Tuesday, October 25, 2011

T-Shirts and Gaming









Do you ever watch the World Series of Poker? If so, then you have noticed some of the lamentable get-ups these players wear to the table. T-Shirts and ball caps, hooded sweatshirts,head phones and gaudy necklaces....really these players are dressed like funnel cake jockeys at a Carnival....or like they are about to clean out the garage.A conglomeration of sartorial swill. The bets in these televised games reach 7 figures as a matter of course. Perhaps the players could come to the table in a collared shirt?
Cards and table games are often on the sportsmen's menu and the poker game at the hunting club can be just as lively and entertaining as trip to a casino. However, in Atlantic City the sketchy guy next to you at the Craps table will more likely be wearing a sleeveless Molly Hatchet Tour shirt than a blazer. Gamblers leave their kids napping on benches,grind their smokes out on the carpet and practically drool on themselves as they wager away the car payment.Dumpy broads in monochromatic warm-up gear with fanny packs and bad make-up are a stark contrast to the fairly hot waitress fetching your Bourbon. When Resorts first opened in Jersey in the late '70's....you had to at least wear a sport coat in the evening to be admitted.This rule has seemingly deteriorated to a policy that would allow entrance to a crack head in a soiled diaper and flip flops.
Juxtaposed to the current mut-o-rama in U.S. gambling halls is the image of Bond in evening wear at the Chemin de Fer table in Monte Carlo or the players in black tie in Havana in the 50's. My Dad told me of trips to Havana in the early 50's when you took an off-white dinner jacket along with your regular black tie rig so you could alternate on different nights at different casinos. Don't the TV producers get it...what a class image they would create if the televised Poker was dressed up a bit.Don't the struggling casinos get it...they may get a better class of players with more money if they employed a modest dress code so you did not have to worry about catching a dose of crabs at the black-jack table.

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