Taken from “Surely You're Joking, Mr.
Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Phillips Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton edited by
Edward Hutchings
I
used to cross the United States in my automobile every summer, trying to make
it to the Pacific Ocean. But, for various reasons, I would always get stuck
somewhere—usually in Las Vegas.
I
remember the first time, particularly, I liked it very much. Then, as now, Las
Vegas made its money on the people who gamble, so the whole problem for the
hotels was to get people to come
there to gamble. So they had shows and dinners which were very
inexpensive—almost free. You didn’t have to make any reservations for anything:
you could walk in, sit down at one of the many empty tables, and enjoy the
show. It was just wonderful
for a man who didn’t gamble, because I was enjoying all the advantages—the
rooms were inexpensive, the meals were next to nothing, the shows were good,
and I liked the girls.
One
day I was lying around the pool at my motel, and some guy came up and started
to talk to me. I can’t remember how he got started, but his idea was that I
presumably worked for a living, and it was really quite silly to do that. Look
how easy it is for me,” he said. “I just hang around the pool all the time and
enjoy life in Las Vegas.”
“How
the hell do you do that without working?”
“Simple:
I bet on the horses.”
“I
don’t know anything about horses, but I don’t see how you can make a living
betting on the horses,” I said, skeptically.
“Of
course you can,” he said. “That’s how I live! I’ll tell you what: I’ll teach you how to do it. We’ll
go down and I’ll guarantee that you’ll win a hundred dollars.”
“How
can you do that?”
“I’ll
bet you a hundred dollars that you’ll win,” he said. “So if you win it doesn’t
cost you anything, and if you lose, you get a hundred dollars!”
So
I think, “Gee! That’s right! If I win a hundred dollars on the horses and I
have to pay him, I don’t lose anything; it’s just an exercise—it’s just proof
that his system works. And if he fails, I win a hundred dollars. It’s quite
wonderful!”
He
takes me down to some betting place where they have a list of horses and
racetracks all over the country. He introduces me to other people who say,
“Geez, he’s great! I won a hundred dollars!”
I
gradually realize that I have to put up some of my own money for the bets, and
I begin to get a little nervous. “How much money do I have to bet?” I ask.
“Oh,
three or four hundred dollars.”
I
haven’t got that much. Besides, it begins to worry me: Suppose I lose all the
bets?
So
then he says, “I’ll tell you what: My advice will cost you only fifty dollars, and only if it works. If it
doesn’t work, I’ll give you the hundred dollars you would have won anyway.”
I
figure, “Wow! Now I win both ways—either fifty or a hundred dollars! How the
heck can he do
that?” Then I realize that if you have a reasonably even game—forget the little
losses from the take for the moment in order to understand it—the chance that
you’ll win a hundred dollars versus losing your four hundred dollars is four to
one. So out of five times that he tries this on somebody, four times they’re
going to win a hundred dollars, he gets two hundred (and he points out to them
how smart he is); the fifth time he has to pay
a hundred dollars. So he receives two
hundred, on the average, when he’s paying out one hundred! So I finally understood how he
could do that.
This
process went on for a few days. He would invent some scheme that sounded like a
terrific deal at first, but after I thought about it for a while I’d slowly
figure out how it worked. Finally, in some sort of desperation he says, “All
right, I’ll tell you what: You pay me fifty dollars for the advice, and if you
lose, I’ll pay you back all your money.”
Now
I can’t lose on
that! So I say, “All right, you’ve got a deal!”
“Fine,”
he says. “But unfortunately, I have to go to San Francisco this weekend, so you
just mail me the results, and if you lose your four hundred dollars, I’ll send
you the money.
The
first schemes were designed to make him money by honest arithmetic. Now, he’s
going to be out of town. The only way he’s going to make money on this scheme is not to send it—to be a real cheat.
So
I never accepted any of his offers. But it was very entertaining to see how he
operated.
The
other thing that was fun in Las Vegas was meeting show girls. I guess they were
supposed to hang around the bar between shows to attract customers. I met
several of them that way, and talked to them, and found them to be nice people.
