The Fairest Game in the World

[2009]

It’s 1941, and two coins are spinning in the air. In a large clearing in Lae, New Guinea, Australian troops watch with anticipation as the pennies soar above the spinner’s head, landing resolutely on the patch of ground cleared just for this game, just for these coins—just for two-up.

“It was very active. Everybody played it,” says Martin O’Sullivan, who served in the Australian army during World War II. It was Remembrance Day, just after 11 am, and I had made my way over the Clovelly RSL Sub-Branch to see what could be remembered about this fascinating game. Over Cascade Lights and a plate of sandwiches, three men sat with me in a back room, looking back on the glory days of two-up.

“All I ever did was lose money,” laughs Martin, his cane propped up on the table next to him. He picks at his sandwich as he talks, eventually putting it down and resorting to the beer.

Born in Canada, Martin left school at age 13 and learned to be a seaman. From 1939 to 1941 he travelled in the merchant navy, but jumped ship while in Australia. “I was in two fights,” he explained, “and when that ship left, I wasn’t on it.” Within weeks of his arrival, Martin joined the Australian army. He found two-up fascinating, and immediately joined in on the games.

Fifty years later, you can still see coins spinning in Australia, and people certainly still lose money playing. But now two-up is legal just three days of the year—Anzac Day (25 April), Victory in the Pacific Day (15 August) and Remembrance Day (11 November).

Odds are more than one in two that most of us here in the land down under have coughed up some serious cash in the fantastically addicting game of two-up, passionately preying for heads or tails, knowing very well that our odds for both are exactly the same. After all, two-up is a distinctly Australian gambling game, played illegally by settlers and convicts alike as early as their arrival in 1788.

What is it about this simple gambling game that has Australians so hooked? It’s been described by many as the “national game,” yet those unfamiliar with it struggle to understand what the fuss is all about. At a 1994 international gambling conference in Las Vegas, one analyst from Nevada University described the game as “simplistic and comical, with little intrinsic merit as a form of gambling.”

Yet every year on Anzac Day, thousands of Australians fervently gather in circles, eagerly anticipating the mere toss of two simple coins. Bridget Turner, Marketing Manager of the Coogee Bay Hotel, estimates that over 500 people participated in two-up on Anzac Day this year. “Sales were up approximately twenty percent,” she said. The CBH, which runs the biggest two-up game in the east, has it only on Anzac Day. Upon attempting to run games on VP Day, Bridget said, few people participated. “The customers needed to be educated on what VP Day was, and that yes, it was legal to play that day.”

At the RSL, I asked the men to help me understand just how the game works. Jim Rankin, of the Traditional Pipers of Clan McLean of Scotland, shared his recollections of the game during World War II, along with Martin. The two men finished each other’s sentences, added to one another’s stories, and bantered back and forth with each other. At times, they spoke on top of each other, their stories and opinions pouring out as if they’d been cooped up in their throats for years. Maybe they had. Then again, maybe the beers just had them particularly chatty, or the thrill of a woman under the age of sixty in the building had them fighting for my attention. Regardless, they both had stories to tell.

The term “two-up school” arose because the men who organised the games were called scholars; eventually this term was applicable to all players of the game, and “schools” thus developed. “A two-up school is just the game,” Martin explained to me. “Anybody could play, as long as you had money to put in.”

The game is controlled by a ring-keeper, who is in charge of watching the spinner—the person in the middle that tosses the two coins. The pennies used in the game are placed on the kip, a small piece of wood.

Robert McPake, duty manager at the Clovelly RSL, brought in the two-up set used for games on Anzac Day. Jim, eager to show off his two-up knowledge, gave me a live demonstration. “You could never throw it straight up,” he said, tossing the coins in the air with a spin. “You had to really put it into the air, and you had to turn it as you threw.”

The spinner, who stands in the centre of the circle, is obligated to bet that two heads will be spun; other players in the game can “go with the spinner” and bet heads, or “go against the spinner” and bet tails. Side-betters opt to bet as much money as they like, and “match up” with players who want to bet opposite of them for the same amount of money. Likewise, someone must bet tails against the spinner. Before two-up was legalised, the “cockatoo” would keep watch at the door, to prevent intruders from entering or to warn when officials were nearby. “Somebody always had to watch out for the coppers coming along,” says Jim.

If two heads are flipped, the spinner (and all of those that bet heads) has won. He or she may continue spinning the coins until tails are tossed, but cannot collect winnings until heads are tossed three times. If tails are spun, the spinner is no longer allowed a place in the centre, and must retreat to the circle. If one head and one tail is spun, then the spinner is said to have “oned” and may spin again. A white cross, painted on the coins that Robert showed me, was often painted on the tails side, to make it easy to quickly spot, and, as he pointed out, “so you couldn’t cheat.”

Back in the war, Jim says, it was all about “pounds, shillings and pennies.” There were no dollars, and men in the army earned just six shillings a day. This didn’t stop them from gambling, however. “In some schools, they bet ten shillings on one game,” he remembers.

