a fair amount of guys showed up for the action and didn't play in the tournaments. i remember jansco telling me at the stardust it had made him mad they didn't enter.
but at the stardust since it was vegas it wasn't an issue. but they all came to vegas.
many entered just so they could dump and win the side bets. slim preston made lines on most of the matches for some of the years. he did win money but i dont know how as he faded all the dumps and held all the bets.
he was one of the best hustlers ever. played at least short stop speed. which caught alot of people.
but his major hustle was poker and short cards.
In 71, Freddy the Beard, Little (The General) Mikey and I left Chicago for that event at the Stardust in Mikey's 67 Olds and $700.00 Total!
Anything that could go wrong with the car did, by the time we hit the Vegas city limits it died completely in front of a gas station at 1am!
He said He'd take a look at it, and gave us a ride to the Stardust, we had $10 rooms already paid for all the way in the back and $21.00 left!
The General drove, He was tired and went to sleep, Freddy and I walked all the way back to the Casino!
I took the $1 bill and put in my back pocket for the 0.99 breakfast, got four $5.00 chips with the Dub!
Went to the crap table and proceeded to win $300.!
It's now about 5am, we can't sleep back to the tables, take a $100 shot and win another $1,100!
Mikey is still sleeping, left him $300 and we're off to breakfast!
We decide to take a $300 shot each, amazingly we win $3,600.00!
The buzz going around was that 'Cornbread & Detroit Whitey' made a Huge Score (90K) before we got there!
The one person that was friends with Freddy & I that heard we were on a small roll was, 'Johnny Ervolino',
Johnny had been working in Vegas for a while and knew how to play Crap at a top-notch level for Money Odds!
To make this story a little shorter, Freddy & I put up $3k and let Johnny shoot the hands!
When we (Seven Out) we had $7,500 out on the board, all the number/hard hits!
We gave Johnny a Nice Jelly after winning $35,000, while starting with just 'four' $5.00 chips!
The General got an end to play Poker/Short Cards!
BTW, We Never played a match in the tournament!