COOL WOMEN GAMBLERS

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11653, 18 October 1923, Page 7

COOL WOMEN GAMBLERS

HICH PLAY AT DEAUVILLE. A LOVE FOR EXCITEMENT. The high play of women, some of them little more than girls, is a feature of this year’s season at Deauville, the most fashionable of the French seaside reaorta. A crowd throngs the casino from early in tho evening until early next mom--ins, but the habitual women players do not, as a rule, arrive till after supper. Once settled down to play, they remain as long as their temperaments and fcbeir purposes can stand the strain. The modern woman gambler is of a different typo entirely from the wizened, elderly habitues that once were the only representatives of their aex at the tables. She is often beautiful, generally young, and always faultlessly dressed. Her fingers and arms are loaded with jewels. Her bearing is self-assured, and, as a rule, she is* astonishingly cool. Although the sum she may at the moment be winning or losing may run into four or five figures', she seldom betrays excitement or loses her head. Only an impatient tapping of her foot beneath the table or a fluttering gesture as she turns up her card reveals the nervous tension that inwardly consumes her. The most accomplished women gamblera are mostly Americans. One American woman recently netted more than £24.000 at chemin de fer, taking thirty bands one after the other. Most of these women seem indifferent to gains or losses. Money to them seems to have little value in itself. They play not for gain so much as for a thrill. Their appetite for this form of excitement seems insatiable.