PLAYING THE GAME.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 255, 27 October 1928, Page 10 (Supplement)

PLAYING THE GAME.

FOR ITS, OWN SAKE.

WOMEN CANNOT DO IT.

GOOD GAMBLERS BUT BAD SPORTS

(By R. E. CORDER.)

Women are good gamblers—with other • people's money. I have seen charming young women lose hundreds of pounds in an hour's play at chemin de fer in the Deauville casino without blanching or blinking.

Not a frown or a quiver disturbed their sweet serenity nor ruflled the surface of their placid calm. When they lost, they merely held out their little hands for more money, as a child will will hold out its hands for nuts to give to a squirrel.

Gambling, like drinking, is a man's game. Everybody knows that a man may drink even to excess and retain his mental and physical powers, while a woman who drinks to excess quickly goes to pieces. Men can gamble and keep their heads —and some of tlieir money —but when a woman has the gambling fever it affects her entire personality. Bridgets. Bridge parties aro pleasant enougn pastimes in themselves, but save us from the wives who play bridge every afternoon, and are bored if they cannot play every night. The game with them has become an obsession. The strain o£ constant play has hardened and coarsened their features; there is an icy glitter in their eyes, and an ugly tightness about their mouths. Women do not play games as men play them. The average man never ceases to be a boy. Take any group of men, say, at the seaside to-day. If one of them idly threw a pebble at a mark, the next minute would see every mai in the company earnestly throwing pebbles.

Should a woman idly throw a stone her friends would conclude that she was either posing to attract some man's attention or that she was in a temper. A man will play a gajne for its own sake; a woman for what she can get out of it.

How often is a woman seen to smile or heard to laugh at the card table? Her mind is too much concentrated on the game to permit any relaxation. The other day I watched two women and two men playing bridge in a railway carriage. One or the other of the men would frequently make a joke, a passing reference between hands to the sccnery; but tho women played like professionals, knowing that every opponent's hand was against them. They played to win, and they were playing at the top of their nerves.

Many hours I have spent in Deauvillo casino merely watching women gamble. The men did not interest me, but the women were fascinating, not so much as women but as players. Beautiful women, young girls, old women eagerly sought a seat at the crowded tables. Jewels worth many fortunes sparkled and glowed, wonderful frocks almost as expensive as rare gems displayed graceful figures. It was an Aladdin's cave transformed into a drawing room. Playing Against Fate. Money, as money, seemed to lose its value. A year's dress allowance was carelessly tossed away at one table; the price of a motor car was lightly won at another. Both time and money lost their value. The gamblers seemed to be playing against fate through eternity. Ani wcfmen could be seen visibly growing old during the long night. Men played on like automatons, pausing only for a drink as a motor car stops, for petrol, and then going on in the exciting race for swift wealth. But the women changed. The fierce desire to win gleamed in their eyes and rested on their lips. Animal Eyes. The eyes of a keen woman gamblor are like the eyes of a hunting animal crouching for the kill. Narrowed eyes, watching, always watching,—watching the cardo, watching the hands of the other players, watching for the turn of luck that must come. And, as most women gamblers are superstitious, they are always watching for an omen, "a mascot, a sign—anything that might influence that intangible thing we call luok. Because women are gamblers men are born, and their readiness to take a chance leads women to marriage; so it may be that as women is the gambling sex, the passion for gambling now seen among women is a logical development of an instinct curbed during man's dominance in the home.

Enjoying their freedom, women are prepared to take more chances. They will even risk what they call theii newly-won freedom in an attempt to win complete ascendancy.

With all their freedom, women have a lot to learn before they can play like men. They are as good, if not better, in the schoolroom; they are excellent in the office; they are ready writers and quick thinkers; but on the playing fields and in the gaming rooms they do not shine.

Women have developed their muscles, but they have not developed the sporting temperament. They are bad losers.

Listen to the comments of a girls' hockey team after a losing game, to the confidential chat of girl runners, girl swimmers, girl tennis players. Things are said of the other side that only a woman would be allowed to say. So it ig with women gamblers. Their eagerness to win, to make easy moneys overcomes their cultivated restraint, the carefully acquired polish, the—l was going to say—elusive quality, but women are no longer elusive; they are extremely obvious. Angel or Tigress. An inveterate woman gambler drops her guard; and at the bidding of the cards she shows her real self. She is not nice to look upon, and Bhe is not nice" to play with. Her eyes and her temper are too sharp. When she wins, she is an acquisiteive angel; when she loses, she is a tempestuous tigress. Women are good gamblers—with other people's money.