Casino Owners Pondering New Rules for Patrons
Editor’s Note: Some readers may find this article offensive. Impressionable young boys should be discouraged from reading it.
A sociologist who studied thousands of hours of casino surveillance tapes found that gamblers who unconsciously remove material from their noses or insert something in an ear during high stakes games are more likely to be winners.
The study by Ruben Martinez, professor of psychology and sociology at New York University, has caught the attention of gaming industry executives who are pondering whether prohibiting nose detritus removal and ear canal object insertion should be banned at gaming tables.
“The question is whether casinos could give their profits an added boost if they banned such activities,” said Robert P. Snodgrass, a casino management consultant based in Egg Harbor, N.J. “They’re weighing added profits against a possible public outcry if you cannot pick your nose or stick a pencil in your ear while sitting at the blackjack or poker tables.”
Martinez’ study grew out of an incident three years ago when Atlantic City casino employees were caught using video surveillance cameras hidden in ceilings above gaming tables to zoom in on women’s breast cleavage, nose-picking, cleaning false teeth and other personal tics. A provision in the settlement the casinos reached with the New Jersey Casino Control Commission provided that Martinez could have access to thousands of hours of tapes for scientific study.
Martinez and his graduate students built a vast database of gamblers’ personal habits at the tables and correlated them with information about winnings that the tapes revealed.
“It was a mammoth statistical undertaking, but in the end it was clear that if you regularly remove something from your nose or stick something in your ear, you will win more, all other things being equal,” Martinez said.
Among other things, the study found that the typical gambler removes something from the nose or sticks an object in the nose every 43 seconds. But the big winners at the casino tables do so every 14 seconds, on average.
“The next, very obvious step in this research is to understand the relationship between extras nose detritus removal and increased winnings,” Martinez said. “Does detritus removal relax you, or does it focus your attention? Perhaps it increases the level of endorphins in the blood.”
Martinez said that he and some faculty members at NYU’s Department of Psychology are designing new studies in which they would monitor gamblers at the tables and administer a battery of tests after each gambling session.
And then there is this provocative nugget suggested by the tapes: “There are numerous examples from the tapes where you can tell that a male who was winning big at blackjack was also fondling his genitalia under the table at the same time,” Martinez said. “We’re pondering how to pursue this with a rigorous scientific study.”
On the Atlantic City boardwalk, one gambler was quick to offer his opinion about Martinez’ academic work.
“You can bet on it that if I sit down at a blackjack table and there’s a sign that says I can’t pick my nose, I’ll be out of there in a fly-ass minute and down the street to a joint where I can pick my nose or scratch my ass or whatever I want,” said Bucky “Big Boy” Dingleman.
“Ain’t nobody gonna tell me I can’t pick my nose,” he said, adding, “Except my wife, of course.”