Pit Bull

by Martin Schwartz

  I was keeping a journal of my trip and when I got back to my room that night, I wrote:

  August 18, 1967. This evening, I hope, finalizes a lesson I paid dearly for, but financially it’s not a great price if I stick to what I’ve learned. Tonight, I lost almost $400 gambling, far too much for an older person, but irrevocably too much for an unemployed person of twenty-two. I’m writing this while I’m still warm, or should I say cold, because there are things that I have learned tonight that should furnish me with a code that I will never break for the remainder of my life:

  1. Never gamble for large amounts. Earn my money through hard work and not hope for the easy killing for there is no such thing.

  2. Never gamble for very much money while on vacation. If one must indulge, make it for small stakes and if the self-discipline is lacking, don’t bring very much money. In fact, only take as much as you can afford to lose, which is indeed very little.

  3. Playing for large stakes at the casinos or the horses is absurd. Small wagers for the sport is the only answer.

  The true value of this evening lies in the future, when I prove whether the price I paid tonight was a large one or a small one for something I’d better remember for the rest of my life. It is time to shake myself out of this crazy mood and return to my past beliefs that hard work creates success and enjoyment. In no other way can I find the satisfaction that comes with productive achievement. This lesson must be learned now before it is too late!

  To help alleviate my poor character as a person, I propose that I do exceptionally well at business school while trying to work one day a week.

  Of course, it was all bullshit. I wasn’t willing to give up gambling. The next day I was back at the tables and before I left London, I’d won some of what I’d lost, but not enough to pay back my parents.

  Don’t beat yourself; if you’ve got a plan that’s working, stick to it.

  Ricky G. took me to the next level. In the winter of 1970, when I graduated from business school and started working for Kuhn Loeb, I transferred from the Marine Motor Transport Reserve Unit in New Haven to the Russian Interrogation Team in Brooklyn. Ricky G. was one of the enlisted men in my unit. Ricky G. was a Runyonesque character who was deep into gambling. Since there weren’t too many Russians in Brooklyn to interrogate at the time, we spent most of our free time at our reserve meetings playing cards and talking about gambling.

  When we were doing our two weeks of active duty at Camp Pendleton, California, we got a weekend pass, and Ricky G. said to me, “Hey, Lieutenant, you wanna go to Vegas?”

  I’d never been to Vegas, so naturally I said, “Conyetchna, duroch!”

  “Huh?”

  “Conyetchna, duroch! Translated: ‘Of course, you fool!’”

  Naturally, most of my enlisted men drove up with me to L.A. and we caught a flight to Vegas. It was early August, it was real hot, and there were sandstorms blowing all over the desert. We were being tossed around like cats in a dryer and the pilot didn’t know if he could land. It took him three tries to get the plane down; I was sure that we were going to crash and die. When we finally walked into the Sands Hotel and I saw the slot machines, the tables, the drinks, the food, the girls, and the games, it was like I’d been born again, a born-again gambler.

  We checked in and the bellhop said, “You boys need anything, you just give the bell captain a call. I mean, if you need anything, just give us a call.” It didn’t take more than a couple of calls before Vegas became my very favorite place in the whole world. I’d gamble, come back to my room, call the bell captain, rest up, have something to eat, go back downstairs, and gamble some more. For a young single guy with a good job, Vegas was heaven. It was the best club I’d ever been in, much better than Aqueduct.

  From then on, I went back to Vegas every chance I got. I used to follow a group of companies that were headquartered out west and I developed this route. On Wednesday night, I’d fly from New York to Salt Lake City and spend all day Thursday talking with companies in Salt Lake. On Thursday evening, I’d fly to Vegas, check into Caesar’s Palace and gamble all night. On Friday morning, I’d fly over to Phoenix and see a couple of companies, and then on Friday afternoon, fly back to Caesar’s. I’d gamble all weekend and fly back to New York on the red-eye Sunday night. On Monday morning, I’d be back at my desk writing my reports and tallying up my wins.

  For the pure gambler, there’s no other place on earth like Vegas.