People who say, “Show girls, eh?” have already made up their mind what they
are! But in any group, if you look at it, there’s all kinds of variety. For
example, there was the daughter of a dean of an Eastern university. She had a
talent for dancing and liked to dance; she had the summer off and dancing jobs
were hard to find, so she worked as a chorus girl in Las Vegas. Most of the
show girls were very nice, friendly people. They were all beautiful, and I just
love beautiful
girls. In fact, show girls were my real reason for liking Las Vegas so much.
At
first I was a little bit afraid: the girls were so beautiful, they had such a
reputation, and so forth. I would try to meet them, and I’d choke a little bit
when I talked. It was difficult at first, but gradually it got easier, and
finally I had enough confidence that I wasn’t afraid of anybody.
I
had a way of having adventures which is hard to explain: it’s like fishing,
where you put a line out and then you have to have patience. When I would tell
someone about some of my adventures, they might say, “Oh, come on—let’s do that!” So we would go
to a bar to see if something will happen, and they would lose patience after
twenty minutes or so. You have to spend a couple of days before something happens, on average. I
spent a lot of time talking to show girls. One would introduce me to another,
and after a while, something interesting would often happen.
I
remember one girl who liked to drink Gibsons. She danced at the Flamingo Hotel,
and I got to know her rather well. When I’d come into town, I’d order a Gibson
put at her table before she sat down, to announce my arrival.
One
time I went over and sat next to her and she said, “I’m with a man tonight—a
high-roller from Texas.” (I had already heard about this guy. Whenever he’d
play at the craps table, everybody would gather around to see him gamble.) He
came back to the table where we were sitting, and my show girl friend
introduced me to him.
The
first thing he said to me was, “You know somethin’? I lost sixty thousand
dollars here last night.”
I
knew what to do: I turned to him, completely unimpressed, and I said, “Is that
supposed to be smart, or stupid?”
We
were eating breakfast in the dining room. He said, “Here, let me sign your
check. They don’t charge me for all these things because I gamble so much
here.”
“I’ve
got enough money that I don’t need to worry about who pays for my breakfast,
thank you.” I kept putting him down each time he tried to impress me.
He
tried everything: how rich he was, how much oil he had in Texas, and nothing
worked, because I knew the formula!
We
ended up having quite a bit of fun together.
One
time when we were sitting at the bar he said to me, “You see those girls at the
table over there? They’re whores from Los Angeles.”
They
looked very nice; they had a certain amount of class.
He
said, “Tell you what I’ll do: I’ll introduce them to you, and then I’ll pay for
the one you want.”
I
didn’t feel like meeting the girls, and I knew he was saying that to impress
me, so I began to tell him no. But then I thought, “This is something! This guy
is trying so hard to impress me, he’s willing to buy this for me. If I’m ever
going to tell the story … So I said to him, “Well, OK, introduce me.”
We
went over to their table and he introduced me to the girls and then went off
for a moment. A waitress came around and asked us what we wanted to drink. I
ordered some water, and the girl next to me said, “Is it all right if I have a
champagne?”
“You
can have whatever you want,” I replied, coolly, ‘cause you’re payin’ for it.”
“What’s
the matter with you?” she said. “Cheapskate, or something?”
“That’s
right.”
“You’re
certainly not a gentleman!” she said indignantly.
“You
figured me out immediately!” I replied. I had learned in New Mexico many years
before not to be a gentleman.
Pretty
soon they were offering to buy me drinks—the tables were turned completely! (By
the way, the Texas oilman never came back.)
After
a while, one of the girls said, “Let’s go over to the El Rancho. Maybe things
are livelier over there.” We got in their car. It was a nice car, and they were
nice people. On the way, they asked me my name.
“Dick
Feynman.”
“Where
are you from, Dick? What do you do?”
“I’m
from Pasadena; I work at Caltech.”
One
of the girls said, “Oh, isn’t that the place where that scientist Pauling comes
from?”
