Word: gambler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...David in extra large, where employees are costumed as giant diamonds or Roman vestals in mini-togas. Amid all this, the ritual extraction of money produces shrieks, groans and -- sometimes -- incongruously grim determination. On his first night as a $25,000-a-year dealer, Larry Brown saw a gambler suffer a stroke. "What really shocked me is how the players reacted, how they continued making their bets, reaching over him and stuff," he says...
...mission's overnight guests like to say they are passing through on their way to something better. Michael, a weasel-faced gambler who landed there after blowing his last $11,000 at craps, says he will soon be reconciled with his wife in New Jersey and on his way to Florida. "We're talking about getting out. Building a little house, a little boat. Soon." John, who last made a living recycling cans, was lured to Atlantic City by one of Trump's ads. "I'm going back to see my daughter in Tacoma. If I can ever...
Members of the self-help group Gamblers Anonymous, who see Rose as one of them, nod and say, aha, his reaction sounds like another part of the classic pattern: denial. There is an ancient gag among Gamblers Anonymous members: "How do you know when a compulsive gambler is lying? When you see his lips move...
...which makes the Pete Rose story more than a gossipy tale about the downfall of an idol. Whether or not he bet on baseball, the last thing America's growing legion of gamblers needs is an example of an admitted heavy bettor blithely denying he has done anything wrong and actually commanding the sympathy of people who continue to worship him. The lure of excessive gambling is too great, even without an exemplar of Rose's stature. Painful as it may be for the millions who admired him as a ballplayer, he should be punished as severely as an objective...
Since the celluloid Gipper has repaired to California and the call to win things for him has happily left the language, maybe it is not too impolite now to remember that the real George Gipp of Notre Dame was a low-life gambler who openly bet on his own football games and everything else from cards and craps to flies landing on sugar cubes. Gipp seldom attended class and only occasionally graced football practice. The sentimental writer Red Smith, a Notre Dame man himself, used to refer to the great dead hero as "the patron saint of eight-ball pool...