He observes dispassionately as punters line up to try their luck, and the movie notices what complete indifference the dealers have for their clients: Whether they win or lose, the work shift is exactly as long. The movie knows its way around casinos, and particularly observes how the dealers, with their strange hours and surreal jobs, tend to date one another instead of outsiders ('incest,' the screenplay calls it). Jack never gambles, but he does deal and is a skilled card manipulator (we imagine his dad teaching the boy to shuffle). Jack's father, now in South Africa, lines up a job for him at the roulette tables of a London casino. Jack's secret is that his hard, calculating facade has been hammered together as a shield over the little boy inside.
The key figure in Jack's life is his father ( Nicholas Ball), who was indeed a gambler, a Jack-the-lad who womanized, drank, gambled and ran roughshod over his son's early years.
