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FAMOUS GAMBLERS
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| 18th Century | |||||
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| John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich |  |
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| b. Nov. 13, 1718 - d. April 30, 1792, London, Eng. | |||||
| Having succeeded his grandfather, Edward Montagu, the 3rd Earl, in 1729, he studied at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and traveled abroad and then took his seat in the House of Lords in 1739. He served as postmaster general (1768-70) and secretary of state for the northern department (1763-65, 1770-71). In the latter capacity he took a leading part in the prosecution (1763) of John Wilkes, the British politician and agitator, whose friend he once had been, thereby earning the sobriquet of "Jemmy Twitcher," after a treacherous character in John Gay's Beggar's Opera. He also was first lord of the Admiralty (1748-51, 1771-82). During the latter period his critics accused him of using the office to obtain bribes and to distribute political jobs. Although he was frequently attacked for corruption, his administrative ability has been recognized. However, during the American Revolutionary War he insisted upon keeping much of the British fleet in European waters because of the possibility of French attack, and he was subjected to considerable criticism for insufficient naval preparedness. His interest in naval affairs and his promotion of exploration led the English explorer Captain James Cook to name the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) after him in 1778. His Voyage Round the Mediterranean was published in 1799. In his private life Sandwich was a profligate gambler and rake. The sandwich was named after him in 1762 when he spent 24 hours at a gaming table without other food. RAKE : fashionable or wealthy man of dissolute or promiscuous habits. As : a rake's progress a progressive deterioration, especially through self-indulgence. |
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| Beau Nash | |
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| Richard "Beau" Nash was originally from Swansea but came to Bath to make his fortune from gambling having already served as an army officer and as a lawyer. Although he had no social standing (his father had been a bottle maker), he was considered rather a 'dandy' and when Webster, Bath's Master of Ceremonies, was killed in a gambling quarrel "Beau" Nash took the title and all the powers it yielded. His influence was soon to be felt by all of Bath's residents. He conducted lavish public balls, dictated dress and social etiquette and even offered his opinion on new building proposals. Strict rules were put in place governing what time public balls could begin and end and Nash dictated that the opening dance was always to be a Minuet. His position also enabled him actively to promote gambling in Bath, in which he also had private interests. To his credit, however, he did ban pipe-smoking in Bath's public rooms and the wearing of swords in public. He died in Bath at age 87 leaving his partner Juliana Popjoy impoverished and, the story goes, to spend the last of her days living within the trunk of an old, hollowed-out tree! In the 1960's, Nash's memory lived on with the establishment of a casino operating under his name in Bristol a mere 10 miles from Bath. |
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| John Law | |
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| b. 1671 - d. 1729 | |||||
| John Law was born at Edinburgh in the year 1671. His father was the younger son of an ancient family in Fife, and carried on the business of a goldsmith and banker. He amassed considerable wealth in his trade, sufficient to enable him to gratify the wish, so common among his countrymen, of adding a territorial designation to his name. He purchased with this view the estates of Lauriston and Randleston, on the Frith of Forth on the borders of West and Mid Lothian, and was thenceforth known as Law of Lauriston. The subject of our memoir, being the eldest son, was received into his father's counting- house at the age of fourteen, and for three years laboured hard to acquire an insight into the principles of banking, as then carried on in Scotland. He had always manifested great love for the study of numbers, and his proficiency in the mathematics was considered extraordinary in one of his tender years. At the age of seventeen he was tall, strong and his face, although deeply scarred with the small-pox, was agreeable and full of intelligence. At this time he began to neglect his business, and becoming vain, indulged in considerable extravagance. He was a great favourite with the ladies, by whom he was called Beau Law, while the other sex, despising his foppery, nicknamed him Jessamy John. At the death of his father, which happened in 1688, he withdrew entirely from the desk and proceeded to London to see the world. He was now very young, very vain, good-looking, tolerably rich, and quite uncontrolled. It is no wonder that, on his arrival in the capital, he should launch out into extravagance. He soon became a regular frequenter of the gaming-houses, and by pursuing a certain plan, based upon some abstruse calculation of chances, he contrived to gain considerable sums. All the gamblers envied him his luck, and many made it a point to watch his play, and stake their money on the same chances. In affairs of gallantry he was equally fortunate; ladies of the first rank smiled graciously upon the handsome Scotchman-the young, the rich, the witty, and the obliging. But all these successes only paved the way for reverses. After he had been for nine years exposed to the dangerous attractions of the gay life he was leading, he became an irrecoverable gambler. As his love of play increased in violence, it diminished in prudence. Great losses were only to be repaired by still greater ventures, and one unhappy day he lost more than he could repay without mortgaging his family estate. To that step he was driven at last. At the same time his gallantry brought him into trouble. A love affair, or slight flirtation, with a lady of the name of Villiers exposed him to the resentment of a Mr. Wilson, by whom he was challenged to fight a duel. Law accepted, and had the ill fortune to shoot his antagonist dead. He was arrested the same day, and brought to trial for murder by the relatives of Mr. Wilson. He was afterwards found guilty, and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to a fine, upon the ground that the offence only amounted to manslaughter. An appeal being lodged by a brother of the deceased, Law was detained in the King's Bench, whence, by some means or other, which he never explained, he contrived