Word: blackjacking
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...liveliest action on the TV screen these days is not interrupted by commercials. It does not involve cops, medics, superwomen, paterfamilial farceurs or country-rock carolers. It is not even rated by Nielsen. Television's new superhit is Yourself, the Athlete (or Racing Driver, or Op Artist, or Blackjack High Roller). The name of the game -which is provided by a wide and wildly competitive assortment of electronic contests that can be simply hooked into any TV set-is Jocktronics...
...wish the children were watching Captain Kangaroo. The Fairchild Video Entertainment System ($ 150 for the basic unit, $20 for cartridges containing additional games) enables homefront Pattons and Rommels to blast the bejabers out of whippet tanks in the desert; or lets the player be a skeet shooter; or pits blackjack skills against an electronic dealer who tots up bucks lost or won, keeps track of the bets and will advance credit if somebody goes broke...
...casino games, the house gets its share through an edge in the odds. On Las Vegas roulette wheels, which have two zero spaces, the house benefits by 5.26%. (In Monte Carlo, where the wheels have only one zero, the house margin is 2.7%.) In blackjack in Vegas, the house has a basic advantage of 5.9%, though this can vary depending on the skill of a player. The best casino odds are in craps, where the house is only 1.4% better off than the player. Slot machines vary, keeping 3% to 22% of the coins they swallow...
Young's actions did little to boost police morale, which had sunk to a disastrously low level in the first place because of the mayor's earlier moves. Young won election in 1973 partly by campaigning against the alleged racist attitudes and "blackjack rule" of the cops. The force is also under a cloud because of a federal investigation of alleged payoffs from narcotics operators to some of its high-ranking officers. Some of the police still regard the mayor as a cop hater and Police Chief Philip Tannian as an inept lackey. But they have enforced...
...last bow, the paradigm of detective-as-Lochinvar is still Raymond Chandler's incorrodable shamus, Philip Marlowe. He was, of course, a total fiction. As Chandler admitted, "the real-life private eye is a sleazy little drudge... a strong-arm guy with no more personality than a blackjack. He has about as much moral stature as a stop-and-go sign...