JOHN BOY WATTS - FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN TO INVENT A CASINO-STYLE BOARD GAME
JOHN 'BOY' WATTS - FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN TO INVENT A CASINO-STYLE BOARD GAME
“The Visionary that changed Card
Playing”
Interviewed and written by Aaron & Tocarra Robinson
When John ‘Boy’ Watts invented
the casino - style board game, Jackpot 16, he knew that it was going to be an instant
hit. History was made and the game was monumental, as Watts was the first ever
African American in the world to ever invent a casino-style board game.
As writer and author, John has written nearly 40 books in his life time; The Rollin 80’s: Drugs, Money, Politics and Reality, Power of the V, The Power of Validation: A Woman Validates Herself, Missing Years of Baby Jesus: From Birth to Age 12, just to name several. He has appeared on shows such as Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood, "Pretty Hurts" Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood and has created his own show Life After Prison Presented by Ice T and the animated series The Blunt Heads.
Consciousness Magazine had an opportunity to interview the gifted John ‘Boy’ Watts as he shares with us some of his legacy creations, latest happenings and opens up to us about his past life.
WHO IS JOHN ‘BOY’ WATTS
JOHN ‘BOY’ WATTS: I was born and raised in South Central. I have five sisters, and two brothers. My mom and dad stayed together until they passed away two years ago. It was pretty much 10 of us living in a two-bedroom apartment. I graduated in 76’ at 16 years old. At 18, [my father] said I had to get out. That's when I decided to put together a dance group between me and my two brothers [called The Robot Bros]. We would stand on the corner and go to Venice Beach and dance to make money to bring back home. That kind of started my entertainment life.
JOHN: It was 2006 when I first came up with the game. I was actually serving federal prison time for overbilling Medicare in Lompoc, California. I would stay in the library typing, doing a lot of things for myself - staying out of the way. I didn't want to get caught up in politics and stuff. I would sit around on the bench and I would play blackjack with myself. I'd deal; I'd pretend to be the dealer. I'd deal people's hands.
One day I was sitting there - after about a couple hours of playing, I said, ‘what if I don't play with the face cards?’ So, I took all the face cards out. Then I said, ‘well, the face card is 10, 10 is 10. Maybe I need to remove the 10s.’ Then I kept playing. I said, ‘let me take away the nines.’ Then I ended up with an ace to eight. I said, ‘okay, this is better, faster - half of the deck. What will I call this? If I get to 16 with a maximum of four cards, [I can call it] Sweet 16. Then I thought about it for a couple of days.’ I said, “Oh!” That sounds like a little girl turning 16 years old; I can't call it that. What I needed... I needed it to become a jackpot. There we go, four fours makes a jackpot!’ So I called it Jackpot 16.
[John begins to talk excitingly]
I put everything together. I went to the library to type it all up - the rules, and how I played. I just saved it in Outlook and waited until I came home in 2008. I immediately started working on my book, in which Ice-T invested in. Then I started working on my cartoon, The Blunt Heads. Two years ago, I started to work back on Jackpot 16. Then we created the board game, currently selling on Amazon. A friend of mine said, ‘well, John, while you're waiting, why don't you turn this game into an app? Right now, everybody's playing on their phone.’ We've been working on the app, and we're pretty much 99% completed. We're just doing some other integration. Originally, I designed the game for casinos.
AARON: Wow! Would you say that's coincidence, or that's your masterminded. Jackpot 16 is brilliant!
JOHN: I need to give credit to God on this one, because he's given me the gift. We all have gifts. God gives us all gifts. Sometimes we know our gifts. Sometimes we recognize it and expose it. I've always been an artist. When I was a kid, seven, or eight years old, I could sit there and look at you and draw you exactly. I think my creative mind allowed me to be creative and do something different. That's how the game developed. With The Blunt Heads cartoon, I never got high in my life, never smoked a blunt and never had a drink. Yet, I came up with an animated cartoon called The Blunt Heads with 33 characters and a full season.
AARON: Interesting!
A HISTORICAL MOMENT ABOUT CARD GAMES
JOHN: I don't know if you all played Blackjack before. Blackjack has been around for over 400 years. No one knows who invented it. Poker's been around 1,400 years; nobody knows who invented it. Back then, they didn't have a patent office. The last game was recreated by a gentleman from Thailand; he came up with Pai Gow Poker in 1985. There has never been a Black man or woman to invent a new card game. That's what I really want to expose. We created the traffic light, the railroad, the first tool for brain surgery. We have done so much, but we don't know these people because back then, you had a slave master. If you invented anything, the slave master took it from you because a slave was not able to patent anything or own anything. If I'm dead and gone the next 100 years, I would like for this game to still be going on and people will say, “Oh, a Black man invented that.”
TOCARRA: Most definitely. Let's talk about your books for a moment. You have over 30 books published.
AARON: 39 is a lot.
JOHN: Well, I wrote 37 of them in prison. They gave me 10 years, so I had to serve eight years and four months. After I got my time, I just started writing. I've written a book in 1995 called The Rollin 80’s: Drugs, Money, Politics and Reality. When I went to prison in 2000, I started writing books again. I said, ‘Okay, let me write books, just to run by time.’ Eight years were in front of me. It seemed like it was 80. I had to find something to do to exercise my mind.