to escape; and an action being instituted against the sheriffs, he was advertised in the Gazette, and a reward offered for his apprehension. He was described as "Captain John Law, a Scotchman, aged twenty-six; a very tall, black, lean man; well shaped, above six feet high, with large pockholes in his face; big nosed, and speaking broad and loud." As this was rather a caricature than a description of him, it has been supposed that it was drawn up with a view to favour his escape. He succeeded in reaching the Continent, where he travelled for three years, and devoted much of his attention to the monetary and banking affairs of the countries through which he passed. He stayed a few months in Amsterdam, and speculated to some extent in the funds. His mornings were devoted to the study of finance and the principles of trade, and his evenings to the gaming-house. It is generally believed that he returned to Edinburgh in the year 1700. Returning to Scotland (1700), he proposed to Parliament plans for trade and revenue reforms and published Money and Trade Considered (1705). His ideas and a proposal for a national bank were rejected, and Law went to France. The finances of France were in critical condition at the death of King Louis XIV, and Law succeeded in winning the support of the regent, Philippe II, duc d'Orléans, for a scheme that promised to reduce the public debt and stimulate French trade and industry. Law believed that credit and paper money, by encouraging investment, would regenerate the French economy. In 1716 the regent chartered Law's private Banque générale and authorized it to issue paper currency. In 1717, Law acquired the monopoly of commercial privileges in the French colony of Louisiana and organized the Compagnie d'Occident, or Mississippi Company, which was consolidated (1719) with the French East India Company and other organizations as the Compagnie des Indes. The Banque générale was made the royal bank in 1718, and its issues of notes were guaranteed by the state. Finally (1720), Law, made controller general of finances, merged the huge stock company with the royal bank and took over most of the public debt and the administration of revenue. A rash of speculation swept France. Numerous small investors bought stock, which soared to heights far beyond what could be expected in returns from the exploitation of the colonies and from trade with East Asia. The bubble burst suddenly. Well-informed speculators sold their stock at huge profits, setting off a frenzy of selling that ruined thousands of investors. The system collapsed (1720), and Law left France in disgrace. He died in Venice, where he had supported himself by gambling. |
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| 19th Century | |||||
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| William Crockford | |
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| b. 1775, London - d. May 29, 1844, London | |||||
| William was founder and proprietor of the most famous English gambling establishment London's fame as a gambling center dates back to the mid-18th century when gaming clubs like Almacks, Whites, Brook's and the Cocoa Tree first became fashionable. William Crockford's career was a remarkable one from start to finish. He had been a fishmonger of Fleet Street with a sideline in bookmaking and such small-scale swindles as the three-card trick. In 1816 he bought a quarter-share in a gambling tavern in St. Jame's. But Crockford realized that this tavern could only have a limited success. He knew that the most popular clubs were so because they were selective, and that if he wanted to compete with them he would have to plan on a much grander scale, and go all out to get the top people as members. So after winning a large sum of money (£100,000, according to one story) either at cards or just by running the gambling establishment, he built in 1827 a luxuriously decorated gambling house at 50 St. James's Street in London. To do so he bought four adjoining houses around the corner. To ensure its social exclusiveness, he organized the place as a club with a regular membership. Crockford's Club, as it was called, quickly became the rage; almost every English celebrity from the Duke of Wellington on down hastened to become a member, as did many ambassadors and other distinguished foreigners. Hazard was the favourite game played at the club, and very large sums changed hands. Crockford retired in 1840 when, as one contemporary put it, he had "won the whole of the ready money of the then-existing generation." Crockford retired with about £1,200,000, but he subsequently lost most of this in unlucky speculations. The building housing his establishment eventually became the Devonshire Club. |
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| "Wild Bill" Hickok | |
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| b. May 27, 1837, Troy Grove, Ill., U.S. - d. Aug. 2, 1876, Deadwood, Dakota Territory [now in South Dakota, U.S.] | |||||
Real name JAMES BUTLER HICKOK, an American frontiersman, army scout, marksman, and gambler who became an American legend. His reputation as a marksman gave rise to legends and tales about his life. As a child in Illinois, he worked on neighbouring farms and helped his father in assisting escaped slaves. He left home in 1856 to farm in Kansas and there became involved in the Free State (antislavery) movement. He later served as a village constable in Monticello, Kan. While working as a teamster in 1861, he killed Dave McCanles at Rock Creek (Nebraska Territory), and legends about him probably began in the exaggerated tales of his role in this gunfight. "Wild Bill" Hickok also lived in Springfield and scouted for the Federals; he was acquitted there of the murder of Dave Tutt. The man who became marshal of Abilene, Kan., on April 15, 1871, was a frontier dandy. He stood 6 foot 3 in his custom-made boots. His riveting gray eyes, set off by a drooping mustache, seemed to look right through people. Beneath the black hat with the sweeping brim, blond hair tumbled to his shoulders, and a Prince Albert frock coat showed off broad shoulders and a narrow waist. During the American Civil War Hickok worked for the Union as a teamster, scout, and spy. After the war he was appointed deputy U.S. marshal, and he later became a scout for the army. Hickok is remembered particularly for his services in Kansas as sheriff of Hays City and marshal of Abilene, where his ironhanded rule helped to tame two of the most lawless towns on the frontier. From 1872 to 1874 Hickok traveled through New York state with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, then drifted some more. In 1876 he met and married a widowed actress, Mrs. Agnes Lake, née Mersman, but he soon left her (in Cincinnati) to visit the goldfields of the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory. Tim