What could be more brilliant to bring to Las Vegas than this vintage red nightgown with “Las Vegas” embroidered on it?!
Vintage Red & Black Nightgown Eye Ful by the "Flaums"
It also has embroidered travel stamps for “Monte Carlo” and “Palm Springs” too.
Vintage Red & Black Travel Nightie
Just remember to pack it back in your suitcase, because you’d be heartbroken to leave it behind!
Vintage Las Vegas Embroidery
I’m not a professional or big time gambler; I’m just a girl who likes to play games, sometimes making them more interesting with bets, and betting on things I think I know something about. It’s all in fun, never risking more than I can afford to lose, never preying upon others. However, it seems “Sarah Phillips” is a scammer pretending to be a gambler. Since this article came out, ESPN has ended their “relationship” with her — i.e. they’ve fired her.
These are not games I wish to play.
Is Sarah J. Phillips Even One Person?
Image via BeyondTheBets.
I don’t normally discuss golf here; other than considering it a “game” and not a true “sport”, or puttering around at mini-golf with the kids, I have no thoughts on it whatsoever. However, I can’t let this vintage box of Lady Diana Pastel golf balls go without a comment.
Vintage Golf Balls For Women
From the 1960s, these balls are “Color Coordinated To Suit Your Game.”
Ugh.
While not admitting lady golfers requiring more fashionable golf equipment to match their outfits (Aren’t men the one’s to go more silly over golfing apparel and paraphernalia?!), the box verbiage touts that ladies just need more of a mental edge for their games:
The colors are Pink, Yellow, and Blue. The box says – Spiritual (Pink), Sunny (Yellow), Serene (Blue). The brand is burke, DIV. OF VICTOR GOLF, MORTON GROVE, ILL. 60053, $15.00 DOZEN. COLOR COORDINATED TO SUIT YOUR GAME!
Gotta love the sexism. Or, more precisely, I love mocking the sexism. I hate living with it.
Via Herstory.
Laura Brown is a fellow writer who produces Word Grrls, a site for writers looking for extra help, inspiration, and creativity. And, it turns out, Laura’s another card player with a gambling spirit.
Nina Leen Photo via LIFE Archives
Do you like any card games?
I do like to play cards games. With my brother and sisters I would play simple games like Crazy Eights and Bloody Knuckles. I was the one who organized the games and kept things peaceful, more or less. My brother, being the only guy with three sisters, didn’t like to lose. But, it was my middle sister who gave him the most competition, she loved to win.
What’s Bloody Knuckles?
Bloody Knuckles was a game played with three cards in your hand. It was kind of like Crazy Eights but the idea was to get your score as low as possible before someone else knocked on the table (making everyone stop and show their cards). Highest score would have their knuckles whacked with the edge of the deck of cards. I don’t remember all the rules for that game but jacks were zero and the other face cards were ten, the ace was one.
What other games did you play?
I liked playing poker and black jack with my brother and sisters. But, that was never a successful game for four kids. I never could remember what beats what and my sister (I always thought) would change the rules to her advantage. Our littlest sister needed help playing. My brother and sister wanted to play for real money. I knew that would never work for me. I loved to take the risk and see how far I could go before I went bust. Mostly, I just didn’t like leaving that road not taken when it came to making the decision to stay or try one more card.
What card games did you play with the rest of your family?
We would play Euchre with my Grandmother when all the family came for dinner around family holidays. I miss her and those Euchre games. Recently we played Euchre with family – but it felt a bit sad to me. It was so much her game, there is so much of her and memories of her all tied up in that game for me.
What card games do you play now?
Now I usually play cards with my Mother when we get together in the evening. She is out in her garden most of the day and then likes to do something other than just watch TV at night. So we play Canasta and games kind of like that which she has picked up while she lives in Florida over the winter months. I like Canasta, it’s pretty simple to pick up and even when I haven’t played in awhile I get back into the swing of it pretty easily.
Do you gamble — play for pennies or nickles anything?
We tried playing for pennies but while my brother always had money for that, my sister and I never had enough.
As a writer, what do you think is the biggest gamble you have taken?
Just sticking with it this long is a gamble. I feel I’m playing against myself. I’m not making myself rich and it gets hard to stick with it. But, I love to write, to expand on new ideas and find new ideas. The highlight to my day is finding something new I’d never heard of before and then researching more until I’ve found user groups, networks, societies, art galleries, and so on. I enjoy the hunt for information.