  One day that fall at a reserve meeting in Brooklyn, Ricky G. asked me to look over his football card. He said he was getting ready to call Carmine, his bookie. “Hotski shitski,” I said, “I’d love to have a bookie.”

  Bookies don’t deal with just anybody, you have to be vouched for, so Ricky G. set up an interview for me with Carmine. We met at the Aqua Vitae Diner in Yonkers. Carmine was a dark furtive little Sicilian with his collar pulled up and his hat brim pulled down, and he was always looking over his shoulder. I guess I didn’t look like a Fed, because right away Carmine started giving me the lingo, like when I wanted to bet $500 that was a “nickel,” and when I wanted to bet $1,000 that was a “dime.” He gave me a number to call when I wanted to get the line or make a bet, then said, “Marty, you need a code name. Ricky lives in Vermont part of the time, and since you’re a friend of Ricky’s, we’re gonna call you Maple, for Maple Sugar.”

  Marty Schwartz aka Maple Sugar. I liked it, so Maple became my handle. I’d go out to a pay phone late Sunday mornings, pull my collar up and my hat down, look around furtively, and call Carmine. “This is Maple,” I’d murmur into the phone. “What’s the line on the Giants. Detroit plus eight and a half? Okay, I like the points, gimme a nickel on the Lions.”

  Carmine didn’t take checks or credit cards so I started looking around the apartment for a good place to hide money. All gamblers have weird hiding places. I finally settled on a federal taxation book that was left over from business school. I figured it was the last place anybody would look for money, and I liked the irony of keeping my gambling money in my federal taxation book.

  “Maple” did all right with football, but during basketball season, he got a little out of control. If Maple had been going to a shrink in those days, he would have been told that gambling was a substitute for a meaningful relationship with a woman. The worse Maple’s social life got, the more Maple gambled, and in early 1972, he was in a real losing streak.

  I’d joined a group ski house up in Sugarbush, Vermont, but I still wasn’t getting far with the women, and in early February I was down about $2,000 that week to Carmine, which was a huge amount of money for me. One Friday night, I was driving up to the ski house in my little TR6 when I decided I was going to go for broke. I’d been down in Louisville earlier that week meeting with Wendell Cherry, CEO of Extendacare.

  Carmine had this exotic bet called the “double if-then reversal” where you could win all four sides of the bet and make four dimes on a nickel. I’d been charting college basketball the same way I’d charted horses, jockeys, and roulette, and by this late in the season, I had a pretty good idea of who could win on the road, who could win on consecutive nights, and who could only win at home. As I burned up 1-91 past Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, and Bartonsville, I picked the four games for my “double if-then reversal.” My fourth and final pick was Louisville by three and a half over Memphis. Everyone in Louisville had been talking about the Cardinals, and I had a wonderful feeling about Louisville. I called Carmine and made my bet.

  Late Saturday afternoon and Saturday night I drove around the mountain in my TR6, fiddling with the radio, searching for the best reception, trying to get the scores. It was snowing its ass off, my hands were freezing, and I was getting all kinds of static, but after midnight I was pretty sure that I’d won the first three parts of the bet. All I needed was Louisville to win by four, and I’d be out of the hole and into some big money. I thought I’d heard that Louisville was down by eleven, or maybe it was seven, at the half, but whatever it was, it didn
’t sound good.

  I was going crazy. I had to find out if Louisville covered. Midnight, one in the morning, I was still parked outside the ski house, jiggling the radio. I was getting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from Salt Lake City, hockey scores from Quebec, cattle prices from Fort Worth, and boxing from Vegas. But nothing about Louisville or Memphis. Everybody else was inside partying. It was no wonder I had trouble forming meaningful relationships.

  At two, I was running out of gas. I gave up and went to bed. The next morning everybody went skiing but me. I got in the TR6, drove into town, and picked up a New York Times. Louisville had stormed back from fifteen points behind and won 75-71.

  I’d won the bet. I’d won four grand. I was out of the hole.