Brady and Johnny Varnes, two leaders of the Deadwood underworld, initiated a plot to kill Hickok so he wouldn't be appointed marshal. Jim Levy and Charlie Storms, two noted gunmen, were offered the job but turned it down. Had they known about Hickok's bad eyesight, they might well have accepted. August 2, at about 4 p.m., he joined a poker game in Carl Mann's Saloon No. 10. The other players were Charles Rich, a gunman in his own right, Con Stapleton, Carl Mann himself, and Captain Willie Massie, a Missouri steamboat pilot. Hickok had a short conversation at the bar with Harry Young before he sat down. He was the last to be seated, and the only chair left for him put his back to the back door. Hickok, as a precaution, always sat with his back to the wall, and asked Charles Rich to change places with him. Rich just laughed and stayed in his chair. But Hickok's conspirators had finally found their man-Jack McCall. A local bum who used several aliases, McCall entered the saloon unnoticed, as he often worked at menial jobs in the place. McCall began moving, quite casually, toward the back door behind Hickok's chair. Once there, he stopped and watched the game for a few minutes. Hickok and Massie were discussing the captain's habit of sneaking looks at his opponent's discards. The other players stared at their hands. Nobody was paying any attention to McCall. Suddenly the air was shattered by a loud crash, as McCall pulled a .45-caliber revolver from his coat pocket and shot Hickok in the back of the head from three feet. Hickok hung suspended in time for a moment and then toppled over backward, the cards in his hand dropping to the floor. That hand, which included a pair of aces and a pair of eights, became known as the Dead Man's Hand. The suits of those cards and what the fifth card was are still being disputed-nobody will ever know these details for sure. Jack McCall was tried by an illegal miner's court in Deadwood on August 3 and found not guilty. Later, he was tried in Yankton, Dakota Territory, and this time he was found guilty. He was hanged on March 1, 1877. |
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| Doc Holliday | |
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| baptized March 21, 1852, Griffin, Ga., U.S. - -d. Nov. 8, 1887, Glenwood Springs, Colo. | |||||
| byname of JOHN HENRY HOLLIDAY , gambler, gunman, and sometime dentist of the American West. "He was the most skillful gambler, and the nerviest, fastest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever saw." This was the tribute paid to Doc Holliday by Wyatt Earp, who was something of a tough character himself. Holliday was reared in Georgia in the genteel tradition of the Old South, graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in 1872, and, already consumptive, moved west for drier climes. He practiced dentistry briefly in Dallas but soon discovered his prowess as a gambler, a poker and faro player, and began drifting throughout the West--Jacksboro, Texas; Pueblo and Denver, Colo.; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Deadwood, S.D.; Dodge City, Kan.; Trinidad and Leadville, Colo.; and Las Vegas, N.M., ending up in Tombstone, Ariz., in 1880. During the period he gained a reputation as a drinker, fighter, and killer; he also probably married one Kate Elder. Holliday had befriended Wyatt Earp in Dodge City and, when in Tombstone, joined the Earp brothers in the celebrated gunfight at the O.K. Corral against the Clanton gang. From then (1882) on, he was again a drifter (having abandoned Kate Elder) and died five years later in Glenwood Springs, Colo., where he had gone for treatment of his tuberculosis. Doc Holliday claimed he almost lost his life a total of nine times. Four attempts were made to hang him and he was shot at in a gunfight or from ambush five times. In May , 1887, Doc went to Glenwood Springs to try the sulfur vapors, as his health was steadily growing worse, but he was too far gone. He spent his last fifty-seven days in bed and was delirious fourteen of them. On November 8, 1887, he awoke clear-eyed and asked for a glass of Whiskey. It was given to him and he drank it down with enjoyment. Then he said, "This is funny", and died. |
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| 20th Century | |||||
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| Benny Binion | |
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| (Lester Ben Binion) b. Nov 20th, 1904 Pilot Grove, Grayson County, Texas - d. 25th Dec 1989, Las Vegas | |||||
| A tough man born to travelling parents who moved through the vast open Texan country. He never attended any school of any sort. He became known worldwide as Benny Binion. At the age of 18 Benny moved to El Paso where he picked up the art of bootlegging. In the 1930s he was twice convicted for it and once promised the judge that he would get out of the liquor business if he didn't send him to prison. He did give it up to move into the numbers game. It was the same sort of illegal lottery that became common in all big cities before state governments declared the racket morally pure and took it over. In 1936, tolerance moved into Texas and Benny began running craps games from hotel rooms near to the Beaumont oilfield, the largest in the world at that time. There was always money there, even through the depression. Still it was a tough thing to protect the games from hijackers and Benny himself carried three guns at all times. In 1931 Binion had killed a fellow bootlegger after an argument turned nasty and he thought the guy was going to stab him. For that he was convicted of first-degree murder but got a 2-year suspended sentence because the dead man was known to be very violent and a killer. In 1936 Binion killed a rival numbers operator who pulled a gun on him and shot him in the armpit as Benny put his arm up in defence. Benny grabbed the man's gun on the barrel so that it wouldn't turn anymore and then pulled his own gun and killed him. He was found innocent on the grounds of self-defence. After 1938 the violence began to escalate and by 1946 it was enough to drive Binion into making the decision to move to Las Vegas after many rivals died. One rival who had dozens of attempts on his life saw his wife blown up by a car bomb. He believed Binion was behind it and rigged a small plane with bombs to fly over to Las Vegas and drop them on Binion's house. He was caught by police as he was loading the bombs and was later killed by a bomb under his mailbox. In 1947 Binion took shares with J. Kell Houssels Sr. in the Las Vegas Club on Freemont Street and later in 1951 opened his own casino, the Horseshoe on the same street. Binion was famous for taking the biggest action in town and at the opening of his casino his limits were easily above anything else. Two years after