Creepy Quick Fact - Stiff at Poker Game
1939 A Fred Martens, or “Fritz the Rooster,” sat at a table in a Las Vegas gambling house playing poker with some men. After a streak of bad luck, he seemed headed for a possible straight.…
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1939 A Fred Martens, or “Fritz the Rooster,” sat at a table in a Las Vegas gambling house playing poker with some men. After a streak of bad luck, he seemed headed for a possible straight.…
1967 After a demonstration of the game, Nevada gambling regulators, for the first time, allowed pai gow — a Chinese version of dominos — to be offered in its casinos. The clubs with pai gow,…
1958-1959 (Part I ran last week. If you missed it, it’s available here.) The Nevada Tax Commission withdrew the gambling license of the New Star operators — Brent Mackie and Kenneth Henton — in July 1958…
1925 Newton “Newt” Crumley, Sr., Goldfield, Nevada resident, met with William Doyle in September to discuss purchasing from him the Commercial Hotel in Elko, but they couldn’t agree on a price. Doyle wanted $5,000 more…
1958 Casino workers at the New Star allegedly were caught in flagrante delicto. In April, a gambling detective — Michael MacDougall from New York — conducted a statewide, in-person survey of various gambling entities upon…
1960s-1970s More than a half-decade after the invention of the slot machine in 1887, liquor-filled decanters in their likeness became the rage, particularly at casinos. The version (in the photo), adorned with 24-carat gold, contained…
1947-1970 For some businesses, the Red Line was beneficial; for others, detrimental. The Red Line designated a rectangular region of downtown Reno, Nevada in which casinos with unlimited gambling could exist. Clubs offering gambling outside…
1948 Arthur T. Morgan belligerently stormed into the Big Hat casino on Highway 91 (outside Las Vegas, Nevada) at about 1:30 a.m. on a Friday night in spring. He immediately began heckling, threatening to shoot…
1954 Due to the 1953 scandal in Wells, Nevada, the Nevada Tax Commission members in June 1954 prohibited open gambling in the town of Jackpot in The Silver State, just south of its border with…
1936 A thief took the trouble of entering a Los Angeles, California café through a skylight to rob the slot and marble games. But instead of getting the heck out after that was successful, he stayed…
1948-1950 In between dispatch orders, a Las Vegas, Nevada taxi driver fleetingly picked up the announcement of horse racing information on his cab radio one day in mid-October, 1948. He informed Clark County Sheriff Glen…
1967 When the owners of the Ponderosa — Reno, Nevada’s newest major hotel (at 515 S. Virginia Street, now the Wild Orchid) — were about to debut gambling, with a celebratory first throwing of the dice, they ran into…
1960 When one rural Nevada town grew into a gambling hotspot in the mid-1900s, the gamblers in another loudly grumbled. Soon after Idaho outlawed slot machines, its last vestige of legal gambling, the sagebrush- and…
1941 In an override of Governor Edward Carville’s veto, Nevada legislators legalized bookmaking. The law explained that “the receiving of bets or wagers on horse races held without the state of Nevada shall be deemed to be…
1969-present When executives of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada hosted 12 people from Kansas City in 1969 as part of a gambling junket, it unexpectedly backfired. When their guests, after four days at the…
The BAR symbol commonly found in slot machines today evolved from the early 19th century logo of the Bell-Fruit Gum Company, whose fruit-flavored chewing gum was dispensed when the player won. The flavors were those…