§ 327 The Personal Touch Was Lacking
Among gamblers there is a saying, and a true one, that no matter how wise a guy may be in his own line he’s always a sucker at some other fellow’s game. The expert confidence man goes against the crooked roulette wheel. The promoter of fixed foot-races blows his loot on faro.
It has remained for a sporting person whose specialty is poker to explain why, in his own case, he fails to garner any profits when he invades a kindred field of endeavor. He went to Belmont track one day to play the races. When he returned home in the evening he was penniless. The hand book-makers had stripped him of his last dollar.
His wife took him to task.
“You certainly are a boob,” she said. “Every time you go to the track you come home cleaned out. Why is it you always lose there when you always can win at cards?”
“Well,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about that very thing myself, and I guess the answer is that I don’t shuffle the horses.”