opening, Binion was forced to sell controlling interests to pay the legal costs of defending himself against racket charges back in Texas and an unsuccessful attempt to avoid prison on income tax charges. He served 3½ years in Leavenworth Penitentiary. In 1964 the family regained control of the Horseshoe but Benny Binion was never allowed to hold a gaming license again. Binion was good at attracting gamblers as opposed to people who wanted entertainment. In the 1970s he invented the gambling tournament as part of a casino business. No casino had offered poker before because of the difficulty of keeping out cheats but the Horseshoe found a small corner and advertised a regular game for the first time. The World Series of Poker was begun by Tom Morehead of the Riverside Casino in Reno who ran it as an invitational but Benny took it over and invented the now global idea of increasing antes and blinds to produce a winner in a short time period. It was a revolutionary idea that has expanded the world of poker a hundred fold. The $10,000 World Series of Poker event has grown from the 8 people who played in 1972, Amarillo Slim Preston the winner, to 512 players in the year 2000. Benny Binion died of heart failure on Christmas Day, 1989. A thousand people packed into a catholic church to bid him farewell. Gambling magnate Steve Wynn said, "He was either the toughest gentleman I ever knew, or the gentlest tough person I ever met." U.S., Senator Harry Reid said: "He's my hero. Nevada is a better place because him!" |
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| John Aspinall | |
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| b. 11 June 1926 - d. 2000, London | |||||
| He was born in Delhi to a well-off family and schooled at Rugby, in England, where he was eventually asked not to return. After a stint in the Marines he went up to Oxford, where he nourished a penchant for gambling. He missed his finals to attend the races at Ascot and he put his entire term's grant on the nose of a winner at short odds. After college he set himself up in the casino business, then illegal in England. His wealthy Oxford friends would drop fortunes at his tables playing chemin de fer. Aspinall had no compunctions about taking their money. He said that he liked "the corrosive effect that it has on such outdated concepts as the sanctity of money and the dignity of labor," adding that his luxurious trappings meant that "gentlemen could ruin themselves as elegantly and suicidally as did their ancestors 300 years ago." He enjoyed being rich, and lived amid opulence. When his tables were raided, the ensuing court case set a precedent by which casino gambling was re-legalized in England, in 1962. He quickly took advantage of the situation by opening a huge casino. His notoriety only increased when it was suspected that he was involved in the disappearance of Lord Lucan, a peer who had murdered his family's nanny with a lead pipe blow to the head. (It was said that the real target was Lucan's wife.) The London tabloids suggested that Lucan had shown up at Aspinall's zoo and implored Aspinall to feed him to the tigers. Aspinall later let it be known that Lucan had committed suicide at sea, but no trace was ever found. At some point Aspinall's mother admitted to him that he was not the son of his surgeon "father" but of a British serviceman who had the pleasure of her company under a tamarisk tree at a regimental ball in India. Unperturbed, Aspinall tracked down the man in a retirement home and supported the old soldier for the rest of his life. In 1957, with money won at the races, he purchased Howletts, a derelict 18th century country mansion near Canterbury, with 39 acres of gardens and parkland that was to become his first zoo. Funds from his own gambling and the casino business allowed him to build up a private collection that included rhinos, bongo antelopes, Przewalski's horses, langurs and leopards. Here he developed his philosophy of treating animals with respect - he said that animals know and resent it when they are being treated as inferiors. He regaled his retinue with diverse, fabulous diets and individual attention. He gathered about himself a devoted team of like-minded keepers. His methods, however, had their problems as well as their successes. Over the years five keepers were killed in encounters with tigers and elephants. A young boy had his arm ripped off by a chimpanzee, and there were other injuries as well. Aspinall frequently appeared in public with his face scratched and bruised from overzealous romps with the animals. He was unrepentant, noting that humans were much bigger killers than animals. "One tiger in 12 has this aberrant streak," he noted of Zeya, who killed two keepers. "With humans it is one in three." Such a view was sadly typical of his mindset. He thought the human race had far too many members, and he rejoiced at the news of natural disasters and plagues that carried off thousands. He said, "I would be very happy to see 3.5 billion humans wiped out from the face of the earth within the next 150 or 200 years and I am quite prepared to go myself with this majority … Let us all look forward to the day when the catastrophe strikes us down!" He also wrote, "The sanctity of human life is the most dangerous sophistry ever propagated by philosophy and it is all too well rooted. Because if it means anything it means the in-sanctity of species which are not human." He tended toward eugenic beliefs that oddly allied him with the English upper classes he fleeced through gambling: "Broadly speaking, the high income groups tend to have a better genetic inheritance." "Reason is the worst possible guide to human affairs," he said a few years ago. "It is merely the undertaker that you send in after the battle to explain the logic of the affair. Instinct and prejudice are much better guides." He harbored a special loathing for wealthy women with left-wing bents. Despite these addled views, Aspinall was clear-headed enough to be able to earn a fortune whenever he wanted. He used his gambling and impresario talents to support his zoos (there was soon a second) to the tune of millions per year. At least three times he abandoned the casino business, only to have reverses that forced him back into it. Each time he attained greater success than he had experienced previously. "I'm like an old warrior who can galvanize himself when he's threatened, but I'm pretty idle when I've got no threats," he said. He only opened up his zoos to the public in the early 70s, when his finances were at a dodgy point after a market crash, and then only after selling paintings and jewelry to feed his animals. Nearing death at age 74 from cancer of the jaw, he wanted to be dispatched by one of his own tigers, but this wish was not to be granted him. He was pleased, however, to leave his zoos in the hands of his eldest son Damian, who had built up excellent friendships with many of the animals. It was typical of Aspinall that he would think of animal friendship and his own bloodlines when considering the fate of his quirky and amazing projects. |
