She just didn’t have the nerve.

Her senior year in high school was a total non-event in her life. She was a straight A student, but she had no desire to go on to college. She had little or no ambition, taking life one day at a time. She felt totally unimportant and the thought of marriage never crossed her mind.

Mary graduated from Elkhart high school in 1972. She was always good with numbers, so she was hired as a cashier at a bank in her neighborhood. It was exciting for the first couple of weeks, but the job quickly became boring.

She worked at the bank for three years and turned twenty-one. Mary rarely went out on a date, shying away from any guy she was attracted to. She had succumbed to the idea she would always be a wallflower of the first degree.

One afternoon after work, she was walking to her car when she was approached by a tall, beautiful blonde girl.

Hi, Mary, the blonde said. Are you still good at reading people’s minds?

Mary stopped and stared at the attractive blonde with the friendly smile. The voice reminded her of her old friend Shirley Stanton, but Shirley was as homely as a hoot owl.

What’s the matter, don’t you recognize your old friend from high school? Do you remember how we were going to get even with Mildred Johansen and her snooty friends who used to make fun of us in front of the boys?

Mary looked astonished. Suddenly she cried out, Oh, my God, it is you! You’re Shirley Stanton. I wouldn’t have recognized you in a million years.

The girls threw their arms around each other and laughed hysterically. Mary hadn’t seen Shirley since she’d moved to Chicago. They’d talked to each other on the phone a few times, but they’d failed to keep in touch over the years.

Mary held Shirley at arm’s length, staring at the only girl in high school who was considered to be as homely as she was.

I can’t believe it, Mary said. You’ve either been reincarnated or your Fairy Godmother has granted you a very special wish.

Shirley giggled. Something like that. If you’ve got some free time, let’s have a drink. I’ll tell you all about it?

I like that idea. Let’s stop at Flytraps and I’ll buy dinner.

* * *

Mary and Shirley had just seated themselves when a good-looking guy stopped at their table and introduced himself. Shirley smiled at the guy and then politely turned down his offer to buy them a drink. The guy never looked at Mary. It was obvious he was only interested in Shirley.

I know you’re the same girl I went to school with said Mary, but you’re definitely not the same person. You used to be the only girl in school who was as plain as I was. Now you’re a six-foot Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe all rolled into one. If you keep me in suspense any longer, I swear to God I’m going to go crazy. Tell me the truth. Did you have plastic surgery or something like that?

Good heavens, it was nothing that drastic. After I went to work for an advertising agency in Chicago, I bit the bullet and enrolled in evening classes at a charm school. They taught me how walk, how to wear makeup, and how to dress to enhance my figure. I had to lose weight and I had a lot of work done on my teeth. About the only thing they didn’t change was my natural blonde hair. Talk about something that changed my life, I woke up one morning and I felt like a real life Cinderella. I eventually worked my way up from a file clerk to the receptionist. And I don’t plan on stopping there. I’m back in night school studying advertising. I’ve got a great future ahead of me.

Mary was fascinated with every word that Shirley said. At times, her breath quickened as she envisioned how wonderful it would be to change her life and be more like Shirley.

It must be wonderful, said Mary. Life is so boring here in Elkhart. The biggest excitement in my life is going to a bar on Saturday night with a girlfriend. Then I have to hope that someone will ask me to dance.

I take it you don’t have a boyfriend?

Are you kidding? I’ve only been out on two real dates in my life and they were both disastrous. All the guys wanted was a romp in the hay, and they thought that dinner and a movie entitled them to the World’s Fair. One guy parked in the boondocks and practically raped me in his car. After he finally gave up, he insulted me by telling me that I wasn’t exactly the pick of the litter.

Some men are like that. Pure bastards.

Mary broke into a smile and then laughed.

What’s so funny? I’ve got a feeling there’s more to this story.

It had a funny ending. When the guy got out of the car to relieve himself, I slid behind the wheel and left him in the boondocks.

You didn’t?

Oh, yes I did. I drove back to town and parked his car where it was sure to be towed away. Then I took a cab home. Now, when he comes into the bank, he always switches tellers when he sees me working at the window.

Oh, I love it. You know, Mary, you’ve done some strange things in your life, but that’s the best story of all. You know, I never could figure out why you were so shy in high school. You could have been the life of the party if you'd had a little confidence in yourself.

You’re a fine one to talk. If I remember correctly, you were afraid of your own shadow.

Yeah, you’re right, but it’s not like that anymore. What are your plans for the future? Do you plan to stay with the bank?

I don’t really have any plans. As for my job at the bank, it’s complete dullsville. I suppose in twenty more years I’ll be the only forty-one year old virgin in Elkhart. Christ, I’m ready to do anything that’ll put a little excitement in my life. I even went to the Arthur Murray dance studio, but no one wanted to dance with me except for old men and a few nerds. I guess I’m hopeless. The only talent I’ve ever had is reading people’s emotions. And believe me, that’s more of a curse than a blessing. Sometimes I wish I’d never been born.

Shirley placed her hand over Mary’s, looking into her eyes affectionately. Don’t you ever say anything like that again, Mary. You’re a wonderful person and you were a great friend in high school. If you’re really unhappy with your life, then damn it, do something about it.

Like what?

Shirley paused. Like coming to Chicago and going to a charm school. The school I went to has a three-week course for career girls that I guarantee will change your life forever. You can stay with me at my apartment and it won’t cost you one red cent. I’d be there every minute to help you over the rough spots and I’ll be your personal cheering section.

I don’t know. That’s a pretty big step. Gees, what would the people at the bank think?

Oh, yeah, I forgot. The bank is the biggest thing in your life.

"Okay,