Wyatt Earp, age 21

Iconic American figure, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (1848-1929), is heralded for his courageous exploits as a lawman, but he was a gambler first and foremost, often relying on the then-respectable profession to earn income throughout his lifetime. He’s earned a spot in U.S. gambling history.

Earp’s Gambling Education And Practice

At age 20, the tall, slender native Illinoisan landed a job in Wyoming grading track for construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. During time spent at the railhead, Earp learned how to play and deal faro and run monte. Over the next several years, he honed the craft in various gambling houses, saloons and brothels of the frontier and became proficient. Eventually, he operated table games, too.

As a gambler, Earp reportedly was honest and garnered high repute wherever he went, and he traveled a lot.

“Earp rarely stayed in the same place for long, frequently becoming broke, bored, unwelcome or some combination of the three,” wrote John Caldbick in a History Link essay.

The nomad typically moved from boomtown to boomtown, and in every one he hustled as a faro banker. He did own some brick-and-mortar gambling establishments, too. Here are some of them:

It Was Westward Ho For Lawman

After a roughly decade-long stint as a law enforcement officer, most recently as a deputy U.S. marshal, Earp relocated to San Diego, California in the mid-1880s.

“There was another Wyatt Earp seldom remembered — an older, wiser gentleman who lived in San Diego and operated gambling halls; bought and sold urban property; refereed [bull and cock] fights and owned racehorses,” reported the San Diego Union (Oct. 17, 1978).

During his roughly decade of living off and on in America’s Finest City, Earp leased and operated four gambling saloons there, all four simultaneously at one point, reportedly. All of them were in the red light Stingaree district that teemed with con men, shifty gamblers and criminals.

They offered faro, monte, blackjack, poker, keno, pedro, monte and other games. Not much else is known about Earp’s gambling enterprises there except for their locations and that they were profitable, particularly during the city’s boom years, 1885 to 1888, during which the gambler could net as much as $1,000 a night.

His most famous and most popular gambling spot was the Oyster Bar, in the Louis Bank Building at 835 Fifth Avenue. The others were at:

• A corner of 6th and F streets (where he ran high stakes faro)
• The northeast corner of 6th and G streets
• 951 4th Street

On Sundays, Earp promoted and ran all types of gambling, including the big wheel, rouge et noir, faro, monte and even thimblerig in Tijuana, Mexico.

Businessman Strikes Gold With New Saloon

After the rush to Nome, Alaska Territory for gold began in 1899, Wyatt moved there. He and partner Charlie Hoxie built and operated the luxurious Dexter Saloon, the town’s hotspot for travelers, miners and locals to drink, gamble, discuss politics and do business. The establishment was hugely successful thanks, in large part, to Earp’s notoriety.

Dexter Saloon

Gamblers Disgruntled by Big Name Newcomer

While still a co-owner of The Dexter, in 1899, Earp debuted another gambling house: The Union Club. That one was in Seattle, Washington’s tenderloin and was a partnership with a local man, Thomas Urquhart.

The move was risky because The Emerald City prohibited gambling and the men running places offering games of chance regularly paid off the local officials to let them operate. Those gamblers were displeased with the famous lawman moving in on their territory and then, with the Union’s immediate success, having to compete with him.

Law enforcement erratically enforced Seattle’s anti-gambling ordinance and this created ongoing trouble for the Union’s co-proprietors. Consequently, within six months of opening, Earp pulled out of the joint venture.

Nomad Stakes Out Mining Camp

Earp sold his share of the Dexter to Hoxie and headed to Nevada, Tonopah specifically. There, in 1902, he opened the The Northern with partner Al Martin and ran a successful business. 

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Know anything more about Earp’s gambling career? Let us know about it, please.

Sources

The Rhythm Boys were all about patterns of sound and movement but in relation to slot machines, not music.

