"This is the first real job I've ever had," says Craig, who bounced around as a poker pro before becoming Assistant General Manager at the Normandie four years ago. Craig has a crap player's energy. He's got that nervous can't-sit-still bring-me- more-action aura of the lifelong proposition bettor— which is misleading, because Craig's real career was on the rail of Santa Anita. He is, in fact, one of the most famous horseplayers ever to work Southern California tracks. Right now we're sitting in the fifties-style diner of his new home, at the famous L.A. poker palace that opened in 1940, and it so happens there's an autographed poster of Eddie Shoemaker looming over us. "The Shoe Wants You," it says.

In the world of wiseguys, Craig is a legend. His bet of a lifetime--every gambler has one--came in 1986, the day he won the Pick 9 on a rainy day at Santa Anita, nailing all nine winners on a $256 ticket for a payoff of $1.9 million. What makes the story even better is that his horse in the ninth race was a colt named Bedouin that won by three lengths, but as soon as he crossed the finish line, the "Inquiry" sign went up, and the judges spent an agonizing 22 minutes deciding whether to disqualify him.

"I was calm, though," says Craig. "I knew the ticket was good. I knew I had it. It was my day."

He then proceeded to stick the ticket in his pocket and vanish for seven days while the newspapers went mad with "Who Won the Pick 9?" stories. By the time he cashed in and held a press conference--"Santa Anita wanted me to badmouth the lottery and I was more than happy to do it"--there were 40 photographers flashing his picture. To make the payoff more dramatic, Craig posed by an eight-foot-high stack of hundred-dollar bills. To this day it's the biggest Pick 9 payoff in Santa Anita history.

So where was he during the seven days?

"I was trying to find a lawyer to tell me about taxes!" he says. "But I figured there might be people who knew I had the ticket, and I didn't wanna get robbed. So I took another ticket I had from that day— one with eight winners on it— and I kept that one with me at all times, but I gave the real ticket to my brother to keep at his house. But that's not the end of the story. A month later the Pick 6 is a million dollars. I get the first five and win $200,000 on the Pick 6. Then 30 days after that, I play the Pick 9 again and I hit eight winners. But a long shot wins the last race and I lose to a guy with nine winners."

How was he picking these horses, is what I wanna know.

"It was a different time," he says. "No speed ratings, big fields, and the only thing I subscribed to was a workout service."

A few feet away, the chaos of the Normandie goes to full tilt. A Chinese guy is pounding a golden dice cage on a felt table and shrieking. The Asian card tables are packed with three- deep standing galleries. On the other side of the room, beneath one of the crystal chandeliers, a burly floorman interposes himself into a poker game and says "Don't make me wash your mouth out with soap!" The angry bad-beat loser backs off. A fat man with $3000 in chips stacked in front of him orders a steak dinner at the no-limit Texas Hold 'Em table, and the waitress has to balance his twin baked potatoes on the edge of his TV dinner tray.

If you close your eyes, you can imagine L.A. in the thirties, when a hundred card rooms like this one flourished under the corrupt reign of Mayor Frank Shaw. The Normandie is the only club left from "Old Gardena," when there was a cheater at every table but he was probably wearing a tux. I like the place, with its low ceilings and electric intensity and vague air of menace. And I can see how a player like Craig Phillips would end up there.

"So what happened to the money?"

He must have known the question was coming.

"I invested $700,000 in an Indian casino in San Diego," he says. "And I bought four horses."

"Thoroughbreds?"

He looks at me like "duh." Of course they were thoroughbreds.

"And?"

"The sheriff hated gambling. He made it tough on us. I walked away. Harrah's just bought the place last year for I don't know how many millions."

"And the horses?"

"I was paying four thousand a month per horse to take care of the horses, because I had a good trainer, David Crass, and we didn't believe in over-racing them."

"So you had to sell them?"

"I would have done different things if I'd had a son then like I have now."

But then he remembers For The Boys, and his eyes light up.

"For The Boys was my two-year-old. He won by five lengths at Delmar. I won some races!"

After dinner, we walk out past the Mexican Poker table ("That's the only place where the Spanish language is allowed during play," he tells me), past the showroom ("We used to have headliners," he says, but now it's just karaoke), and through the jumbled poker room. "Nicholas Cage has been in the club," Craig tells me. "Mike Tyson, too, but Mike likes to play Asian games. He came in with an entourage one night to play Pan 9."

Outside, under the purple and pink neon of the Normandie porte cochere, we say our goodbyes and talk about the old games that aren't played anymoe. "I used to play in large lowball games here," he says, "but lowball is a game of the past."

And before I go, Craig remembers one more thing. That time he owned the horses, and he was running For The Boys as a two- year-old and he won that big race at Delmar, that time when he was a real honest-to-goodness thoroughbred owner . . . "For The Boys paid nine-sixty that day. He came in at nine-sixty."

That's great, I tell him. That's something. And it is.

*

© Copyright 2001 United Press International and Joe Bob Briggs