time and put his cue away, and then, idle, went over and stood watching the keno game.
Keno is played on a standard billiard table; at one end is a wooden platform raised almost an inch above the level of the felt, and along its front edge is a brass ramp. There are four rows of holes in the ramp, spaced alternately, and each hole is numbered. In the exact center of the platform is a starred hole. Any player whose ball lands in the starred hole gets a keno and the point value of the ball. If the ball or balls land in any other hole, the player gets the value of the hole, and if the number on the ball matches the number of the hole, he also gets a keno. The game is played with a regular set of fifteen pool balls, racked at the other end of the table. In the game Billy was watching, each keno was worth fifty cents from each player, and the player with high score when all the balls were on the rack got a dollar from each of the other players, less any kenos. Each game ended with a flurry of calculating and arguing over the score, but Billy saw at once that there was plenty of money changing hands. It looked like a game worth getting into.
Keno looks like a luck game, which is its chief attraction to poor players, but as Billy stood and watched, now drinking a bottle of Coke, the players with the best stroke always seemed to come out ahead. There was more to the game than met the eye; it was not enough to ram your cue ball into another ball so that it banked around the table and ended up on the platform, although that is just exactly what most of the players did. Players came and went; at one point, as Billy watched, there were six of them, and a man with the placid face of an idiot stood by the blackboard keeping score and talking about the game like a sports announcer. But the good players, without seeming to, always managed to play their cue ball back to a bad position for the next man, and instead of just getting a ball up onto the platform, played it so that it knocked into other balls, rearranging them on the platform and making higher scores. Also, the good players seemed to know the precise strength a ball needed to roll up to its keno hole and stay in it, without bobbling out or flying off the end of the table. Still, it looked easy to Billy, and he itched to get in.
He fidgeted through three or four games, and then finally got in without half-trying. A tall red-faced man who had been losing steadily as Billy watched, cursing his bad shots and bad lays as bad luck, finally got out in disgust when he had to pay off eight kenos and game. “Shit, this sure as hell aint my day,” he announced. He walked up to the wall rack to put his cue in it, and instead, thrust it into Billy’s hands. “Here,” he said. “
You
try it.”
Billy moved up to the table, picked up a piece of chalk, and stood there chalking the cue, and no one seemed to object. One of the players said to him, “You follow me,” and he was in. Apparently, his money was as good as anybody else’s. The action-feeling started to come over him, and he felt good; he could feel it thickening in his throat, and deep in his belly was a sense of anticipation almost sexual. When it was his turn to shoot he bent over the table slowly, savoring the feeling. He banked the six-ball off the side rail with the speed and direction he assumed would make it go up onto the ramp, hit the twelve-ball, which was in the center keno hole, displace the twelve, displace the ten-ball behind it, and give him a score of at least twenty-eight plus keno, maybe double keno if the ten kept rolling and landed in its own hole in the back row. Instead, the six sped up the ramp, glanced off the twelve without moving it, skipped over the top of the ten and off the back of the table, coming up against the bar with a crack.
The idiot at the scoreboard chanted,“...and the new money
jumps
the rail and draws a
blank!
Next shooter, Mister Frank Bartholomew,
if you please!
”
There were
Keno is played on a standard billiard table; at one end is a wooden platform raised almost an inch above the level of the felt, and along its front edge is a brass ramp. There are four rows of holes in the ramp, spaced alternately, and each hole is numbered. In the exact center of the platform is a starred hole. Any player whose ball lands in the starred hole gets a keno and the point value of the ball. If the ball or balls land in any other hole, the player gets the value of the hole, and if the number on the ball matches the number of the hole, he also gets a keno. The game is played with a regular set of fifteen pool balls, racked at the other end of the table. In the game Billy was watching, each keno was worth fifty cents from each player, and the player with high score when all the balls were on the rack got a dollar from each of the other players, less any kenos. Each game ended with a flurry of calculating and arguing over the score, but Billy saw at once that there was plenty of money changing hands. It looked like a game worth getting into.
Keno looks like a luck game, which is its chief attraction to poor players, but as Billy stood and watched, now drinking a bottle of Coke, the players with the best stroke always seemed to come out ahead. There was more to the game than met the eye; it was not enough to ram your cue ball into another ball so that it banked around the table and ended up on the platform, although that is just exactly what most of the players did. Players came and went; at one point, as Billy watched, there were six of them, and a man with the placid face of an idiot stood by the blackboard keeping score and talking about the game like a sports announcer. But the good players, without seeming to, always managed to play their cue ball back to a bad position for the next man, and instead of just getting a ball up onto the platform, played it so that it knocked into other balls, rearranging them on the platform and making higher scores. Also, the good players seemed to know the precise strength a ball needed to roll up to its keno hole and stay in it, without bobbling out or flying off the end of the table. Still, it looked easy to Billy, and he itched to get in.
He fidgeted through three or four games, and then finally got in without half-trying. A tall red-faced man who had been losing steadily as Billy watched, cursing his bad shots and bad lays as bad luck, finally got out in disgust when he had to pay off eight kenos and game. “Shit, this sure as hell aint my day,” he announced. He walked up to the wall rack to put his cue in it, and instead, thrust it into Billy’s hands. “Here,” he said. “
You
try it.”
Billy moved up to the table, picked up a piece of chalk, and stood there chalking the cue, and no one seemed to object. One of the players said to him, “You follow me,” and he was in. Apparently, his money was as good as anybody else’s. The action-feeling started to come over him, and he felt good; he could feel it thickening in his throat, and deep in his belly was a sense of anticipation almost sexual. When it was his turn to shoot he bent over the table slowly, savoring the feeling. He banked the six-ball off the side rail with the speed and direction he assumed would make it go up onto the ramp, hit the twelve-ball, which was in the center keno hole, displace the twelve, displace the ten-ball behind it, and give him a score of at least twenty-eight plus keno, maybe double keno if the ten kept rolling and landed in its own hole in the back row. Instead, the six sped up the ramp, glanced off the twelve without moving it, skipped over the top of the ten and off the back of the table, coming up against the bar with a crack.
The idiot at the scoreboard chanted,“...and the new money
jumps
the rail and draws a
blank!
Next shooter, Mister Frank Bartholomew,
if you please!
”
There were
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