The gamble is in time management. I tend to get a lot of ideas, spread myself thin and then not really get anything completely done. This is how I can work against myself. At the end of the day I’ve had a great day but I haven’t made any money. Which sounds so commercial – but someone has to pay the bills and there’s only me sitting here to do that.
What would it take for you to feel you have won in your gamble to be a writer online?
If I had money in the bank after I’ve paid the bills, bought groceries and all the other standard stuff that needs to get paid then I feel I’ve got a winning month. A lot of people I know would not think of that as a win. But, right now that works for me. If things pick up I might grow my standards and expect more.
Or, if I had a staff writing job somewhere. That would be a dependable income, at least more than you can count on from freelancing where you have to find clients and live contract to contract.
Laura is not only the web producer of Word Grrls; she also runs Green Living History and the ASCII Art Bazaar and is one half of UP to the DL. Laura can also be found on Twitter @thatgrrl.
If you’re no longer satisfied simply voting for your favorite star, why not bet on them before they dance tonight? Here are the current odds:
In Scrap The Lotto, David Sirota advocates for leaving the lottery behind because lottery mania has become an obsession. Sirota writes about Americans confusing a lottery with a financial investment; how in desperate times many tend to believe in, or at least act on, the whim of a big win to save themselves; and how the government ought to bear more responsibility in deliberative tax collection and management. While I agree with that last part wholeheartedly, I see something lurking beneath the discussion…
What you might not be able to see (because Salon’s links are not properly coded, and so do not work), is that Sirota’s reference for the Consumer Federation of America’s report that “one in five Americans believes playing the lottery is the best way to secure his or her long-term financial future” is a link to an article on gambling and gambling addiction.
I’ve no doubt gambling addiction numbers are up during such poor economic times; so are the numbers of other addictions, domestic violence, etc. Stress increases, and people are at their weakest in many ways. The ability to cover medical bills or to pay for professional services is also diminished, leaving people even more vulnerable. But that’s not everyone.
And they are missing the key point here.
While the odds for that jackpot lottery of $640 million were set at 1 in 176 million, those odds still seem better than the odds we in the 99% face just trying to make it in this country.
The odds may be stacked against us in the lotery, but somebody will win something, even if it’s the government who is guaranteed the win. But in the real world, we know it’s the “house,” the 1%-ers who always win. What are our odds when the playing field in this country is less even than at a casino?
The Global Betting and Gaming Consultancy (GBGC) has entered into the discussion of how new technology is changing the way people gamble, in particular how social networking and the millions of free-play games and games where no cash winnings are paid will impact gambling. Will, as many Nervous Nellies fear, players of these games somehow be lured into the real gambling? Will they become gambling addicts? After all, there have been numerous attempts to cash-in online, combining social networking with gambling…
According to GBGC, the answer is, “No.”
No doubt large marketing and incentive campaigns will be run to encourage “casual” free-play customers to switch to real-money play. But if a customer does not perceive gambling as an activity which should cost them money then the conversion rate will be low. Those players that do convert could be the type of player who takes a sign-up bonus and then stakes at such a low level (if at all) that their cost of acquisition is not recouped. There might be a small boost to the “new sign-ups” figure but it won’t be reflected in the profit.
The GBGC came to their conclusions not only by their own experience but with the help of behavioral economist Dan Ariely. I think they all could have just used common sense.
The avid Monopoly player doesn’t become addicted to buying up real estate, building hotels, or even to playing board games.
Playing a game for fun is very different from gambling. Even if you enjoy both, as I do. However, if and when a person wants to go for the cash win, they go gamble. Then they head to a casino, online or otherwise, to a bingo hall, to a regular card game or whatnot. Not a free game at a social site.
That would be a joke-r.
Vintage Joker Vargas Pinup
Isabelle Adjani, The Driver (1978)
Isabelle Adjani At The Gaming Table
All In: The Poker Movie is a documentary film covering the story of a card game that’s as associated with con-men on riverboats as it is with presidents, a game which in very recent history went from one being played by bored old folks in community centers to the game of celebrities — a game that makes celebrities. At the start of the new millennium, poker began to be cool, and a bit dangerous, again in the underground clubs of New York City — seeing a worldwide boom in popularity.