I
had been in Las Vegas many times, over and over, and there was nobody who ever knew
anything about science. I had talked to businessmen of all kinds, and to them,
a scientist was a nobody. “Yeah!” I said, astonished.
“And
there’s a fella named Gellan, or something like that—a physicist.” I couldn’t
believe it. I was riding in a car full of prostitutes and they know all this
stuff!
“Yeah!
His name is Gell-Mann! How did you happen to know that?”
“Your
pictures were in Time
magazine.” It’s true, they had pictures of ten U.S. scientists in Time magazine, for some
reason. I was in it, and so were Pauling and Gell-Mann.
“How
did you remember the names?” I asked.
“Well,
we were looking through the pictures, and we picked out the youngest and the
handsomest!” (Gell-Mann is younger than I am.)
We
got to the El Rancho Hotel and the girls continued this game of acting towards
me like everybody normally acts towards them: “Would you like to gamble?” they
asked. I gambled a little bit with their money and we all had a good time.
After
a while they said, “Look, we see a live one, so we’ll have to leave you now,”
and they went back to work.
One
time I was sitting at a bar and I noticed two girls with an older man. Finally
he walked away, and they came over and sat next to me: the prettier and more
active one next to me, and her duller friend, named Pam, on the other side.
Things
started going along very nicely right away. She was very friendly. Soon she was
leaning against me, and I put my arm around her. Two men came in and sat at a
table nearby. Then, before the waitress came, they walked out.
“Did
you see those men?” my new-found friend said.
“Yeah.”
“They’re
friends of my husband.”
“Oh?
What is this?”
“You
see, I just married John Big”—she mentioned a very famous name—”and we’ve had a
little argument. We’re on our honeymoon, and John is always gambling. He
doesn’t pay any attention to me, so I go off and enjoy myself, but he keeps
sending spies around to check on what I’m doing.”
She
asked me to take her to her motel room, so we went in my car. On the way I
asked her, “Well, what about John?”
She
said, “Don’t worry. Just look around for a big red car with two antennas. If
you don’t see it, he’s not around.”
The
next night I took the “Gibson girl” and a friend of hers to the late show at
the Silver Slipper, which had a show later than all the hotels. The girls who
worked in the other shows liked to go there, and the master of ceremonies
announced the arrival of the various dancers as they came in. So in I went with
these two lovely dancers on my arm, and he said, “And here comes Miss So-and-so
and Miss So-and-so from the Flamingo!” Everybody looked around to see who was
coming in. I felt great!
We
sat down at a table near the bar, and after a little while there was a bit of a
flurry—waiters moving tables around, security guards, with guns, coming in.
They were making room for a celebrity. JOHN BIG was coming in!
He
came over to the bar, right next to our table, and right away two guys wanted
to dance with the girls I brought. They went off to dance, and I was sitting
alone at the table when John came over and sat down at my table. “How are yah?”
he said. “Whattya doin’ in Vegas?”
I
was sure he’d found out about me and his wife. “Just foolin’ around …” (I’ve
gotta act tough, right?)
“How
long ya been here?”
“Four
or five nights.”
“I
know ya,” he said. “Didn’t I see you in Florida?”
“Well,
I really don’t know …”
He
tried this place and that place, and I didn’t know what he was getting at. “I
know,” he said; “It was in El Morocco.” (El Morocco was a big nightclub in New
York, where a lot of big operators go—like professors of theoretical physics,
right?)
“That
must have been it,” I said. I was wondering when he was going to get to it. Finally he leaned
over to me and said, “Hey, will you introduce me to those girls you’re with
when they come back from dancing?”
That’s
all he wanted; he didn’t know me from a hole in the wall! So I introduced him,
but my show girl friends said they were tired and wanted to go home.
The
next afternoon, I saw John Big at the Flamingo, standing at the bar, talking to
the bartender about cameras and taking pictures. He must be an amateur
photographer: He’s got all these bulbs and cameras, but he says the dumbest
things about them. I decided he wasn’t an amateur photographer after all; he
was just a rich guy who bought himself some cameras.