“Whatever money you had, you’d put in two-up,” Martin adds. He recalls betting not

only shillings, but beer, liquor and cigarette rations as well. “We used to get an issue of one bottle of beer per week. I used to sell it. We’d sell it to the Yanks, get money from it and put it in the two-up game. We might even toss for each other’s boots.”

But it wasn’t always so easy to make or lose a quick buck—or boot. In the nineteenth century, two-up was played in the back yards of hotels or cemeteries for discretion, often with men stationed in treetops acting as lookouts. Extravagant tunnels were even dug to provide for a quick escape, and the transient two-up schools—operable almost anywhere there was a clear patch of land—often took place in clandestine locations.

Prudence continued throughout World War II. Jim remembers putting two-up coins in a matchbox, one on top and one on the bottom, so they wouldn’t make noise. “People would talk,” he said. “They’d say, ‘Well, he’s a gambler!’ if they heard coins rattling in your pocket.”

Joe Thommo’s two-up school in Sydney was one of the biggest shifting two-up games in the city; it thrived for over sixty years. Martin remembers the Thommo School as vulgar and prone to fighting. Higher bets were made there, he recalls, and more fights broke out because of its urban location. World War II soldiers carelessly spent money before leaving for international service, and veterans picked up the wartime game once they returned from active duty.

“All these men,” Jim said, “all they could do was drink, go with women, or gamble.” And gamble they did. By the late 1940s, Thommo and other two-up enthusiasts had developed a roaring trade. It even followed the men to Germany, where Jim was stationed. “Usually by late afternoon, we’d try to find some sleazy café that sold schnapps, or something like that. It was just men on the streets, and before you knew it, there was a two-up school.”

For the next three decades, two-up grew in Australia as anti-gambling legislation continued to be unsuccessful, social values became liberalised, and police were persecuting players less and less. In one unusual raid at the Echura School in 1975, a two-up player swam the Murray River in order to avoid arrest.

Before long, the onset of legal gambling activities swayed the interests of would-be two-up players, as off-course TAB betting and state lotteries were established. The new generation of servicemen, this time from Vietnam, preferred cards to coins. Managers of two-up schools began publically fighting for legalisation.

In 1973, two-up was legalised in Australia, at first in Tasmania. The game was legalised in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia in 1983, and in 1989 two-up was made legal to play on Anzac Day in New South Wales.

Robert, who ran two-up games on Anzac Day in 1994 and 2001, says he’ll never run a game again. “It’s just too violent,” he insists. “The bra boys raided the RSL in 2001, and we had to call it off.” Beer was even thrown on him, because, Robert notes, “it’s not a game that’s traditionally played sober.” The biggest game he ran was at the Coogee/Randwick RSL, where they had at least four policeman at the game, off-duty but controlling any threatening situations.

Jim agrees. “When you enter a two-up school, never go alone,” he advises. “If you have someone with you, you can mold into the group.” He admitted that even in the army, he always went with his mates. “Maybe five of six of us would go play two-up,” he said.

Martin, however, remembers it a bit differently. “There’s a certain amount of comradery,” he argues. “I don’t remember any fights. Everybody’s your friend when you’re drunk!”

The game has been subject to rioting, however. Robert reminded us that players can butterfly coins, by not spinning it properly, rig pennies so that they aren’t properly weighted, or even produce two-headed coins. “Everyone gets on the drink, and someone might throw up a two-header. You’ll see these guys start nodding their heads, and suddenly everyone’s betting heads. It’s regulated only as much as it can be.”

But Jim pipes up enthusiastically, eager to defend the game. “The honest game of two-up is a good game. If you have money, it’s all right,” he says.

In 2006, after a two-year trial period, two-up was made legal to play on three days of the year. “Only permitting two-up to be played on the three commemorative days recognises the game’s historical association with a number of wars over many years,” says a spokesman from the New South Wales Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing. I asked the men at the RSL what they thought about the extended legalisation of two-up, and they seemed content with the way things stand. “It’s a way of life,” Jim said. “We’re entitled to it.”

It should be no surprise that Australians are so keen on the game of two-up; after all, gambling has been a part of the culture since the beginning of European colonisation. A government report found that 69% of the New South Wales population participate in gambling activities, with over $10 billion spent on gambling related activities each year.

For Martin and Jim, two-up was a part of army life. As my interview came to a close, and Martin and Robert had left, Jim offered me his final thoughts. “We’ve all boasted about what we’ve done during the war,” he says, “and a lot of what happened is to be kept to ourselves. We saw lots of things. We’ve done things that we regret. But these things—they happen during war.” He sighs, looking off into the distance as images of the war flash before him. But two-up, to be certain, is not among those regrets. Men had little more than the boots on their feet and the cigarettes in their mouth; their lives could end tomorrow, or the war could go on for years. Why not risk it all with the flip of a coin? Bombs were exploding, guns were going off, and mates were burying mates far before their time was due. Whether a win or a lose, for shillings or for shoes—at the end of the day, two-up was nothing more than a sure bet for a bit of fun.