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| Nick"The Greek" Dandolos | |
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| b. 1893 - d. 1966 | |||||
| A man who became almost as legendary as any man in romantic fiction and certainly America's most famous gambler. Born in Rethymnon, Crete, and educated at the Greek Evangelical College in Smyrna, Nick ( whose real name was Nicholas Andrea Dandolos ) was the son of a rug merchant and the godson of a wealthy shipowner. When he was 18 years old, his grandfather sent him to America, giving him an allowance of $150 a week. In Chicago he met and fell in love with a girl, but they quarreled and Nick moved on to Montreal. There he became friendly with a leading jockey of the day, Phil Musgrave; assisted by the jockey's advice and his own natural ability for working out odds, Nick won $500,000 in six months' betting on horse races. Nick then went back to Chicago and promptly lost the entire amount playing card and dice games that were unfamiliar to him. But he was not at all deterred from continuing in his chosen profession. He began to study these games assiduously and in a few years had become so well known as a freelance gambler that casino proprietors were offering him large salaries to work for them. He usually refused, but became an enormous attraction at the casinos nevertheless merely by playing - partly because he would seldom stop gambling even after losing (as he frequently did) as much as $100,000 in a single session at the tables. Naturally this unpredictable gambler with a degree in philosophy and a passion for Aristotle & Plato was the source of endless speculation and rumour. It is widely believed that he once won a city block in Los Angeles, that he challenged an arrogant opponent to draw one card for $550,000 (the other man backed down), that he played faro for 10 days and nights without sleep. In the summer of 1949, as the story goes, Nick the Greek approached Benny Binion with an unusual request-to challenge the best in a high-stakes poker marathon. Binion agreed to set up a match between Dandolos and the legendary Johnny Moss, with the stipulation that the game be played in public view. During the course of the marathon, which lasted five months with breaks only for sleep, the two men played every form of poker imaginable. Moss ultimately won "the biggest game in town" and an estimated $2 million. When the Greek lost his last pot, he arose from his chair, bowed slightly, and uttered the now-famous words, "Mr. Moss, I have to let you go." Dandolos then went upstairs to bed. He was enshrined in 1979 as a charter member of the Poker Hall of Fame. |
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| Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegal | |
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| b. Feb. 28, 1906, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S. - d. June 20, 1947, Beverly Hills, Calif. | |||||
| byname of BENJAMIN SIEGEL, New York and Californian gangster who was the U.S. crime syndicate's initial developer of Las Vegas gambling. Young Siegel began his career extorting money from Jewish pushcart peddlers on New York's Lower East Side; he then teamed up with Meyer Lansky about 1918 and took to car theft and later bootlegging and gambling rackets in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia; he and Lansky also ran a murder-for-hire operation, the forerunner of Murder, Inc. In 1931 he was one of the four executioners of Joe "the Boss" Masseria. In 1937 the syndicate leaders sent him to the West Coast to develop rackets there. In California the handsome gangster successfully developed gambling dens, gambling ships (offshore beyond the 12-mile limit), narcotics smuggling, blackmail, and other illegal enterprises and equally successfully cultivated the company and friendship of Hollywood stars and celebrities. He developed a nationwide bookmakers' wire service and in 1945 began realizing his dream of a gambling oasis in the desert northeast of Los Angeles. In that year he built the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nev., originally budgeted at $1,500,000 but costing eventually $6,000,000, much of it in syndicate funds from the East. The cost overruns involved extensive "skimming" by Siegel, who had his girlfriend Virginia Hill deposit the money in European banks; he also began writing bad checks to cover construction costs. Such actions and other duplicities angered Lansky and other eastern bosses. In the late evening of June 20, 1947, Siegel was killed in his palatial Beverly Hills home, brought down by a fusillade of bullets fired through his living-room window. At almost the same moment, three of Lansky's henchmen walked into the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and declared that they were taking over. |
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| Arnold Rothstein | |
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| b. in 1882 on East 47th Street in Manhattan - d. November 6th, 1928, New York's Polyclinic Hospital | |||||
| Known by many names - A. R., Mr. Big, The Fixer, The Big Bankroll, The Man Uptown, and The Brain - Arnold Rothstein seemed more myth than man. He was the inspiration for Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby, and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. He was rumored to be the mastermind of the "Black Sox" scandal, the fixing of the 1919 World Series. Arnold Rothstein was gambling, and Arnold Rothstein was money. He was Mr. Broadway and had his own booth at Lindy's restaurant in Manhattan where he held court. From The Big Bank Roll, biography of Rothstein: "The cigar salesman made a good living. He lived frugally, did not dissipate. Each week the roll in his pocket grew a little thicker. He knew he could never attain his ultimate aim by simple economies, but these could start him on his way. He didn't like long range projects. He was essentially a short-term, quick-turnover man." "Rothstein pursued a fixed course. He worked at selling cigars until he accumulated $2,000. He decided that this was sufficient to base an entry into gambling as a profession. He quit his salesman's job. He would never again work for anyone else. All the rest of his life, no matter what else he might be, he would always be a professional gambler." With "Big Tim" Sullivan's backing, in 1902 Rothstein began working on his own. He booked bets on baseball games, elections, horse races and prizefights. In addition, he gambled on his own - shooting craps, playing pool and participating in poker