A Real "Shooter"

by Barry Z.
(Central Florida)

A number of years ago, I found myself shooting craps at the Park Hotel, downtown. (It was originally a Holiday Inn, I believe and had been closed and re-opened under a series of different names. It's now the Main Street Station.) It was aprox. 7:00 AM and the table was about half full.

A player steps up to the table, buys in, and immediately starts grumbling, insulting the dealers, and just being downright rude. The dealers give as good as they get, and before long, it was clear that there was no love lost between this player and the dealers. After a while, one of the dealers explained that earlier in the AM, the player had been drunk, disorderly, and had "shot a monster," and was now "back for more."

After a few minutes, the dice pass to the rude player. On his first roll, he throws a die off the table. The dealers jump right in and holler, "Keep the dice on the table!!", etc. On his second roll, he throws another die off of the table. This time, the stickman slams the stick right in front of him, and repeats the exhortations even louder than before, with the addition of some personal insults.

The player doesn't waste a second. The reaches right in front of the stickman and grabs the remaining dice, winds up for a baseball style pitch, and hurls the three remaining dice as far as he can to the very back of the casino with all his might!

Security jumps on this guy in about a second, and whisk him away to parts unknown.

Meanwhile, the dealers, stickman, and all of the players are pressed into service to scour the casino for the missing dice, as the player had thrown ALL FIVE dice off the table in three throws and the game couldn't continue. After about five minutes without recovering the dice, the management calls us all back to the table and opens up a new package of dice so that the game could continue.

What a morning! I've seen of various arguments, fisticuffs, people throwing drinks and food, lots of drunks, and a bunch of other roughhouse in Vegas over the years, but this one takes the cake!