But, he thought, what if gamblers could play two hands: one with five cards, the other with two? Players beating the bank’s two hands would win. Torosian believed a 13-card game would be too slow. They then play against a banker’s three hands. Puy soy is a Chinese card game in which players receive 13 cards and cut them into three poker hands. Then one night, an elderly Filipino poker player pulled him aside and told him about a game called puy soy. The way Torosian tells it, he walked around his empty casino for days, letting the ideas swirl in his head. The only numbers he knew were on the bottom line, and the most creative thing he had ever done was painting a house. “My deal was, I’m not going to wait,” he recalled telling his fellow casino owners. Under that law, only three card games were permitted: draw poker, low-ball and panguingue. Some bosses wanted to lobby lawmakers to change the state’s gambling law, which was nearly 100 years old. Pai gow - an ancient Chinese domino game that means “near nine” - had achieved some success, but its complexities and low revenue limited its appeal. Torosian and the others agreed that they needed to start new games. Nervous casino bosses held monthly strategy meetings at a conference room off the main bar at the Bicycle Club Casino in Bell Gardens. It was a similar story at card rooms across southeast Los Angeles County, where a casino building boom had left dealers staring into space, shuffling alone. It had dozens of tables and 750 employees, but some nights there were only enough customers to keep four games going. His wife, Vicky, a wig shop owner, liked to play draw poker there, and encouraged her husband to add to his mini-empire of hardware stores and food stamp distribution outlets. Torosian, a onetime bread delivery man turned real estate investor, was already a successful entrepreneur in 1984 when he first toured the California Bell Casino. Life in the casinos takes very strange twists,” said Peter Ruchman, a Las Vegas-based gaming analyst. “He should, by all rights, be receiving a royalty check from every casino that uses his game around the world, and he doesn’t. Instead, gaming history is poised to forget his name, just as it has forgotten the names of the creators of blackjack and baccarat.

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