King of Vices
Hi Fabulous Subscribers, How are you all? I hope each of you is doing exceedingly well and life is good. As for me, I’ve been working on my next gambling history book, and today I’m…
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Hi Fabulous Subscribers, How are you all? I hope each of you is doing exceedingly well and life is good. As for me, I’ve been working on my next gambling history book, and today I’m…
1935 Hollywood movie studios released more than a handful of gambling-related movies in 1935. This seemed unusual given the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America’s (MPPDA) recent re-commitment to ensuring movies didn’t contain content…
1890s-Today A way to drum up business for a failing zoo in the late 19th century, reportedly, quickly evolved into and, to this day, remains an enormously popular game of chance among Brazilians: jogo do…
1938 In the following verse, penned about the S.S. Monte Carlo following its demise, the writer Ida Clarise Gowan uses a hostile, derogatory and accusatory tone. She personifies, or gives human qualities to, the ship,…
1932-Today Though local, state and federal authorities were working to eradicate all gambling ships moored off of the Pacific Coast, the S.S. Monte Carlo met its demise at the hands of an unexpected interloper, Mother…
1936-1950s The Palace Club introduced a new casino game to Nevada’s “Biggest Little City” on May 1, 1936. Renoites quickly discovered it, and its popularity soared, leading to a solid run over about a decade.…
1965-1969: The Red Carpet in Biloxi was cheating its craps players by using a “juice joint,” a two-ton electromagnet that controlled metal-containing dice on a game table, in 1965. At the time, Mississippi prohibited all…
1965-1969: In its July 1966 raid of Kress Manufacturing Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents seized a treasure trove of crooked gambling equipment that seemed headed to various Nevada casinos. The haul…
1937-1947 More so than craps, roulette, 21 and slots, all on offer, tango enraptured gamblers at Club Fortune, then “the outstanding night spot in Western Nevada,” according to the Reno Evening Gazette (Jan. 12, 1953).…
1920s-1960s Joseph “Doc” Stacher (né Gdale Oistaczer)* was a New Jersey-based Mobster who made his foray into organized crime with Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky’s Bugs and Meyer Mob in Manhattan, N.Y. and then…
1961-1966 “When you bring in gamblers, you bring in trained law violators, and to expect them not to break the law is to expect the tides not to rise,” Wallace Turner wrote in Gambler’s Money.…
1958 Myrton “Mert” C. Wertheimer was murdered, William “Bill/Curly” J. Graham ordered the hit and Frank “Frankie” Frost carried it out. This was hearsay from Los Angeles Mobster and made man, Aladena James “Jimmy/The Weasel”…
1953-1955 When sheriff’s deputies responded to a 10:45 p.m. call from Dixie’s Log Cabin* on January 11, 1953, they found a man, injured and lying in the parking lot there. He was Raymond “Bud” Dutcher,…
1969 A group of Southern Californians, winding down from a Monday night of gambling at the El Capitan Club in Hawthorne, Nevada, were on the “Gamblers Special” flight back home. The plane never made it.…
HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 1907-1945 Wanting to kick off 2021 with a positive blog post and being inspired by the $15.5 million jackpot win on Christmas Eve at Las Vegas’ Suncoast Hotel and Casino, we sought…
1947-1960 One Carlin, Nevada business owner learned the hard way that the state didn’t tolerate gambling operators cheating the players. Gino Quilici just had been granted a gambling license in August 1952 for the State…