Gambling Nostalgia

Funny how well you get to know some people in cyberspace even if you have never met them in person.  My guest on the blog today is one of those people.  I became acquainted with Mickey Crimm on the video poker forum vpFREE and have been fascinated with  the details of his colorful life.  Mickey has always been a “ramblin’ man” and when he took up gambling about twenty years ago, his ramblin’ didn’t stop – it just made him very successful – and has provided some very entertaining  gambling stories.

I asked Mickey if I could share some of these stories with my readers.  He should write a book himself – but in the meantime he is happy to let me make public some of his fascinating ramblin’ and gamblin’ experiences.  I asked him for a few autobiographical details I could put in this introduction and here is his reply:

I’ll be 58 on the 17th of this month.  I first realized I could beat a poker game called 7 Card Stud Hi-Lo Split 8 or Better in the summer of 1992.  I first realized I could consistently make money on machines in October of 1996.   And my first comped meal in Las Vegas was at the Las Vegas Rescue Mission.  A bowl of beans and all the bread I could eat.

Here’s Mickey on the subject of finding “abandoned money.”    

Ah, the good old days of being a credit hustler are long gone.  It was such a carefree lifestyle.  It went by a lot of names: slot walkin’, slot cruisin’, seagullin’, silver mining, buffalo hunting, pigeon holin’.   The occupation has to be all but dead now with everything being TITO.

When it was coins, you found abandoned credits on the machines, coins in the trays, coins on the floor, pigeon holes underneath the bartops where quarters that didn’t register wound up, even the public coin counters that would spit the dimes to a trough down below where people never looked.  Hey, may as well make a finger swipe through all the coin returns in the phone booths too.

It was the first trade I learned in Las Vegas when I wound up there in the early nineties.  Taught to me by a guy named Black Bart. You had to be good to get away with it for any length of time.  You had to be looking while looking like you ain’t looking.  Up and down every row, no cranking the head back and forth, just moving the eyes back and forth.  Detecting and avoiding security, knowing where every door out of the casino was in case you caught heat. Never staying in one casino too long.

You had to be able to read the buttons on abandoned machines to determine if there were still credits on it.  It was a light thing.  Generally, if there were no credits on a machine then no buttons would be lit.  But a lot of machines had buttons that stayed lit no matter what.  So you had to know which button was the credit button and if it was lit or not. 

You never just walked up to a machine and punched the credits off.  You had to muddy the situation up in case you caught heat.  So you put a coin in and made a spin or played a video poker hand.  Then you cashed out.  “What are you talkin’ ’bout man! I played this machine!”

I built a condo behind the Carpet Barn off Charleston and Main, back by the railroad tracks.  Made it out of pallet slats and carpet remnants. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling carpet.  In the morning I would start the walk.  Sahara was the first stop, then Circus Circus, Slots of Fun, get the big fat hotdog at the Westward Ho (lots of mustard, relish, and ketchup to kill the taste), then on to the Stardust.

I even crossed the picket at the Frontier.  The picketers raised hell with me when I first showed up but I told ’em, “Look, man, I’m a credit hustler, they ain’t gettin’ any of my money, I’m gonna get theirs.”  I would get some cheers every day going in the north door and cheers when I came out the south door about ten minutes later.

Then it was on to Treasure Island, Mirage, Caesars, Boardwalk, Tropicana.  Then I’d turn around and go back through them all again on my way back north.  Day labor paid 4 or 5 bucks an hour back then.  I made that much credit hustlin’.  But I did a lot of walking. 

There used to be a Salvation Army store just north of the California Club on Main Street.  It was almost right under the overpass.  A few bucks for a change of clothes, then around the corner to the municipal swimming pool on Bonanza for a shower and shave (buck and a quarter).  Then I was back in action.  The trick was to not look like a tramp. 

The credit hustlin’ was good downtown too.  Yes, Sir!  Those were the good old days.

(To hear Mickey talk about some of his ramblin’ gamblin’ experiences, go to the April 7th radio show of “Gambling with an Edge,”  archived at  Frank’s Web site  and Bob’s site.)