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Walk through the main gaming floor at the California Hotel & Casino in downtown Las Vegas and it’s hard to miss the Golden Arm trophy case, built in 1989 to honor craps players who held on to the dice for more than 60 minutes at a time.
Inside the case, hundreds of names are listed on small plaques surrounding a gold-painted plaster cast of a human arm and a pair of dice — often draped in lei. But what some gamblers might not realize — or remember — as they pass by the trophy case is that the person credited as the first “Golden Arm” was a retired painter from Honolulu.
Stanley Fujitake, who died in 2000 at age 77, was a frequent Las Vegas visitor who loved to play craps. So when his wife woke up in the early hours of May 28, 1989, and noticed he wasn’t in bed, she didn’t think much of it. Down in the casino, she found him amid a huge crowd at one of the tables but didn’t find out until a few hours later that he had held the dice for three hours and six minutes, making 118 rolls and winning around $30,000 for himself and approximately $750,000 for other gamblers who bet on Fujitake’s lucky streak, according to an account of the night.
Fujitake’s record stood until 2009, when a New Jersey woman held the dice for four hours and 18 minutes in Atlantic City.
Texas-based freelance writer Sean Chaffin, who heard about Fujitake last year while on assignment in Las Vegas covering the World Series of Poker, will take a closer look at the isle gambler’s legacy and the California Hotel’s unique relationship with Hawaii residents when his new podcast, “True Gambling Stories,” debuts Wednesday at pokernews.com.
“I had heard about his story a few years ago while I visited the California on a whim,” Chaffin explained. “I wrote about him just as a kind of throwaway story as we waited for the final table (of the WSOP) last year, and it just blew up online. People loved it.
“It’s such a unique story, and that’s what we were going for with this new podcast. There’s so much lore and stories out there about gambling in general. We wanted to start with Stanley because we knew his story will appeal to listeners.”
Find Chaffin’s “True Gambling Stories” at pokernews.com every last Wednesday of the month; click on the “Podcasts” link for the latest episode. Follow the podcast online at facebook.com/TrueGamblingStories and twitter.com/GamblingPod.
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