WRITING WHILE INCARCERATED
AARON: So, at one point of your life you had millions of dollars, and then now you're in solitary, basically. You can't go anywhere. How was that for you knowing that you were once able to move around, and live in luxury? The same people that you thought you knew didn’t come to visit you... or you don't have the same friends.
JOHN: That became my world for eight years and four months. I realized that I needed to adjust. I can't keep thinking about the streets. I'm in prison, fighting staff, kids [inmates], and being in riots. I needed to reprogram my mind to become a convict. I needed to take my mind and switch gears. I kind of stayed to myself, stayed in the library, typing, minding my own business. I didn't want to get caught up. I went to six prisons. Every prison I'd gone to, 10, 20, 30, 50 people would know me from the past. I'd speak, talk, chat, but I still stayed at the library typing. It was different knowing that you have a lot of friends, even some family members that they didn’t visit you for eight years and four months nor send you a dollar! It was hurtful because I've always done for other people. Back then I had a nightclub. Thousands of people would come per night from all the Lakers I served and entertainers, such as Janet Jackson. I never used my club for too much. I've done a lot for a lot of people, and for them to not be there, it's kind of hurtful. I didn't allow that to determine who I would become. I did my time and came home. I had to start over. I can truly say that God has blessed me all the way to this point. I've been home now for 17 years.
AARON: That's a blessing. Were you ordained in prison?
JOHN: I got ordained in 2001 in prison. You know, society... everything is different now. 20 years ago, it was easy to get money, find money, get loans, and credit cards. It's hard now. I'm older, so I can't take any more chances at my age. I’m just thankful for what I got. If it’s meant for you, God will give it to you again.
WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THE YOUTH
JOHN: Know your worth. Don't be a follower. You have to look at yourself. You're not a copy machine. Stop copying other people; you're original. Everybody's fingerprint is different. Know that you can do so much more. Yeah, it seems hard, it may be difficult, and you may get down. That's okay; that's part of life. Every day is not going to be a happy day. Every day is not going to be a sunny day. You make money, you spend money, and tomorrow you're going to have less than what you had yesterday if you spent 80% of your money. You have to learn to save. Be more frugal with your money.
[John continues to speak with sincerity and shares wisdom]
It's kind of hard to tell a person 22 years old, don't buy a $100,000 car. When I was 22, I bought about $600,000 in cars - Ferrari, Porsche. Back then, 1982 was different. Do things legal to get those things. Once you go to prison, you're going to lay on that hard bunk and look in that ceiling, and you're going to be crying and say, ‘how did I get here?’ I said it to myself, ‘how did I get here?’
I didn't even have to agree to overbill my home health care agency. My manager said, “John, we can do this, we can do that. You can make extra money. I can get an extra $300,000.” I said, “do it for a couple months.” A couple months we made $6 million. A year later, I got indicted. I didn't do it, he did it, but I authorized it. I didn't have to do that because I knew better. God blessed me with a great business. I was taking care of all the elderly in the community. I had 420 patients being seen a day. I provided 47 jobs and was making $50,000 a week. How much more did I need? So greed – greed will send you to prison or get you killed.
AARON: Earlier, you mentioned your family were living in a two-apartment bedroom. Your father said you had to get out at a certain time. You went out and made money with some of your brothers with your dance group. When you are in these circumstances, can I say poverty or coming up in those living conditions - is there a choice, or do you have to take desperate measures to take care of yourself and family because sometimes it's not really like a choice right?
JOHN: For me, what I done was not wrong in my mind. Society and the law say it's wrong to sell drugs. I wanted to help my mother. You know, she having eight children and with a man that decided not to work and has a gambling habit, spending the rent money. That's why we kept moving. My mother didn't work. The only income was a welfare check and food stamps. I didn't like living like that, especially when we finally got a black and white TV. I used to watch Brady Bunch, My Three Sons and Leave It to Beaver. They were living in houses and eating at dinner tables. You look at that and say, ‘man, why can't I live like that? We have one bed.’ We took one of the mattresses out to split the mattress - four kids on this one, four kids on that one. It was tough. I tried to get a job but I didn’t have experience.
[John pauses, takes a breath and thinks about his life changing moment]
I was introduced to the dump game by a friend. I didn’t have any money. I only had three pennies. I knew where my mother's rent money was. The rent was due in three days. I took $300 out of the $700 and gave it to him. I took a chance. He came back later that night, doubled the money, gave me back three, and I put the three back. Eight months later I had $2.2 million.
TOCARRA: Oh Wow! Would you like to add anything else before we conclude the interview?
JOHN: I have a documentary that we’re working on. We've already done the trailer. We already wrote the script for the documentary. It’s called King Pins of LA. It’s myself, ‘Freeway’ Rick Ross, Whitey and Lil Tommy. I also have a non-profit called Smart Kids Don't Get High Foundation. I have books and a curriculum that teaches kids workbooks, not to get high, not to do drugs and the danger of drugs.
AARON: We just want to thank you again.
TOCARRA: Yes, thank you John!
JOHN: You're welcome!
For more information about John ‘Boy’ Watts visit:
https://johnboyentertainment.com/
Email: info@jackpot16.com
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