Danny Foster, Johnny Pugh and Robert E. Black made $1,000 (about $11,800 today) from playing the slots for a few hours at the Club Cal Neva in Reno, Nevada in late 1950. Casino management asked them to leave. They did.

Sometime after, they were making money off of the El Cortez Hotel’s slots. During that spree, two Reno policemen approached and ordered them to leave the city by the next night or there’d be “blood on the streets,” Foster later reported to the press (Reno Evening Gazette, Oct. 31, 1951). In their threat, the officers referenced the trio’s continued, local slot playing. The Rhythm Boys moved on, to Lewiston, Idaho.

Trail Of Winnings

Wherever the Rhythm Boys played slots, they won. They used a method for beating the machines that tipped the odds heavily in their favor, boosting slot payoffs by more than 10 percent, reportedly. Morrie Brodsky, manager at the Club Cal Neva, told news reporters he estimated that each of the Rhythm Boys had hit a jackpot once in every 15 plays in his casino.

More distressing to slot operators was that the rhythm method was legal. That fact made them “physically ill,” wrote The Lighter Touch columnist Frank Johnson (Nevada State Journal, May 4, 1958).

“Even today the mere mention of [Rhythm Boys] sends a chill through the gambling fraternity,” Johnson added. “It was that bad.”

Tricks Of The Trade

The Rhythm Boys were nicknamed after their technique. It involved first determining a slot machine’s timing cycle, by the sound the device’s air governor made. Next was repeatedly pulling the slot handle according to a certain rhythm, letting a specific amount of time pass between yanks. Doing so interfered with the timing, slowing it down or speeding it up, such that the reels then “literally floated,” Johnson wrote.

He explained that proficient rhythm players could land the first and third reels in the position they wanted them in and hold them there. Then they could wait for the middle reel to spin to the needed position for a winning row and once there, stop it.

“It’s in the way they pull the handle of the slot. You get it going with a rhythm to it, the right rhythm. And it’ll jackpot for you every time,” columnist Stan Delaplane wrote, quoting a blackjack dealer at Reno’s Circle RB Lodge (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 27, 1960).

Attention Mounts

Once in Lewiston, two of the Rhythm Boys, Pugh and Foster, enticed the local news reporters to watch them play by betting they could land several $2 jackpots and spend less than $50 in doing so.

Successful, the duo collected $210 ($2,300 today) in 45 minutes’ time, having fed the machine only $20.

That afternoon, Foster and Pugh entered the 600 Club in Lewiston, and the proprietor turned his slot machines so their front faced the wall.

In October 1951, despite many slot operators urging them to stop playing slots in Lewiston, the Rhythm Boys announced they planned to stay in Idaho for years and make a career out of cleaning up on the gambling machines.

Even Classes On It

The rhythm method had been around since before the Boys drew widespread attention to it. Reportedly, it originated in Las Vegas, Nevada, even was taught there, then expanded.  

Johnson explained in his May 4, 1958 column. “One of the first institutions of higher learning in Las Vegas was a special college for rhythm players conducted by the man who developed the system.  It was no cheap diploma mill. The cost was $500 plus expenses for two weeks of concentrated instruction. Probably there were no more than 30 or 40 graduates during the time the school was in existence, but they were enough to endanger the whole slot machine industry.”

An affiliated school was located in Idaho.

Rhythm Is Gonna Get You

The great publicity surrounding the three slots stars and their method, which the Rhythm Boys invited, was their undoing.

“The thing that really hurt was the fact the rhythm boys were so obvious,” Johnson wrote. “Other casino patrons seemed to catch on wherever they played. Pretty soon jackpots would begin falling all around the section where the rhythm expert was in.”

No longer able to play publicly, the trio sought to capitalize on their system by selling it, outlined in a booklet titled How We Beat The Slots, for $2 a pop. In the publication, they Rhythm Boys noted that “publicity barred us from playing in some clubs and made us unwelcome in others.”

To start, in early 1952, the rhythm method kings sent an estimated 30,000 letters to residents of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho in which they offered their treatise for sale.