games. Rothstein had a simple philosophy, "Look out for Number One. If you don't, no one else will. If a man is dumb, someone is going to get the best of him, so why not you? If you don't, you're as dumb as he is." Rothstein had promised his new wife Carolyn that after he made a lot of money he would retire from being a gambler. Rothstein was comfortable discussing his philosophy of gambling with his wife, but never the actual mechanics, and certainly not the people he interacted with. At Saratoga he pawned all of the expensive jewelry he had given Carolyn to obtain cash. This was more lucrative than borrowing the money at a higher interest rate. By the end of the honeymoon, which coincidentally coincided with the end of race season at Saratoga, Rothstein had won $12,000 and got Carolyn's jewelry out of hock. Returning to New York, Rothstein decided to open his own gambling house. He rented two brownstones on West 46th Street and he and Carolyn took up residence in one, while the other was outfitted with roulette wheels, faro and poker tables. Rothstein then went to "Big Tim" Sullivan to discuss "protection." Sullivan, an Irishman who believed in marriage and large families, was delighted that his protégé had wed. His wedding gift to Rothstein was protection. By 1914 Rothstein was already on his way to becoming the go-to-guy for lay-off betting in the bookmaking business. Since its early years, America has had a love affair with horse racing - and betting on horse races. As placing wagers on the sport became more popular, especially in the country's larger cities, the art of bookmaking, also known then as pool operating, became popular too. It was not until Rothstein came along to organize the various bookmakers that it became a huge money making venture. By the mid-teens Rothstein's ever-growing bankroll allowed him to set the terms for what became known as the lay-off bet. This is the process of evening out a bookie's slate when one horse has so much money riding on it that the results can break the bookie's bank. He simply bet's the other way with someone with enough money to handle the bet and the two split the winning percentage from the bets placed. Rothstein was soon known from coast to coast as the man who could handle any lay-off bet. Assembling a loyal group of men who worked around the clock for their master, Rothstein's ability to take care of this type of betting would last until his death. Meanwhile, as the country moved through the 1910s, Rothstein's gambling contemporaries in New York fell by the wayside. Having one of the few reputable gambling houses in the city Rothstein decided to close up shop because it had become too well known. In 1916 he opened a new casino in Hewlett, Long Island where the cost of "protection" was not nearly as high as in Manhattan. Both the building and the land the gambling house occupied were owned by a state senator who was recognized as a major political figure in the area. The casino was lavishly furnished and provided the gamblers, who arrived by invitation only, with the best in food and drink. All of the casino's employees were required to dress in appropriate eveningwear. Rothstein took advantage of what he termed "snob appeal" for his gambling den. "People like to think they're better than other people," Rothstein once told Damon Runyon. "As long as they're willing to pay to prove it, I'm willing to let them." For three years he allowed them to "pay," to the tune of $500,000 in profits, before he closed the club in 1919 after the local authorities became greedy. Three events took place in Rothstein's life that became legendary and created a reputation for the gambler that certainly preceded him and made him the talk of New York. The first incident occurred in 1917. August Belmont owned a horse named Hourless, whose trainer, Sam Hildreth, was considered one of the best in the country. During the 1917 racing season Hourless lost in a three-horse race to that year's Kentucky Derby winner, Omar Khayyam. Hildreth knew he had been outsmarted by Hourless' rider, a dishonest jockey who dropped his whip during the race. When the New York season was over an enterprising track owner agreed to put up a purse for a grudge match between the two horses. On October 17, the day before the race, Rothstein decided to bet $240,000 on Hourless, but could not find anyone willing to handle a wager that large. Later that day, Rothstein received a telephone call and was informed whatever bet he was willing to place there was a man who would accept it - no limit. Rothstein knew immediately that there must be a fix. He called Hildreth and voiced his concern regarding the sudden change of heart of the bookmakers to take his bet. If there was going to be a sucker in this race, it was not going to be Arnold Rothstein. At the last minute Hildreth changed jockeys and Hourless won convincingly. Rothstein pocketed a cool $300,000. This bet was the largest Rothstein had won up until this time and he would exceed it twice in 1921. The first bet occurred on July 4. Independence Day was the second of the three big racing days that took place at the New York horse racing tracks (the other two being Memorial Day and Labor Day). On this holiday Rothstein was betting on his own horse, Sidereal. Sidereal's entrance in the day's third race was a last minute decision by Rothstein. In fact, the horse was stabled at Belmont Park and the race was being run at Aqueduct. Rothstein sent Carolyn to fetch the horse while he maneuvered around the busy track drumming up business and, at the same time, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible so not to tip his hand. Rothstein "borrowed" as many as forty trackmen to do his bidding in placing bets on Sidereal. By the time the horse arrived at the track the paddock judge told the trainer he had beaten the deadline by a mere six seconds. Sidereal won the race and Rothstein earned the incredible amount of $850,000. Weeks later, on August 20, Rothstein won $500,000 by betting on another of his horses, Sporting Blood, in the Travers Stakes. Rothstein had received some quality information about problems the favored horse was experiencing. He was quick to take advantage of the information - for which he always rewarded the provider well. Arnold Rothstein's "fixing" of the 1919 World Series (Baseball) is the American underworld's most popular myth. The reality is, however, different. Rothstein's name, his reputation, and his reputed wealth were all used to influence the crooked baseball players. But Rothstein, knowing this, kept apart from the actual fix. He just let it happen." Last Hours of Mr. Big That was the message recorded at 10:53 p.m. on Sunday, November 4, 1928 by a desk sergeant in Manhattan's West 47th Street station. By midnight, the information had been updated to show that Arnold