We’re digging deep into our roots for this week’s Sunday Sample.
Comp City was the third book we published (after Extra Stuff by Peter Griffin and Bargain City by Anthony Curtis). It was 20 years ago today that Comp City taught the world to play the comp game.
The book was written by Max Rubin, who came to Las Vegas as a teenager to attend Nevada Southern, the original name of the University of Nevada Las Vegas (it was changed to UNLV in 1969), then stuck around to work for the casinos in just about every capacity, from break-in dealer to casino manager. At the time he was writing his book, he was a swing-shift pit boss at the Mirage.
In addition to his career on the custodial side of the tables, Max was even more prolific as a player. He's the host and founder of the Blackjack Ball, a member of the Blackjack Hall of Fame (inducted by a vote of his peers), and he came up with the title for Jean Scott’s first book (and brand), The Frugal Gambler. And, of course, he wrote the book on comps.
When it was first published in 1994, Comp City was an instant classic in the gambling genre, and it remains one today; over the years, it’s been named to several "best-gambling-books-ever-written" lists. Comp City is not only a deep inside look at blackjack (and other table games), pit personnel, casino marketing, and, of course, how to play the comp game, but it’s perhaps the most entertaining and amusing high-level gambling book ever published.
While Max Rubin is certainly the force behind Comp City, the book's content benefits from a number of writers, editors, and players who had a hand in making it the classic that it became; there's an enormous amount of brainpower in these pages, which speaks to the way we prepared books that early in the history of this publishing company. We knew our first titles could make or break the reputation of Huntington Press, so we pulled out all the stops, and to a certain extent, Comp City put us on the map as a gambling-book publishing company.
We brought out a second edition in 2001, which updated the first edition and added a chapter on other gambling jurisdictions, as casinos proliferated around the U.S. in those days. Over the years, we’ve made a number of stabs at updating it again, though the comp scene changes so fast that we simply haven’t been able to keep up with it, rendering any printed "snapshot" likely out-of-date before it's even off the presses. The paperback Second Edition has itself long since gone out of print, but we’ve kept the title alive as an e-book -- which you can buy from Kindle, Nook, and iTunes for $9.99 -- because the concepts still hold true, while its pure-entertainment value remains timeless.
We've had an excerpt of Comp City on ShopLVA.com since we first released it in e-book format, but for this week's Sample Sunday, we're providing completely new material; the only thing that's the same is the Table of Contents. New are 50 pages of the 380-page second edition, including a big chunk of Chapter 3, featuring the sections "Blackjack Is Your Vehicle," "Bankroll Is Your Fuel," and "The Casino Is the Avenue"; two interesting sections of Chapter 4, "Living with the Losses" and "Living with the Wins"; and all of Chapter 10, "Superstitions and Admonitions." Enjoy!
