The player's club

Forty years later, the Gambler's Book Shop still caters to the smart crowd

By Newt Briggs

Howard Schwartz is careful to note that his 11th Street bookstore is called the Gambler's Book Shop--not only because it's often mistaken for the Gambler's General Store on Main Street but because its name is part of its history. Founded in 1964 by John and Edna Luckman, the corner store was originally called the Gambler's Book Club--a name that reflected the proletarian vision of the owners.

"They wanted a place where people would stand and argue and discuss and exchange information--like a coffee shop," says Schwartz, 64, who inherited the store when Edna Luckman passed away in November 2002. "So it was like a club, and it was for anyone who'd ever gambled with coins or lagged a penny or played jacks or anything like that. We only switched over to `shop' in the 1990s because a lot of people thought that they had to make some kind of financial commitment before they could come in and browse."

But besides the name, little has changed about the 6,000-square-foot building that the Luckmans converted from a run-down produce market 40 years ago. The ancient, triangular sign--accented with a pair of dice--still beckons visitors off Charleston Boulevard. It's still the place where greenhorns learn when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em, and where seasoned speculators come to brush up on new gambling systems (many of them evaluated by Schwartz himself). The built-in shelves, which wrap around the store, are stocked with everything from Scarne's Complete Guide to Casino Gambling (an 800-page tome that Schwartz considers required reading) to Phil Steele's College Football Preview (consistently one of Schwartz's hottest sellers).

Wherever there aren't books, there are large, framed photos--a visual history of four decades of gambling in Las Vegas. Schwartz can talk about them all at length, but on this afternoon he picks out the images of Vegas icon Big Julie Weintraub, legendary sports bettor Lem Banker and Sonny Reizner--"the most flamboyant sports book owner in the country," he says. Schwartz characterizes them as "classy old-timers," and although he's careful not to criticize too harshly, he compares modern-day, corporate casino executives to bookkeepers.

Mixed in with the legends are pictures of problem gamblers--guys like Pete Rose (who's pictured with Schwartz on one of the store's walls) and Archie Karas (the golden-armed gambler who turned $10,000 into $17 million and then lost it all). In the northwest corner of the shop, Schwartz singles out a photo of Little Eddie Seremba, who took his Social Security check and ran it up to $800,000 in three days while playing craps at Binion's Horseshoe and Jerry's Nugget. "A week later, he lost every penny," Schwartz says. "Total degenerate."

One of Schwartz's favorite gambling stories concerns a nameless couple who wandered into the shop while waiting to see an attorney next door. While browsing, they picked up one of the Luckman's signature $1 primers on keno. The pamphlet explained how the game worked and how to fill out a keno ticket, and after consulting the lawyer, the pair took the handbook out to Sam's Town and filled out the same numbers that were marked on the sample ticket in the book. Sure enough, they hit a $100,000 jackpot.

"They shot at the sky long enough and a duck flew by," says Schwartz. "They called from Sam's Town shouting, `We won! We won!'"

As for himself, Schwartz doesn't gamble much. He says he'll play maybe $10 a week, if there's a horse race or ball game that tickles his fancy. Otherwise, he spends his day talking to customers, stocking merchandise, reading catalogs and tending to his cats (12 at last count). Occasionally, he'll sneak in a nap on a cot in the back of the store, but when business is good--as it is now--it makes for long, busy days.

"We're a barometer of economic confidence," Schwartz says. "When people feel like everything's going well and they feel safe and they're confident about the economy, they'll buy lots of books because they have discretionary income. After 9/11, you could have shot a cannon off in here for three months. I don't think we had 90 customers in 90 days."

In fact, if Edna Luckman had not infused the shop with a burst of personal capital, it might have gone under. "We're one of the last specialized independent bookstores in the country," says Schwarz. "Independent bookstores are dying, and they're dying because the chains have moved into their neighborhoods and undercut them out of existence. But the chains don't do what we do. It's like you go into a supermarket, and you ask someone where the tomatoes are. Now, they'll point you to the tomatoes, but no one's going to tell you which tomatoes are the juiciest or the freshest or the best for salads or just to munch on. So that's what we give our customers. We help them pick the best tomatoes."