Rothstein, 46 years old of 912 Fifth Avenue had been shot in the abdomen and found near the employee's entrance of the Park Central Hotel. Earlier that evening, Rothstein arrived at Lindy's restaurant on Seventh Avenue and went to his private booth. Lindy's was Rothstein's office. He kept a regular schedule there and several men were already waiting to see him when he walked in that night. One of the men, Jimmy Meehan, ran the Park City Club, one of the city's biggest gambling dens during the 1920s. Meehan operated the plush club with a bankroll supplied by Rothstein. About 10:15, Rothstein received a telephone call. After a short conversation he hung up and motioned for Meehan to walk outside with him. "McManus wants to see me at the Park Central," Rothstein said. He then pulled a gun out of his pocket and handed it to Meehan saying, "Keep this for me, I will be right back." Meehan then watched Rothstein walk up Seventh Avenue. The man who had requested Rothstein's presence at the hotel was George McManus. A bookmaker and gambler, McManus was well connected in the city with one brother serving on the police force and another serving as a priest. Several weeks earlier, McManus had hosted a high-stakes poker game in which Rothstein had participated. The game began on September 8th and continued into the morning of September 10th. Other players participating in the game were West Coast gambler Nate Raymond, Alvin "Titanic" Thompson, and Joe Bernstein. By the end of the marathon card game, Rothstein was a big loser. He owed Raymond $219,000, Bernstein $73,000, and Thompson $30,000. When Rothstein walked out, without so much as signing an IOU, a couple of the players became irritated. McManus assured the pair, "That's A. R. Hell, he's good for it. He'll be calling you in a couple of days." A week passed and Rothstein had still not made good. Rumors began to circulate that the game was crooked. Rothstein confided to Nicky Arnstein, who by now was out of prison and back in New York, "A couple of people told me that the game was rigged." Arnstein's advice to Rothstein was to pay the players off, "no point to your advertising you were a sucker." Rothstein held off paying his debt though, hoping to make the gamblers sweat and maybe take a lesser payoff. The players however were beginning to pressure McManus since he was the host and had promised them that Rothstein would make good. McManus sought help from his friend Jimmy Hines of Tammany Hall. Hines, who was also a friend of Rothstein, began to pressure him to clear up the matter. As the weeks passed, the pressure began to get to McManus who began drinking and threatened Rothstein for not making good on the debts. On Sunday night November 4, McManus called Rothstein from room 349 in the Park Central Hotel where he was registered as George Richards. He requested that Rothstein come over right away. The conversation and events that took place after Rothstein arrived are still a mystery. Shortly after Rothstein entered room 349, he was shot once in the lower abdomen. The revolver was then tossed out the window where it bounced off the hood of a parked taxi and landed in the street. Employees later found Rothstein walking down the service stairs, holding his stomach and asking for a cab to take him home. Late on Monday afternoon, his wife Carolyn was permitted to see him. He requested to go home and told her, "Don't go away. I don't want to be alone. I can't stand being alone." As he tried to raise himself he fell back and into unconsciousness. Rothstein would not regain consciousness and died the following morning at approximately 10:20, Election Day, November 6th, 1928. Rothstein had bet heavily on the election that year. Had he lived, he would have collected $570,000. His death negated the wagers. In the Jewish tradition, Rothstein was buried the following day in Union Field Cemetery in Queens. Inside the closed casket he was dressed in a white skullcap with a purple-striped prayer shawl over a muslin shroud. |
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| 21st Century | |||||
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| Stu Ungar | |
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| The Tortured Champion | |||||
Ungar, who was born in New York City and raised on the city's Lower East Side, became a professional gambler at age 14, a year after his father, who was a bookmaker and bar operator, had died. Stu was an incredible gin rummy player. At age 10 in '63, he won his first gin rummy tournament in a Catskill Mountain Resort while vacationing with his parents. At age 14, he was regularly playing and beating the best players in New York. At 15 he dropped out of school when a well known bookie staked Stu to the $500 buy-in in a big gin rummy tournament. Stu won the $10,000 first prize without ever loosing a hand, a record still held in the card rooms of New York City. A week later, after giving his parents $1,000, he lost the rest on horses at the Aqueduct racetrack. It was a sign of things to come. Ungar moved to Miami where the juiciest Gin games were. He did well but his weakness for sports and track betting drained him of any success. In 1976 Stu reached Las Vegas, broke and just about beaten. Somehow he found the money to enter a $50,000 tournament. On the last two hands he forecast the losing player's cards - correctly. This bravado was another bad career move as it meant other players feared his skills. As a result, he could no longer find any games outside the tournaments. It wasn't long before he decided to try his luck at blackjack. He'd cleaned up on poker tables from Nevada to New Jersey and the time was right to move on. One night at Caesars Palace he won $83,000 but the manager stopped the play. Stu retaliated by correctly forecasting the last 18 cards left in the single-deck shoe. That was the beginning of the end for single deck blackjack tables. They were removed from Caesars and later from other casinos, and Stu's picture was posted up in the security rooms of dozens of casinos. Result: Stu was banned for life. His next feat was to bet any takers $10,000 that he could perform yet another memory miracle: he offered to count down the last two decks in a six-deck shoe! There were no takers. Then in January 1977 a former owner of Vegas World and designer of the Stratosphere Tower stepped into his life. Stu Ungar met Bob Stupak. The new taker offered Stu $100,000 to count down the last three decks, half-way through a six-deck shoe. If Stu lost he'd owe Bob $10,000. Memories of this amazing feat still linger on today in Las Vegas. To the astonishment of onlookers, and Bob, Stu didn't miss a single call from a total of 156 cards. When Bob handed him a check for $100,000, it marked the beginning of a lasting friendship between them. In 1980 at 24, Ungar entered his first world