When did you first gamble?

[Inner Dirt]

My step-great grand father, I figure that is his correct title as he was married to my widowed great grandmother, taught me Black Jack and five card draw poker in 1968 at the age of 7. When I visited him he would pay me for chores and then turn around and win the money back at cards, at least he never won back more than he paid me. Not sure if he was trying to teach me a lesson or wanted free labor.

[dlivery]

In Vegas on Crap table The Big 6 & 8 Silver Dollars at the Frontier that was fun.
The Kid who held the dice was Down and out and we had to take up a fund so he could get the Plane back home to get married

[Dave Schwartz]

Age 9.

My Bio

My Story
I was born in Ft. Laud*erdale, Florida and grew up in Hol*ly*wood, just a few miles from Gulf*stream Park and even closer to Calder. The South Florida of the 1960s was full of gam*bling in spite of the many “blue laws” still in effect back then. My father once owned a gam*bling house in Nia*gara Falls and was a very savvy gam*bler. His belief was that all males will even*tu*ally be intro*duced to gam*bling in one form or another and that it was bet*ter to win than to lose. There*fore, he set out to arm me with as much gam*bling knowl*edge as pos*si*ble. I like to say that I was raised with a pair of dice in one hand and a deck of cards in the other.

I was a pre*co*cious child. It is prob*a*bly safe to say that I was the only child in my 3rd grade class that could explain why there was only one way to win a hard eight and ten ways to lose or that the house advan*tage on roulette was 5.26%. Although teach*ing a young child how to gam*ble is not some*thing I agree with, it cer*tainly armed me with a dif*fer*ent per*spec*tive on life.

When I was nine, a friend of my father’s came to visit. He asked, “Can the kid deal?” I said, “Sure!” and pro*ceeded to illus*trate by deal*ing cards around the table much as any nine-year old would do.

“He’s got the cards in the wrong hand!” says the friend. “No, this is the way I do it,” I replied.

My father told me to put the deck into the other hand and never deal right-handed again. Seven years later, when I was work*ing my way through high school deal*ing black*jack at an ille*gal casino in Miami, I would come to under*stand that it is a big advan*tage for a black*jack dealer to be left-handed because it was eas*ier to see the top card (before it is dealt).

Mine was not a nor*mal childhood.

Note: This would not be my version of child rearing.

[Shemp Howard]

I took my Christmas gift money to the corner bar and took Broadway Joe and the Jets.

7-1 on the money line and, at game time, +18.

He GUARANTEED IT and looked like he got more pussy than Earl Morrell and Johnny U. combined.

[horses4courses]

At Wrigley Field - it was on a school field trip from elementary school
in Palatine, IL and it was either in 1967, or 68, making me 9 or 10
years old. There was this kid in class named Mark Rupp.

He had moved to Chicago from St. Louis, and was a Cardinals fan.
Of course, they had an excellent team around then.
I didn't care - I was a big Cubs fan.

I bet him an entire quarter on the outcome that day.
My favorite player, Ron Santo, smacked a game winning HR
late in the day to put a smile on my face, and a scowl on Mark's.

Luckily, none of the teachers, or chaperons, attending got word of it.

[whodoyoulike]

I think I was about 6 or 7 years old, pitching pennies or nickels (I understood the basics) in order to buy candy or soda. We used to find and turn-in glass soda bottles at the local mom and pop, I think it was for 3 cents apiece (it may have been for less). I had to get spending money some way since, I don't remember ever getting an allowance.

I remember those who pitched for dimes or quarters were considered "pros" or from the wealthy families.

[ultracapper]

9 years old. 4th grade. In school, we had this game with 15 dice-like cubes. Two players. when it was your turn, you could pick up either 1,2 or 3 cubes, then it was the next player's turn, and back and forth. Player that picked up the last cube won. Obviously, getting it down to 4 cubes snookered the other player, so that was the strategy. Skip Nelson, Bobby Fleury, Jeff Palmer, Erik Dizard, and maybe a couple other guys would play during lunch recess. Each put in a nickel, pick up the last cube, you took the 2 nickels. Skip just kicked our asses for a couple weeks, and it ended. But that was the first real gambling I remember. My mom started bringing me to BINGO with her when I was about 12. I did that a number of times over the next few years.

By the 8th grade, Skip was running a pretty active book during football season. Placed a number of bets with him. He always paid.

[TJDave]

When I was 14 got an afternoon job at the local pool hall racking balls. By 15 I could beat anyone in the house. By 16 I learned how to beat them for money.

[Johnny V]

When I was a kid I would play penny poker with my family and also flip baseball cards with the other kids. When I was 14 I got a job as a caddy and waiting between calls in the caddy shack to go up we would play blackjack and shoot crap. I figured I could make more money doing that than shagging golf balls and caddying. In blackjack the deal would shift to the one who had blackjack and when I had the deal I would just keep it by paying a kid a buck or so or giving him a "free ride" i.e. one free play. I usually just kept the deal most times in effect becoming the house and I cleaned up. I never went up to caddy again just played blackjack.

[fiveouttasix]

Freehold Raceway....in HS, as soon as we got our Driver's Licence we were there every Saturday.