the oldest established craps game in new york.

My boss, the big boss of the company, asked me what I wanted from Santa this year. Actually, he asked what sort of prizes should be featured at the holiday party, but it felt like Santa all over again, just if Santa happened to be a thin, middle-aged programmer.

First, let me just mention that our company holiday party totally rocks. At my old job, we would go out to a nice lunch at the country club on the last day before Christmas vacation. Then we would play Dirty Santa with a bunch of presents that the company had bought and the secretary wrapped. The presents weren't bad, though I never ended up with one of the good ones, but the whole sit-down lunch had the feeling of the class Christmas party in the third grade: no matter how fun it was, no matter how many sticky cupcakes you got to eat, the whole time you were counting down the minutes until you could leave.

This company has the party after Christmas, which solves the problem of employees feeling like dogs with noses against the window. Also, we gamble.

First, dinner. It's a nice dinner, and we don't pay for it. Previously we had a buffet setup, but last year we went to Bonefish and had sort of a weird family style dinner. I think it was cheaper that way, but the whole thing felt a little rushed. Then we go to where some sort of games company has set up a mini-casino. We're given chips and told to have at it. Last year was BYOB, again for expense reasons, but previously there was a bar, where we could buy drink tickets for a quarter, which could then be traded for mixed drinks. I think the whole ticket arrangement was skirting some sort of legal issue, so if we got trashed, went out and drove into a median, we couldn't sue the company. After all, they just sold us tickets.

The casino featured poker and blackjack, with both tables being pretty much monopolized the whole evening by the same people. Those tables were tense and serious. Then there were the stations for the people who weren't really into gambling: roulette and craps. Roulette was fairly steady. It was the kind of place you went to to cool down for a few minutes and have some mindless chip shuffling. There is nothing to roulette. You put a chip in a box, a guy spins a wheel, you may or may not get chips back. It is nice that there are levels of risk. You can bet on a specific number to come up - the odds are bad with a big payoff if your number comes up. Or you can bet on the even numbers or the black numbers. Great odds, low payoff. Roulette is the Joe Camel of gambling tables.

But craps is where it's at. Aside from making me think of Frank Sinatra as Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls (He had the oldest established craps game in New York!), craps is fun. If someone tries to explain it to you, then your eyes will probably glaze over and you'll wander back over to the roulette table for the quiet simplicity of a piece of felt with numbers on it. I can't explain it to you, because it's been roughly eleven months since I played. But it's better to just jump in. You'll still put down chips on some labelled felt, and the longer you play, the more you get it. Maybe it's different in Vegas. At the company party, we have a friendly dealer named Lou with a charming working-man Brooklyn accent who patiently explains things to people and helps people who put down their chips in the wrong place or at the wrong time.

The thing that makes craps awesome is the community of it. When you play at any of the other tables, you're on your own. You make your bets and you play against the dealer. At craps, you make your bets, and whether you win is determined by the roll of the dice of one of the people at the table. As long as the dice don't show one particular number (and I wish I remembered what it was), then you keep rolling and keep winning, along with everyone else at the table. Everyone is essentially betting on the same numbers. As the time goes on, the excitement builds. In roulette, the bets are cleared after each number, but with craps they stay and earn you more chips. It's really bunches of fun. I don't want to encourage bad habits, but if you ever have the chance to play craps on the company dime, you should totally do it. Don't let the complicated rules scare you away.

At the end of the night, we exchange our chips for raffle tickets. We put half of a ticket into one of several jars, each one associated with some sort of groovy prize. Now we've come full circle, to where my boss was taking a poll as to what sort of prizes would be good raffling options. He seemed shocked that I wasn't interested in a Blue Ray player, and maybe even more shocked that my only TV was too old to even handle input from such a thing. Some people just have different priorities, I suppose. It was hard not to jump up and down and say "GPS! GPS! We want a GPS!" I'll save that sort of display for casino night, if I actually win the GPS this year.

True, we don't each come home with a prize this way, as opposed to the method my old company used. Of course, one year I came home with a ceramic oil and vinegar set, after having a new printer and a digital camera taken from me during Dirty Santa. But a fun night at the craps table with a beer and the possibility of a GPS system is better than an oil and vinegar set that ends up at Goodwill anyway.