championship. He won and to silence the critics of his "fluke" he won the next year as well. He wasn't done with pure gambling though and he lost $900,000 in RAZZ game in an afternoon, $1m in a craps session and picked up $5m from Larry Flint (the porn king) over many heads-up sessions. Ultimately his fever for action took everything in the physical world and his drug addiction was close to taking his life. By the 1997 WSOP tournament in Las Vegas, Ungar hadn't been in the frame for over 7 years. He was seen around the gambling Mecca playing in small games but was pretty much written off by the poker world. He didn't have the money to enter the Championship event but an hour before play an anonymous benefactor produced the $10,000 entry. Four days later the greatest comeback in poker history had occurred and the record of three victories established. In all he won 10 major No limit Hold'em tournaments out of the 30 he entered! Two months later he was broke again. Another year of oblivion and Stu was on the comeback trail again with his old friend Bob Stupak offering to cancel his debts and signing him up for commissioned card play. With $2000 of Stupak's money in his pocket (spending money) he checked into a cheap downtown hotel. Two days later he was dead. He left behind a 15 year old daughter. He once said although he could conceive of a better poker player than himself, not in the next 50 years of the world would there be a better Gin player. Nov 22nd, 1998 - Oasis Motel, 1731 S. Las Vegas Blvd - Stu Ungar found dead. The Clark County Coroner's office on Monday ruled Ungar's death accidental based on the results of toxicology tests that came back from the lab Friday. A mixture of narcotics and pain killers triggered a heart condition that killed him. The drugs found in Ungar's system were cocaine, methadone and the pain-killer Percodan, Clark County Coroner Ron Flud said. No one drug by itself was enough to cause Ungar's death. "The cause is accidental death by coronary atherosclerosis". "The heart condition developed over a period of time. The attack was brought on by his life-style." Coronary atherosclerosis occurs when not enough blood can be pumped through the heart muscle. It is not uncommon to find a mixture of cocaine, Percodan and methadone in an autopsy of a drug user. Percodan is often used to bring a person down from his cocaine high so he can sleep. Methadone is given to heroine addicts to get them off the drug. It is not known when Ungar, a three-time world poker champion, took the drugs that contributed to his death. Police investigating the scene said they found no drug paraphernalia at that location. . |
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| Kerry Packer | |
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| b. 1938 | |||||
| A the beginning of the 21st Century Kerry Packer claimed position as the richest man in Australia and the worlds biggest casino gambler. He's the owner of the Channel Nine television network and has interests in Pay TV. He also owns 60 percent of all magazines sold in Australia including Belle, She, Wheels, HQ, Bulletin, Woman's Day and the Womens' Weekly. It was the Women's Weekly which really started the Packer media empire. Set up by Kerry's father, Sir Frank Packer in 1933, the magazine was hugely successful and it allowed Sir Frank to expand his business beginning with newspapers like Sydney's Daily Telegraph. By most accounts Sir Frank was a hard worker and a hard father. Kerry and his brother Clyde saw little of their father and when they did it was often to get a taste of Sir Frank's strict discipline. In a rare interview on radio in 1979 Kerry talked about his upbringing. "I mean I got a lot of hidings because that's the sort of person I was and the sort of person he was." Kerry's young life was lonely and disrupted. He was sent to boarding school at the age of five, and just a year later caught a serious illness called polio myelitis or infantile paralysis. Today children are immunised against the virus but in the 1940s severe cases could kill or leave a child crippled. Young Kerry's case was severe and he spent nine months immobilised in an iron lung, an early version of a respirator, which helped him to breathe. By the time he got back to boarding school, at the age of nine, he was way behind his class mates. Luckily his recovery from polio had been complete because it was his size and strength that helped him achieve in one area , sport. "My life was sport. I was academically stupid. My method of surviving through school and those sorts of things was sport." Kerry finished school when he was 19 and went to work for his father's newspapers. He took over the business when Sir Frank died in 1974. In 1977 when he couldn't get exclusive television rights to Sheffield and Test cricket he made up his own teams with the best players in the world and started World Series Cricket. If the Australian Cricket Board wanted the services of these players it would have to give Kerry the TV rights and , in 1979, after a long battle, he got his way. In 1987 he sold his two Channel Nine TV stations to businessman Alan Bond for one billion dollars. It was a lot more than they were worth and the deal made Kerry Packer his first billion. Three years later, Bond was in financial trouble and Kerry bought the stations back for just 250 million dollars. His greatest love is polo and he spends three months of every year in England playing the game and millions of dollars on horses, stables and players for his own team. In 1990 a heart attack while playing polo left him literally dead for six minutes until he was revived by ambulance officers. But once again his return to form has been spectacular. Legendary Status Mr Packer's legendary status as a high stakes gambler came to the fore when he took Las Vegas' MGM Grand for $26 million playing blackjack for $200,000 a hand, six hands at a time. It was this big hit and run style that actually got him barred from stuffy Vegas joints because they just couldn't take the action. Mr Packer was also reported to have suffered the biggest losses ever sustained in the UK in September 1999, dropping £11m ($16.5m) at Crockfords casino in London. However at that time such sums were only a tiny fraction of the wealth of the owner of Australia's Nine television network, estimated to be around $8bn. More $20 million losses have been reported but there are also tales of incredible generosity, including a $100,000 tip to dealers and waitresses and loans to fellow gamblers whose repayment he refuses to accept. Legend also has it that Mr Packer's grandfather put the family on the road to riches by buying a passage from Tasmania to the mainland on the proceeds of a bet on a horse. He found his 10 shilling stake lying in the street. |
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