  When I got back to the city I called Carmine to find out where we should meet for the payoff. Thanks to pro football, the betting week ends on Sunday and you settle up on the following Tuesday. Carmine said he’d meet me Tuesday after work on the corner of 86th and Third, right in front of the movie theater. I was really nervous about getting $4,000 in cash. There were a lot of people walking around the streets of New York who’d cut your throat for $40. I didn’t want to think about what they’d do to you for four thousand.

  The Godfather had just opened, and the line stretched around the block. I was standing under the marquee when Carmine came down the street with his collar pulled up and his hat pulled down. He pushed his way through the line and pounded forty hundred-dollar bills into my palm. Everybody was staring at us. There I was, standing beside a big poster of Don Corleone, collecting a big wad of cash from a bookie named Carmine. I had an image of myself sleeping with the fishes. I was sure that somebody named Luca Brasi was waiting to mug me, or worse, before I got home. I didn’t stop sweating until the four thousand was tucked safely away in my federal taxation book.

  Good gamblers keep their bets in balance. You have to have a life beyond brokers and bookies.

  Ricky G. had a friend named Billy H. who was a commodities broker for H. Hentz & Co., and Billy was always on the fringes of something. In August of 1971, the three of us were driving up to Saratoga for the Travers and Billy said that he’d run across a trainer who claimed he could fix a race. I doubted it, but it doesn’t make any difference whether you’re playing the market or the ponies, everyone’s dream is to have the results ahead of time. “Billy,” I said, “if this guy ever gets one going, let me know.”

  The next month at our reserve meeting, Ricky G. pulled me aside. “Lieutenant, Billy says the fix is on. There’s a horse running in the sixth at Aqueduct on Thursday, My*Tune, and he’s a sure thing. You wanna go?”

  “That’s a big conyetchna, baby.”

  Monday I went down to the bank, got a thousand, and tucked it away in my federal taxation book. Tuesday, I told Joanne, my secretary, that I had a very important meeting on Thursday afternoon and not to schedule any appointments. Wednesday, I bought a copy of the Daily Racing Form and noted gleefully that My*Tune was at 4-1, but on Thursday morning, I got a call from Ricky G. “Forget it, Lieutenant,” he said. “We’re not going. Our horse has been scratched.”

  The following Monday was Columbus Day and even though the banks were closed, the market was open, so I was at the office. I was just getting ready to go to lunch when the phone rang. It was Ricky G. “Lieutenant, we’re back on. Billy just heard that our horse is running in the fourth. We’re headin’ out right away.”

  “Da, da, da!!”

  “But we got a problem. The banks are closed and we don’t have any money. You got any?”

  “Yeah, about a thousand. But it’s at home. Gimme an hour.”

  “Bring it all and any more if you can get. We’ll meet you at Billy’s office at one o’clock.”

  The race was on. I called my brother Gerry to see if he had any money. He wanted a piece of the action. “Meet me at Grand Central, the uptown express platform, in half an hour,” I said. I grabbed my jacket and said to Joanne, “I’ve got to go to that meeting that got canceled last Thursday. It’s very important. If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be back around three or three-thirty.”

  I ran down to the Wall Street Station and caught the uptown express. I hopped off at 42nd Street, found Gerry, got a hundred bucks from him, and jumped on the local. I got off at 77th, ran up to my apartment on 78th between Lexington and Park, grabbed the thousand out of my federal taxation book, ran back to the subway, and took the local back down to 59th. My watch read 1:05. The H. Hentz & Co. office was at the corner of 59th and Park Avenue. Ricky G. and Billy were pacing on the sidewalk outside.

  “You got the money?” Billy said.

  I pulled out my wad and we jumped in a cab. I threw the driver a twenty and said, “Aqueduct, and step on it.”

  We got there just as the third race was ending. I loaned Ricky G. and Billy $300 and put $800 on My*Tune to win. He went off at 7-2 and that race was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. My*Tune won by two and a half lengths, and all the time we were yelling, screaming, pounding each other on the back, and jumping up and down. I won $2,800. For once I thought I was on the inside, and that made it feel even sweeter.