I
figured by that time that he didn’t know I had been fooling around with his
wife; he only wanted to talk to me because of the girls I had. So I thought I
would play a game. I’d invent a part for myself: John Big’s assistant.
“Hi,
John,” I said. “Let’s take some pictures. I’ll carry your flashbulbs.”
I
put the flashbulbs in my pocket, and we started off taking pictures. I’d hand
him flashbulbs and give him advice here and there; he likes that stuff.
We
went over to the Last Frontier to gamble, and he started to win. The hotels
don’t like a high roller to leave, but I could see he wanted to go. The problem
was how to do it gracefully.
“John,
we have to leave now,” I said in a serious voice.
“But
I’m winning.”
“Yes,
but we have
made an appointment this afternoon.”
“OK,
get my car.”
“Certainly,
Mr. Big!” He handed me the keys and told me what it looked like (I didn’t let
on that I knew).
I
went out to the parking lot, and sure enough, there was this big, fat,
wonderful car with the two antennas. I climbed into it and turned the key—and
it wouldn’t start. It had an automatic transmission; they had just come out and
I didn’t know anything about them. After a bit I accidentally shifted it into
PARK and it started. I drove it very carefully, like a million-dollar car, to
the hotel entrance, where I got out and went inside to the table where he was
still gambling, and said, “Your car is ready, sir!”
“I
have to quit,” he announced, and we left.
He
had me drive the car. “I want to go to the El Rancho,” he said. “Do you know
any girls there?”
I
knew one girl there rather well, so I said “Yeah.” By this time I felt
confident enough that the only reason he was going along with this game I had
invented was that he wanted to meet some girls, so I brought up a delicate
subject: “I met your wife the other night …”
“My
wife? My wife’s not here in Las Vegas.”
I
told him about the girl I met in the bar.
“Oh!
I know who you mean; I met that girl and her friend in Los Angeles and brought
them to Las Vegas. The first thing they did was use my phone for an hour to
talk to their friends in Texas. I got mad and threw ‘em out! So she’s been
going around telling everybody that she’s my wife, eh?”
So that was cleared up.
We
went into the El Rancho, and the show was going to start in about fifteen
minutes. The place was packed; there wasn’t a seat in the house. John went over
to the majordomo and said, “I want a table.”
“Yes,
sir, Mr. Big! It will be ready in a few minutes.”
John
tipped him and went off to gamble. Meanwhile I went around to the back, where
the girls were getting ready for the show, and asked for my friend. She came
out and I explained to her that John Big was with me, and he’d like some
company after the show.
“Certainly,
Dick,” she said. “I’ll bring some friends and we’ll see you after the show.”
I
went around to the front to find John. He was still gambling. “Just go in
without me,” he said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
There
were two tables, at the very front, right at the edge of the stage. Every other
table in the place was packed. I sat down by myself. The show started before
John came in, and the show girls came out. They could see me at the table, all
by myself. Before, they thought I was some small-time professor; now they see
I’m a BIG OPERATOR.
Finally
John came in, and soon afterwards some people sat down at the table next to
us—John’s “wife” and her friend Pam, with two men!
I
leaned over to John: “She’s at the other table.”
“Yeah.”
She
saw I was taking care of John, so she leaned over to me from the other table
and asked, “Could I talk to John?”
I
didn’t say a word. John didn’t say anything either.
I
waited a little while, then I leaned over to John: “She wants to talk to you.”
Then
he waited a little bit. “All right,” he said.
I
waited a little more, and then I leaned over to her: “John will speak to you
now.”
She
came over to our table. She started working on “Johnnie,” sitting very close to
him. Things were beginning to get straightened out a little bit, I could tell.
I
love to be mischievous, so every time they got things straightened out a little
bit, I reminded John of something: “The telephone, John …”
“Yeah!”
he said. “What’s the idea, spending an hour on the telephone?”
She
said it was Pam who did the calling.
Things
improved a little bit more, so I pointed out that it was her idea to bring Pam.
“Yeah!”
he said. (I was having a great time playing this game; it went on for quite a
while.)
