Although today unknown except to a small circle of people, in his day John Scarne was internationally renowned.

He was a sleight of hand magician, considered by many to be the wold’s greatest card manipulator. And were he alive today, I doubt he’d have any serious challengers.

He was a close-up magician (as opposed to a stage magician) and his performance style could best be described as understated. Nothing about him was flashy or fancy. He wasted neither time nor motion, used no hyperbole or hype, and all his moves seemed simple, straightforward, and deliberate.

Of course, nothing he did was straightforward. So while you followed his every move perfectly, his ending was a total surprise, and the steps he took to get there were impossible to reconstruct. I saw him on a talk show in the ’60s and while I can’t remember his specific tricks, I can remember being completely boggled.

Scarne had interests other than magic, one of which was gambling. But his was no mere hobby — he was — and still is — considered one of its foremost experts. During WWII the army hired him to tour bases, giving lectures and demonstrations on how to detect card and dice cheats. After the war, he had a career advising casinos worldwide how to set up their various games and avoid scammers.

Beyond that, he was a prolific author, one of his books being “The Encyclopedia of Gambling.” It’s a big tome — almost 900 pages — and it covers every imaginable aspect of every type of gambling, from casinos to carnivals, and everything in between. It’s out of print, but copies can be had for a few bucks, like the one I got a few weeks ago.

Why did I buy a book on gambling? It sure wasn’t to improve my chances at the tables of Lost Wages. Gambling is one vice I don’t indulge in. Or more exactly, one I haven’t indulged in since the tender age of 13, when I lost $1.38 in a penny-a-point gin rummy session. The trauma was such that I’ve never waged a sou or a centime since.

That said, I was always fascinated by gamblers and had a bunch of “old guy” friends who gambled frequently, and sometimes mightily, and I liked listening to their adventures. I figured Scarne’s book would conjure up memories of those rascals, all of them now long-gone.

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A numbers game

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As I said, the book is huge and detailed and can tell you everything you’d want to know about every game of chance. Unfortunately, a lot of it told me what I didn’t want to know, namely all the mathematics involved, which was explained ad-damned-near-infinitum.

As it turned out, Scarne was as brilliant a mathematician as he was a magician, which only makes sense for someone who understands the ins and outs of gambling. Sadly, I’m as mathematically inept as he was brilliant, so as soon as I saw all those numbers, I shut down — as I always do. Luckily, there was so much other stuff to read — history, anecdotes, tales of scoundrel and sinners — I still have enough to keep me entertained for a good long while.

But no matter how you cut it, however entertaining the book might be, it pales in comparison to the entertainment provided by my gambler pals themselves. What most intrigued me about them was their attitudes, because they were the exact opposite of mine.

There are many kinds of gamblers and if I had to label my pals, it’d be “philosophic.” They were neither compulsive, nor impulsive. They didn’t try to win back what they lost, nor did they go for lost causes like lottery tickets or carny games. Instead, they had their specific games; knew their skills; and looked at winning and losing in equal measure, as just bizness as yoo-jool.

One of my pals was my sis-in-law’s father, Ed Keating. Ed was a self-made man, an independent cuss, and sharp as a tack. He was an excellent — and often sardonic — judge of character. He was also a member of the Elks Club, which he did not join for either the brotherhood or bonhomie, but to play gin rummy.

Much to my lasting regret, I never talked to Ed about his gambling in any detail, but I knew he wasn’t into it for either fun or penny ante stakes, especially since one night he won an apartment house. But something he told my nephew Daniel stuck with me over the years as a perfect summation of his gambling “philosophy.”

Daniel was a mere poppet of five and I guess Ed figured now that Daniel was in kindergarten it was time he learned the facts of life (or at least the most important ones).

What Ed said was this: “If you get up from a game after either winning or losing a thousand dollars and can’t keep a straight face, you never should’ve sat down to begin with.” Easier said than done, but I assume Ed did it.

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The hot spot

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Speaking of the Elks Club: In my Gilded Youth, it was a hotbed of gambling, with the games running as regularly as the New York Central, just with greater frequency and higher ticket prices. I know for a fact that in 1967 one of the regulars lost $2,000 in one hand of gin rummy. And for perspective: A new 1967 Ford Mustang convertible cost about $2,800.

The Elks Club held Las Vegas nights featuring all sorts of games –all illegal, of course. Every now and again the local powers of Truth, Justice and Moral Rectitude, in a magnificent show of faux outrage, staged a police raid on the club. Knowing where their bread was buttered, the powers made sure to call the club before the constabulary arrived, so all the pillars of the community could haul dupa and not have their stellar reputations get sullied.

Once the cops arrived, all the operations were shut down (at least for that night), the patrons were ordered home, and the bartender, Danny Sullivan, was hauled off to the hoosegow and booked. Before the ink from his fingerprints had dried, an Elk was there to bail him out. Later, of course, they paid his fine, and from what I heard, slipped him generous compensation for his role as the sacrificial lamb.

On one of those Las Vegas nights, one of my old pals was at the craps table. He laid down two bucks, threw the bones, and won. And he kept throwing and winning. Then his wife came up and told him she wanted to leave. “OK,” he said. “Lemme throw till I lose.” He did exactly that, and when he finally lost he was up $1,200.

And here’s the diff between the philosophic gamblers and me: He thought of it, not of losing twelve hundred bucks, but only two. No big deal. But if it’d been me, I would’ve lost my cool at twelve bucks, cashed in then and there, and would’ve left the table feeling like Mr. Royalty at the Golden Nugget.

On the back of Scarne’s book it says, “Everything you need to know how to play well.” Without casting aspersions on the book, I’ll say I knew everything about gambling before I ever looked at the book. It can best be summed up by a Damon Runyon quote from a short story, The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, and is a perfect way to end this column:

“One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider.”