The Calculus Diaries - Jennifer Ouellette [28]
With such role models before him, it is small wonder that young Master de Marigny matured into a spoiled, dissolute, and extravagant young man, coming into his substantial inheritance at the tender age of fifteen after the death of his doting father. His long-suffering guardian despaired of controlling the headstrong teenager and shipped Marigny off to London in hopes that there he might learn some temperance. Instead, Marigny frequented any number of gambling dens, most notably the infamous Almack’s. That’s where he learned the game of hazard, bringing a simplified version of it back home to New Orleans a few years later. In local dialect, the game was dubbed crapaud, from a derogatory term for the French in New Orleans, Johnny Crapaud. English-speakers later shortened the name to craps.20 The game quickly spread to the Mississippi riverboats and beyond.
Bernard de Marigny died penniless in 1868, having repeatedly subdivided his once vast plantation into numerous land parcels, selling them off to cover his ever burgeoning gambling debts. He is largely forgotten, but two legacies remain: the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans (built on the site of the old Marigny estate), and the game of craps, which is more popular today than ever. In fact, there is a street in the Faubourg Marigny district named Craps, reflecting its founder’s place in gambling history.
There have been many refinements to the rules of craps over the centuries, but the fundamentals remain unchanged. Each player takes turns being the shooter, rotating around the table as each individual game comes to an end. Every game starts with a “come-out” roll: Players place their initial bets on the “pass” line (required in order to play), and the shooter rolls the dice. If the shooter rolls a 7 or 11, everyone who placed a pass bet wins outright. If the shooter rolls a 2, 3, or 12, everyone loses outright. If the shooter rolls any other number, that number becomes the “point” for the duration of the game.
Our first shooter is a middle-aged man of Eastern European descent—let’s call him Yuri—visiting Vegas with his wife. He starts off strong, rolling a 7 right off the bat, and the table cheers in victory. We collect our winnings, place new line bets, and Yuri rolls again. It’s an 8; this becomes the point, and the game’s afoot. Now that a point has been established, we keep betting and Yuri keeps rolling until he rolls the point again (an 8) or he rolls a 7 (craps). If the former, we win; if the latter, we lose. Either way, the game ends, a new shooter takes over, and the cycle begins anew.21
If that were all there were to craps, it would become boring very quickly. So as the game evolved, additional types of bets were added, each with its own set of odds. For instance, as an alternative to the standard pass bet on the come-out roll, a player can place a “don’t-pass” bet—essentially betting against the shooter and the rest of the table. One caveat: This will make you very unpopular. It’s a very social game, and players tend to bond at a craps table, because people’s fortunes rise and fall with the shooter’s. Betting against the shooter is a buzzkill. For don’t-pass bets, the win-lose rules are reversed. If the shooter rolls a 2 or 3, a don’t-pass bet will win outright, while the rest of the table loses. If the shooter rolls a 7 or 11, a don’tpass bet will lose outright—and everyone at