When
the show was over, the girls from the El Rancho came over to our table and we
talked to them until they had to go back for the next show. Then John said, “I
know a nice little bar not too far away from here. Let’s go over there.”
I
drove him over to the bar and we went in. “See that woman over there?” he said.
“She’s a really good lawyer. Come on, I’ll introduce you to her.”
John
introduced us and excused himself to go to the restroom. He never came back. I
think he wanted to get back with his “wife” and I was beginning to interfere.
I
said, “Hi” to the woman and ordered a drink for myself (still playing this game
of not being impressed and not being a gentleman).
“You
know,” she said to me, “I’m one of the better lawyers here in Las Vegas.”
“Oh,
no, you’re not,” I replied coolly. “You might be a lawyer during the day, but
you know what you are right now? You’re just a barfly in a small bar in Vegas.”
She
liked me, and we went to a few places dancing. She danced very well, and I love to dance, so we had
a great time together.
Then,
all of a sudden in the middle of a dance, my back began to hurt. It was some
kind of big pain, and it started suddenly. I know now what it was: I had been
up for three days and nights having these crazy adventures, and I was
completely exhausted.
She
said she would take me home. As soon as I got into her bed I went BONGO! I was
out.
The
next morning I woke up in this beautiful bed. The sun was shining, and there
was no sign of her. Instead, there was a maid. “Sir,” she said, “are you awake?
I’m ready with breakfast.”
“Well,
uh …”
“I’ll
bring it to you. What would you like?” and she went through a whole menu of
breakfasts.
I
ordered breakfast and had it in bed—in the bed of a woman I didn’t know; I
didn’t know who she was or where she came from!
I
asked the maid a few questions, and she didn’t know anything about this
mysterious woman either: She had just been hired, and it was her first day on
the job. She thought I was the man of the house, and found it curious that I
was asking her questions. I got dressed, finally, and left. I never saw the
mysterious woman again.
The
first time I was in Las Vegas I sat down and figured out the odds for
everything, and I discovered that the odds for the crap table were something like
.493. If I bet a dollar, it would only cost me 1.4 cents. So I thought to
myself, “Why am I so reluctant to bet? It hardly costs anything!”
So
I started betting, and right away I lost five dollars in succession—one, two,
three, four, five. I was supposed to be out only seven cents; instead, I was
five dollars behind! I’ve never gambled since then (with my own money, that
is). I’m very lucky that I started off losing.
One
time I was eating lunch with one of the show girls. It was a quiet time in the afternoon;
there was not the usual big bustle, and she said, “See that man over there,
walking across the lawn? That’s Nick the Greek. He’s a professional gambler.”
Now
I knew damn well what all the odds were in Las Vegas, so I said, “How can he be
a professional gambler?”
“I’ll
call him over.”
Nick
came over and she introduced us.” Marilyn tells me that you’re a professional
gambler.”
“That’s
correct.”
“Well,
I’d like to know how it’s possible to make your living gambling, because at the
table, the odds are .493.”
“You’re
right,” he said, “and I’ll explain it to you. I don’t bet on the table, or
things like that. I only bet when the odds are in my favor.”
“Huh?
When are the odds ever in your favor?” I asked incredulously.
“It’s
really quite easy,” he said. “I’m standing around a table, when some guy says,
‘It’s comin’ out nine! It’s gotta be a nine!’ The guy’s excited; he thinks it’s
going to be a nine, and he wants to bet. Now I know the odds for all the
numbers inside out, so I say to him, ‘I’ll bet you four to three it’s not a nine,’ and I win in
the long run. I don’t bet on the table; instead, I bet with people around the
table who have prejudices—superstitious ideas about lucky numbers.”
Nick
continued: “Now that I’ve got a reputation, it’s even easier, because people
will bet with me even when they know the odds aren’t very good, just to have
the chance of telling the story, if they win, of how they beat Nick the Greek.
So I really do make a living gambling, and it’s wonderful!”
So
Nick the Greek was really an educated character. He was a very nice and
engaging man. I thanked him for the explanation; now I understood it. I have to
understand the world, you see.