A Fair Attempt to Be a Winner : Skill, Not Chance, Governs the Games at the County Carnival

Just to show how easy his carnival game is, John Allen tosses softballs behind his back into empty bushel baskets as he chats with visitors at the Ventura County Fair.

But half of the balls bounce out of the tilted baskets.

“Who said everybody’s perfect?” he says.

Down the midway, carny Jay Stillman shows skeptical fair-goers how to play his game, Stand Up the Bottle.

“You just gotta have a steady hand,” Stillman says as he manipulates a pole with a ring attached to slowly bring a soda bottle upright. “Really, it’s not hard.”

Nearby, another carny readily admits that the hoop on his basketball game is oblong, making it more difficult to sink the balls.

“It’s not round and I don’t wear a Santa Claus outfit,” he says. “But it is possible.”

Possible? Sure. But not exactly easy.

Photographer Michael Owen Baker and I found that out this week when we were sent out of the office with $100 to blow on such games.

The instructions were simple enough: Spend it all and see what you wind up winning in return.

But the games themselves--everything from darts to ring tosses--were difficult. Not to mention expensive.

Of the 54 games at the fair’s carnival this year, nearly half cost $2 per round.

And there’s no margin for error.

Whether the cost is $2 per ball or $2 for four balls, players usually must get every ball in to win: If they miss on their first try, they have already lost.

“If we had a margin for error,” one carny explained, “a lot more people would win.”

A few games--tossing darts at a wall of balloons, for example--offer a yo-yo or other trinket for making only one hit. And some geared for children guarantee a small prize to everyone who enters.

Early in the day, the “everybody wins” games were my favorite. Maybe it was just midway nerves. Anyway, I won a little stuffed pig just by tossing a dart at a rubber dartboard.

It was a good way to build some early confidence.

But carnies said most games have to be tougher. Otherwise, the people who own the games and rent booth space wouldn’t make money.

“I think they’re rigged,” Ojai resident Kathy Hunter said after watching husband Jim Hunter nearly succeed in maneuvering a Coke bottle to its upright position in a round of Stand Up the Bottle.

The Hunters said they were playing the carnival games in hopes of winning a four-foot-high stuffed animal for their 9-month-old daughter, Sarah.

Kathy Hunter said the game operators make the games look easy because they practice so much. For the ordinary fair-goer, she said, “by the time you get it right, you’ve pretty much paid for the stuffed animal.”

Hunter’s assessment is not far off, according to a private consultant hired by the fair to oversee the carnival.

Dennis Stanfield, a gaming consultant with Walnut-based Bob Snyder & Associates, spends every day of the fair making sure the rides are safe and the games honest.

Unlike some other carnivals around the state, the Ventura County Fair has only games of skill rather than games of chance.

So people who play a game more than once have a better chance of winning.

“It’s just like anything else in skill,” Stanfield said. “With practice, you’re going to get better.”

Games of chance, like dice throws, have the advantage of giving all fair-goers--including the young, the old and the clumsy--the same opportunity to win as ace athletes.

But such games also allow more room for fraud, he said.

So the city of Ventura has outlawed any carnival games that don’t require some skill to win, he said.

Because of the restriction on games, many carnival booths at the fair are alike: After a few hours on the midway, it seems as if every other game is throwing darts to pop balloons, pitching balls to knock over bottles or tossing basketballs into oblong hoops.

Ventura Police Lt. Steve Bowman said the city’s ordinance against games of chance may be too strict.

“We overprotect the consumer because we try so hard to keep out the crooked games,” Bowman said. “Some of the games they’ve put in now, you don’t get winners very often because it takes so much skill to learn.”

He said Ventura police officials plan to recommend that the City Council change the law to allow some games of chance.

But Bowman acknowledged that the public still has a perception that carnival games are rigged--a suspicion warranted at some carnivals around the country, but not in Southern California, he said.

Although some carnies become understandably defensive when a fair-goer questions the integrity of a game, others maintain their good humor.

“I’ve had people accuse me of gluing the cups down because they couldn’t knock them over,” Patricia Disbrow said with a laugh.

She was one of two women operating a game where players shoot a ball from a gun to knock over a stack of three plastic glasses. Disbrow said she enjoys her work but admitted that she usually can’t win her own game.

“See, I really don’t like guns,” she explained.

Maybe it was the knowledge of carnies like Disbrow who are no better coordinated than me. Maybe it was just knowing that if you spend enough money and time on the midway, you’re bound to win something. In any case, my confidence increased as the afternoon wore on.

My proudest moment was winning twice at the cow race, a game where you move a cow toward the finish line by bowling balls into little holes.

I didn’t know I had it in me, but I beat Mike Baker, as well as a father and son team. The first triumph won me a little stuffed sheep, which I traded in for a bigger stuffed sheep after my second victory.

When it was all over--after taking more than three hours to spend the $100--Baker and I walked away with seven stuffed animals, including a huge bear that Mike won by shooting down two beer bottles.

We also collected two framed photographs--one of Jesus, one of Garth Brooks--by popping balloons with darts. The haul also included a Chinese paper yo-yo and two inflatable toys.

Some of the carnies, perhaps eager to make their journalist visitors happy, got excited whenever I won.

When I got the two balls in a bushel basket--good for a green giraffe at John Allen’s booth--he jumped up and down, yelling.

“That’s my job,” Allen said, “to make you have fun.”

Editor’s note: The prizes won by Maia Davis and Michael Owen Baker were donated Tuesday to the Zoe Christian Center in Oxnard.