Why No Calls
30 June 2006
By Mark Pilarski
Dear Mark,
I had an interesting situation happen on a crap
table and I would appreciate having your take on
it. I had been playing for approximately an hour
or so and ran out of chips with the exception of
a lone $5 chip in hand, plus what I had on the
Pass line and its odds. I tossed the $5 chip on
the table and yelled out to place the 6 for $25,
and was reaching for my wallet for the
additional money when the dealer yelled back "No
Call Bets" and shoved the money back my way. As
you may well have guessed the 6 came up.
Regardless of my ill fortune, my question still
remains, is this standard procedure? I will
defer to your answer before raising issue with
the casino next time I go in. Kregg M.
Before raising cain, Kregg, you first want to
check and see if the crap table you played on
states "NO CALL BETS" on the layout. What that
sign means is that a player is not allowed to
call out a bet without having at least enough
chips on the table to cover the bet. The dealer
wants to see you've got the cabbage in plain
view before he or she will book your wager.
Another reason the No Call Bets rule exists is
to prevent confusion as to the amount of your
wager. You could have tossed that $5 chip on the
layout, pretended to be reaching for more moolah
and simultaneously yelling, "place the 6 for a
nickel," and a dealer, not visually seeing your
meager $5 bet being lobbed in, might interpret
"a nickel" as $500.
Because of the frenzied pace on the crap table,
dealers do allow a player to make last-second
bets when the dice are about to be thrown. For
instance, you could toss out a $25 chip and
clearly call out, "place the six for $5, and the
dealer will say "it's a bet" and return $20
change to the player after the roll. The dealer
doesn't even have to actually place the wager in
its proper place on the layout for it to
constitute a valid bet.
Also, the No Call Bet rule aside, if the dealer
is not clear about the intention of someone's
play, he or she can and will state "no bet" and
push the chips back to the player.
Dear Mark,
I noticed while cleaning an old purse $10 worth
of Mega Millions lottery tickets I purchased
last year in California (I actually live in
Reno). I checked a web site and found they were
not winners, but I was still wondering how long
I had to redeem them had I won anything, and
what would happen if no one came forward to
claim the big MEGA Millions jackpot? Aubrey F.
If a jackpot prize is not claimed within the
required time limit, in your case 180 days, each
of the participating states in the MEGA Millions
game gets back all the money they contributed to
that jackpot. The 12 states where the game is
played, California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York,
Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington, each use
unclaimed prizes for different purposes. Your
tickets, Aubrey, were purchased in California,
so their portion of the unclaimed MEGA Millions
jackpot prize would go toward public education.
Gambling Wisdom of the Week: "Whether he likes
it or not, a man's character is stripped bare at
the poker table; if the other players read him
better than he does, he has only himself to
blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to
see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will
be a loser in cards, as in life." —Anthony
Holden from the Big Deal
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