GAMBLER WHO CAN’T LOSE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIII, Issue 3076, 7 November 1929, Page 7

GAMBLER WHO CAN’T LOSE.

BISCUITS WORTH £BOO EACH. The casino at Deauville is a vast one-storey crem-coloured square with ceillings fifty feet high, the floors carpeted luxuriously, the whole decor being of the Louis XVI. period. As we enter the swing doors we are challenged for our carte d’entree, give ten francs to the two nuns, and walk up a few steps into a huge equare dancing room (relates Chas. Graves in the Daily Mail.) Straight in front is another long corridor leading to the gambling rooms and to the restaurant —about half the size of the Palais de Danse at Hammersmith, and with a stage and a tall vaulted ceiling. We produce our passports, however, pay 250 francs, sign a lot of forms while the officials look to see if we are on the famous black list that all casinos have of previously defaulting players, and enter the rooms. Almost at once there are familiar faces. Lady Evelyn Beauchamp is gaily punting against a pleasant, dark chinless Frenchman. Beside her is her husband and Lady Carnarvon. A few feet away is Lord Stanley, the son and heir of Lord Derby, whose horse lost at the races that afternoon. The Frenchman wins three times more. Lord Carnarvon comes up and successfully takes his measure.

All round us are spectacled Americans, lithe dark-skinned Argentines, pretty ladies from Paris, their arms glittering with bracelets of diamonds and platinum, and middle-aged Frenchmen, with or without beards. Now if you have got £4 5s in your pocket we will gO' into the private room where the Greek syndicate holds the fort. Here the heavy brocade curtains are drawn and the chandeliers send down the unreal electric light. There are sixty people cluster round the oval table. Twenty of them are gambling in either side of M. Zographos, the small dark Greek with the sunburnt skin, haunted eyes, high forehead, and imperceptible fatigue. He has just won on both sides of the table five times consecutively. As we stand there he does it four times more.

In front of him are a pyramid of white oval “biscuits” worth £BOO each, three feet of oblong red and blue £BO “biscuits” neatly parked on the green baize table, and a flood cf transparent discs worth £8 each. In all there is £BO,OOO in front of him. £68,000 of it represents his winnings of the afternoon.

Here he sits afternoon after afternoon and night after night, while the rich men of France, the United States, South America, Italy, and even Turkey and Egypt bring their chequebooks and their cash and try to break his luck. As we stand and watch he wins another £20,000, lights a cigarette, waits a moment and then, the cards being exhausted, makes a movement as if to close the session. But he is urged to continue. He does so, a trifle wearily, and wins heavily again. There is not an Englishman playing against him, though Lord Stanley has followed us and is watching at a discreet distance. M. Zagraphos never smiles and seldom talks. His one mannerism is to put his hand on his hip while the croupier rakes in the money. He never drinks alcohol. He treats the game as a business, which indeed it is for him. The mathematical odds in his favour are only guineas to pounds. But the phychological odds are tremendous. The punter who is winning does not plunge when he should. He plunges when he is losing and the luck is running against him. The Comte de Bearn joins us. “I will introduce you, if you like, later on,” he says “Zographos is more expensive at night.” He meant “expansive at night.” But expensive is even better.