  Ricky G. and Billy stayed for the rest of the card, but I had to get back to the office. I took out a quarter and started heading for the subway. Then I saw the line of limousines parked in front of the track and I said to myself, “Wait a minute, you jerk. You just won $2,800. You’ve got over $4,100 in your pocket. Why the hell are you getting on the subway?” For fifty bucks, I hired myself a limo and was chauffeured back to Kuhn Loeb.

  Nothing can beat knowing what’s going to happen before it happens, except when it doesn’t.

  In 1972 I discovered Paradise Island in Nassau. You’d fly two and a half hours from New York, pay a couple of bucks to cross over Huntington Hartford’s toll bridge, and on the other side was a combination of Aqueduct, Divone, and Vegas. There were lots of trees and water, there were lots of Europeans in coats and ties, and there was lots of action. Unlike Vegas, however, Paradise Island was more of a “couples” vacation place, and since I could never get a date who looked good in a bathing suit, I only went a few times.

  Then I met Audrey. Audrey looked terrific in a bathing suit. When it came time to pick a place for our honeymoon, I didn’t have to think twice. We were going to Paradise Island. We spent March 26, 1978, our wedding night, in New York City, then caught the morning flight to Nassau. I’d booked us into the honeymoon suite at the Loews Hotel, right on the beach. We checked in at noon and while Audrey started to unpack, I grabbed the phone and began calling my broker at Bear Stearns. I was trying to make money even on my honeymoon.

  The casinos opened at one o’clock, so at five to one I finished my calls and yelled, “Audrey, time for some fun?”

  “I’ll be out in a minute, Buzzy,” she purred seductively from the bathroom.

  I looked at my watch, “Well, hurry up, honey. I’m really feeling hot.”

  The door opened and there was Audrey dressed in a flimsy negligee with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a tray of chocolate strawberries in the other.

  “Hey, whatcha doin’?” I said. “Why aren’t you dressed? The tables open at one. We’re going to miss the action.”

  Audrey didn’t say a word. She just turned around, walked back into the bathroom, put down the strawberries and champagne, and locked the door. Her visions of a romantic honeymoon on Paradise Island had just crapped out. Here she was, married to some bozo whose idea of fun was trying to screw a casino.

  Keep your priorities straight.

  I don’t play cards, bet the ponies, or go to casinos much anymore. After Audrey and I developed “The Plan” in the summer of ’78, I did my gambling on the stock market, then the options market, then the S&P futures market. But I haven’t forgotten the lessons I learned at Artie’s corner store, Eddie Cohen’s basement, Aqueduct, Hinsdale, Europe, Vegas, the Aqua Vitae Diner, and Paradise Island. As more and more new financial instruments are thrown into the game, and
trading moves out of the pit onto the computer, more and more traders are learning their lessons at places like Harvard, Wharton, the Sorbonne, and the London School of Economics. That’s important, but all the academic degrees in the world aren’t enough once the bell rings. I see that with some of the kids who come to see me looking for advice. Unless they’ve got that feeling in their stomach, they can’t toe the line, they can’t pull the trigger, they can’t be a winner.

  Show me a great trader and I’ll show you someone who understands gambling.

  Viva Las Vegas

  Trading futures is a lot like playing the craps tables. So Las Vegas is a great place to work on the mental discipline it takes to become a successful trader. There’s no way to win consistently in Vegas, but, if you’re really good, you can win some of the time, not lose too much of the time, and have a good time all of the time. But it takes discipline. The casinos want you betting with your gut, not with your head, and they’ll do anything to break your concentration. Unlimited booze, uninhibited women, and unrestricted fun, twenty-four, seven, three sixty-five.

  My game is craps. It’s a lot like floor trading—fast, loud, crowded, with lots of money moving around. Twelve players are leaning over the table watching every roll, urging the dice to come up a winner. “Boxcars, craps, you lose.” “Give me fever.” “Aces, snake eyes.” “Eighter from Decatur.” “Nina from Pasadena.” “Thirty-three the hard way.” “Yo-leven, winner, pay the line.” When someone’s on a roll, chips are flying, men squeeze in tighter, women lean over farther, everyone breathes harder, and the shouts get louder. It’s just like being on the floor with Chickie, Frannie, and Fat Mike.