Roulette Bag Lady

As I walked past a roulette table in Trump Plaza, I couldn't help but notice the coverage of number 17. The chips were stacked eighteen inches high on that number, and I could tell from the stripes in the stack of chips that all the players at the table had contributed to the pile.

Now, this matter of stacking is a gray area, because the rules for how high you can go will vary from one casino to the next, or even one roulette pit to the next within the same casino. On the one hand, casino management likes to entertain their clientele with crowd pleasers when opportunities arise but, on the other hand, they also want to avoid disputes over who bet what, if the stack should fall.

In this case, neither the dealer nor the floorperson had objected.

The dealer set the ball loose in the spinning wheel and up popped a number that was definitely not 17. He took care in disassembling the pile of losing chips, but when he lifted the dolly the players feverishly re-created the pile.

Hope springs eternal.

This ritual continued for four more spins, but the 17 never appeared. Suddenly, all the players at once abandoned the table; their compulsive bets had tapped them dry. The once-lively table was vacant.

I started to walk away, but then noticed an older woman dressed like a bag lady on the opposite side of the table from where I stood. She walked up to the empty table, set down her bags, and took a seat. To my surprise, she put five white chips on the 17. Captivated by her stupidity, I stuck around to watch her bet go down.

It didn't. Number 17 won.

Dressed as she was, I was sure she'd take the money and run, but instead she repeated her five-chip bet on the 17, and added some multiple-chip coverage to a few of the lower numbers, using the chips she'd just won. Number 5 won, which she covered. She was now over $300 ahead from two spins that had taken place in about two minutes. The dealer had to make part of the new payoff with reds and greens, because she had tapped him out of the whites he had been using to pay her.

I looked around. No one was watching but me. This was too incredible to believe, but she was just getting started.

The woman left the table after about ten spins, roughly $900 ahead. She had caught the 17 three times, along with some other numbers.

To this day I still wonder who she was and how she did that.

© 1999 Rick D. Ellison

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