COOL WOMEN GAMBLERS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19001, 25 October 1923, Page 8

COOL WOMEN GAMBLERS.

HIGH 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 resorts. A crowd throngs the casino from early ia the evening until early next morning, bu 6 the habitual women players do not, as » rule, arrive till after supper. Once settled down to play, they remain as long as their temperaments and their purses can stand the strain. The modern woman gambler is of a different type 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 lingers and arms are loaded with jewels. Her bearing is selfassured, 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 & fluttering gesture as she turns up her card reveals the nervous tension that inwardly consumes her. The most accomplished women gamblers are mostly Americans. One American woman recently netted more than £24,000 at chemia de fer, taking 30 hands one after the other. Most of these women seem indifferent to gains or losses. Money to them seems to have little vai ac in itself. They play not for gain so much as for a thrill. Their appetite for this form of excitement eeem« insatiable.