Hubris
WHEN TOO MUCH PRIDE LEADS TO A FALL
BY FRANK SCOBLETE
The ancient Greeks had a term for overweening pride: hubris.
The great Greek playwright Aeschylus in his masterful play
Agamemnon wrote about how the gods seek to destroy men who
put themselves above other men. Those great kings whose heads
rise too high and who “count their kills by company”
must fear the “lightning” of the gods that will
bring them down. If you have too much pride, you will fall,
because the gods are gunning for you. Man is not meant to
be a god, and the gods protect their celestial kingdoms.
The Western religions also know about the dangers of pride.
The Pharaoh Ramses was filled with pride, and the lowly
Moses channeling God’s awesome power brought him and
his nation down. Adam and Eve had been tempted by the snake
with the concept that if they ate of the fruit from the
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they “would
be like gods,” and so they ate and brought all manner
of horror into the world, including the crusher of all human
pride: death itself.
Satan, the great causer of evil, had originally been the
most beautiful of God’s angels, called Lucifer, the
angel of light. But his sense of exalted self, as expressed
by the poet Milton in Paradise Lost, was a prideful preference
to “reign in hell than serve in heaven.” Hence
the most beautiful of all creations became the most despised,
feared and ugly of beings: the devil himself.
Even in mundane realms, too much pride can be a bane. It’s
good, of course, to have confidence, to be strong in one’s
character and to have a modicum of self-worth, certainly.
But even in real life, too much pride does come before the
fall.
Which brings me to me.
I really screwed myself up because of my own hubris. As
a writer and as a gambler, the past 12 months have been
very exciting for me. I’ve written and appeared in
a Travel Channel show (What Would You Do If?), appeared
on the History and Travel channels in two other shows besides;
had the New York Times, Monthly Trader and Cigar Aficionado
(along with other magazines) publish articles about me;
and I have done dozens of radio shows around the country.
I’ve got a DVD out and two books about to be published,
and my craps and blackjack seminars are almost always sold
out.
That’s all great for the ego, right?
My craps shooting in the past 12 months has given me epic
rolls of 50, 52, 55, 57, 60 and 89 before I sevened out.
Very few craps players get to have hands in the 50s, and
some people wait a lifetime to have one roll like this.
But I had a half dozen—and five of them have occurred
in front of plenty of witnesses who know me, which helps
because no one likes a braggart who heavily pumps up his
own accomplishments. In fact, no one really believes such
braggarts. So, thankfully, I don’t have to tell the
stories of my great rolls because the witnesses can tell
them, and they have.
Oh yes, I was beginning to swell with pride at my run of
good fortune in writing and my string of devastatingly good
rolls at craps. I was sticking my head into the clouds and
asking for it. And I got it, but good! I fell like a mountaintop
that had been exploded by the lightning of Zeus.
Here’s what happened. A well-known journalist wanted
to hang out with Dominator, Rock ’n’ Roller and
me on a recent trip to Las Vegas. He wanted to see the “Three
Musketeers” (as we have been called) do “their
thing.” Dominator and Rock ’n’ Roller were
all for it. So was I. This great journalist would be witness
to the rolls of the fabulous threesome. And magnificent
rolls they would be.
That’s what I thought—totally, fully, emotionally.
I had no doubt that when we hit those craps tables in Vegas
we would bring down the house and have monumental rolls,
as we always do when such witnesses are watching. I was
bloated with hubris. I was full of myself. I was actually
a helium balloon about to explode and go zizzing around
the room to land in a shriveled heap on the dusty floor.
I got into Vegas at 10:30 a.m. The flights from the East
Coast take about 5 hours and 30 minutes. Traveling like
that is almost a whole workday. Normally when I arrive I
check into my hotel room and take a nice long nap. I go
out for a walk and then have a relaxing dinner. I play after
dinner when I am relaxed.
Not this day. The hotel did not
have my suite ready, so I put my stuff in Dominator’s
suite. The journalist wanted to meet us at noon to play. Dominator
had the flu, but he said he was ready to play. He looked like
he was ready to die.
I ignored what I was seeing with my own eyes: Dominator
was sick, so what? I should have been resting cozily in
a bed. Instead I was heading for Bellagio’s casino
to meet Rock ’n’ Roller and the journalist. Now
Rock ’n’ Roller is always ready to play—except
that his greatest rolls occur when he is rested. Catch him
in the morning or just after a nap and you’ll watch
the Babe Ruth of dice shooting put on a show. Catch him
after he’s played five or six straight hours and his
rhythm is off. He becomes mortal.
That day, Rock ’n’ Roller had been playing since
4 a.m. By noon he had been playing for seven hours with
just an hour’s break for breakfast.
Didn’t I see what was about to happen? My hubris had
made me blind to my fatigue. I was blind to Dominator being
sick. I was blind to Rock ’n’ Roller needing a
nap. And the journalist was waiting to record our dismantling
with his mighty pen.
The three of us shot four hands each. Almost each and every
time we got the dice, we established our point and either
immediately sevened out or rolled a few numbers and then
hit the canvas. I was the Max Schmeling of the second Joe
Louis fight. Certainly, the fever-wracked Dominator wasn’t
good. The somnambulist Rock ’n’ Roller wasn’t
good. But I was truly and without question the worst dice
shooter on the planet that afternoon.
“Seven out! Line away!” shouted the stickman after
my first point/seven-out.
“Seven out! Line away!” shouted the stickman again
and again and again.
When I left the casino, I finally woke up. Why had I played
on that first afternoon? I never do that! Why hadn’t
I used the 5-Count method on my fellow Musketeers when I
saw how awful they were? I would have saved a bundle of
money because the 5-Count stops you from betting early on
shooters. I was going to be in Vegas a whole week, I needed
to rest from a wearying flight, not jump into a game to
impress a journalist whose pen would now write in bloody
red after seeing the slaughter that had taken place at Bellagio.
I had to relearn the lesson I had learned in the 1980s from
the Captain of Craps, the world’s greatest craps player
and my gambling mentor: Impose your rhythm on the games,
don’t let anyone or anything impose on you. But my
hubris had gotten the best of me. I thought I could play
when I couldn’t.
Men are not gods. The Greeks knew this, the Bible knew this,
and now I know it.
Frank Scoblete is the No. 1 best-selling gaming author
in America. His websites are www.goldentouchcraps.com,
www.goldentouchblackjack.com,
www.goldentouchpoker.com
and www.scoblete.com
in association with CasinoCity.com.
For a free brochure, call 800/944-0406.
To read Casino Player in its entirety CLICK
HERE to subscribe.