The cast of the film includes Hollywood stars, big time gamblers, and a handful historians. However, of the 36 named cast members, only 5 are women: Annie Duke, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Isabelle Mercier, Vanessa Rousso & Jennifer Tilly. That’s a scant 13.8%. However, that’s a lot better than any other minorities seem to fair… Provoking the question, at least, that Poker’s primarily a white man’s game and perhaps we are not “all in”.
If you’re a fan of poker, or just curious, the documentary becomes available for video download (in HD) on April 24 — including a special “deluxe” set available for pre-order now. This set contains a DVD of the film along with the HD download as well as collectibles: a theatrical-sized movie poster and playing cards featuring artwork from the film.
In The Psychology Of Casinos, Jonah Lehrer gets Roger Thomas, the head of design for Wynn Resorts, to dish on those interior designer tricks casinos use to create “lovely and relaxing spaces that encourage people to squander their cash.” The article begins with the story behind a four-month renovation of the high-limit slot-machine room at the Wynn Las Vegas resort.
Thomas, who is the executive vice-president of design at Wynn Resorts, Steve Wynn’s gambling and hotel company, had done the original design for the room only a few years before. He had been told to create a space for older male gamblers, and so he had filled the gaming area with overstuffed leather armchairs, heavy curtains, and dark mahogany panelling. “It was all very clubby,” he said. “A place for bourbon, testosterone, and cigars.” But the Wynn Casino Operations department monitors the returns of every gambling device in every Wynn casino, and the room’s yields were falling short. After some investigation, it became clear that the problem was a demographic one. Men weren’t playing these games; women were.
So Thomas redesigned the room. He created a wall of windows to flood the slot machines with natural light. He threw out the old furniture, replacing it with a palette that he called “garden conservatory”—lime green, white leather, and gold. “I wanted it bright and shimmery and full of flowers,” Thomas told me. “A place where a lady might feel comfortable.” Now every available surface appears to be covered in something expensive. There are Italian marbles and carpets designed by Thomas. Bowls of floating orchids are set on tables; stone mosaics frame the walkway; the ceiling is a quilt of gold mirrors. Thomas even bought a collection of antique lotus-flower sculptures, which he placed near a row of blinking video-poker slots. “These gambling machines are basically big light fixtures—they scream for attention—and so you normally don’t try to compete with them,” he said. “You design around them. But I wanted this room to be the opposite of every other slot room.”
Turns out, this isn’t mere sexism at work here; there’s quite a science behind Thomas’ work.
Karen Finlay is a professor at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, who focusses on the behavior of gamblers. Her latest experiments have immersed subjects in the interiors of various Vegas hotels by means of a Panoscope, which projects three hundred and sixty degrees of high-definition video footage. There are slot machines and card tables in every direction.
Using the Panoscope method, Finlay compared the mental effects of classic casinos, with low ceilings and a mazelike layout, to those of casinos designed by Thomas. Subjects surrounded by footage of Thomas’s interiors exhibited far higher levels of what Finlay terms mental “restoration”—that is, they were much more likely to say that the space felt like a “refuge” and reduced their stress level. They also manifested a much stronger desire to gamble. In every Panoscopic matchup, gamblers in Thomas’s rooms were more likely to spend money than those in Friedmanesque designs. Although subjects weren’t forced to focus on the slot machines, the pleasant atmosphere encouraged them to give the machines a try.
Finlay refers to Thomas’s environments as “adult playgrounds,” since they provide an atmosphere in which people are primed to seek pleasure. “These casinos have lots of light and excellent way-finding,” she told me. “They make you feel comfortable, of course, but they also constantly remind you to have fun.”
She went on, “The data is clear. Gamblers in a playground casino will stay longer, feel better, and bet more. Although they come away with bigger losses, they’re eager to return.”
Finlay notes that the effectiveness of such designs comes at the expense of the guests, who have been persuaded by flowers and nice furniture to squander money on games that are rigged in favor of the house. According to her findings, Thomas’s designs have a particularly marked efect on those guests who normally don’t gamble. The seduction of his décor, perhaps, is that it doesn’t feel like a gambling environment. The beauty is a kind of anesthesia, distracting people from the pain of their inevitable losses.