End Of The Road

Eventually, savvy slot machine mechanics learned through the rhythm method course or the grapevine about this shortcoming of slot machines and sought to eradicate it. (Bud Garaventa, the foreman of Harrah’s Club’s slot machine repair shop, was one who attended the class, according to Johnson.)

The solution was a mechanism added to the inside of a slot machine. Described as windmill like, it spun when the slot handle was pulled and dictated how long each reel would spin. It prevented the floating of any and all reels but didn’t change the game’s odds.

“This [development] was at least six or seven years ago, and since then [the industry] has seen a rare slot machine not so equipped,” Johnson wrote in 1961 (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 27).

Sources

Alvin J. Paris

1946-1947

Alvin J. Paris ingratiated himself with two New York Giants football players by inviting them to parties at his apartment and taking them to nightclubs. He bet on a Giants game and gave them the payout, $500 each ($5,300 today). Then he made his move.

He promised them incentives to intentionally lose their upcoming playoff game against the Chicago Bears for the 1946 National Football League (NFL) Championship — $2,500 ($33,300 today) in cash, the winnings of a $1,000 ($13,300) wager on the Bears and a $15,000 ($200,000) job with the novelties shop Paris ran.

Allegedly, Frank “Frankie” J. Filchock, quarterback and halfback, refused whereas Merle Hapes, fullback, indicated he might go along with it.

Merle Hapes

The Story Gets Out

Before the Dec. 15 gridiron showdown, the NFL learned about the possible fix. The scandal went public a few hours before kickoff.

The media purported that a “big-time syndicate … said to control the betting of millions of dollars on sports events in all major cities,” was behind this scheme (United Press/Nevada State Journal, Dec. 17, 1946).

NFL Commissioner Bert Bell immediately suspended the two Giants, for a duration to be determined later. However, he allowed Filchock to play in the championship game, as the opening quarterback, reportedly because he’d denied having been approached by anyone about throwing it. The thousands of fans present booed the eight-year pro player when he was announced.

Frank Filchock

Hapes, on the other hand, admitted a gambler had tried to bribe him and, thus, was benched.

Gamblers predicted the Bears would prevail by 10 points. During play, the Giants scored two touchdowns, but Filchock’s six intercepted passes led the Bears to a 24-14 victory. As for bets placed on either team to win, the game was a push, so there weren’t any winners or losers.

In The Crosshairs

Two days later, the local grand jury returned indictments against these four allegedly involved men:

• Alvin Paris, 28, for bribery and bookmaking. Described as a playboy, Paris was the front for the New Jersey-based bookmaking enterprise of racketeer Eddie Ginsberg, his stepfather.· 

• Jerome Zarowitz, 32, for bribery and conspiracy. Zarowitz worked for Ginsberg as his handicapper, right hand man and sometimes bookie, and owned an estimated 20 percent interest in the business. Zarowitz had two previous arrests, for bookmaking, but no convictions. He was married, had one child and a clean U.S. Army military record. (Zarowitz, an alleged partner of the New York Genovese and Boston Patriarca Crime Families, later would become the casino manager of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.)

• David Krakower aka Dan Kramer, Peter Krakauer, Abe Goldstein, 44, for bribery and conspiracy. Krakower, who owned a 12.5 percent interest in Ginsberg’s book operation, was a gangster who’d served time for various charges, possession of a revolver, burglary, arson, and passing and selling counterfeit Federal Reserve bank notes.

• Harvey Stemmer, 36, for bribery and conspiracy. Stemmer, also with a 12.5 percent stake in Ginsberg’s business, was a racketeer with a family and a criminal record. When indicted, he was serving prison time for attempted bribery of Brooklyn College basketball players two years earlier.

While cases against the quartet were being pursued, the NFL “sought to restore public confidence in the integrity of the ‘pro’ game,” the United Press reported (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 17, 1946).

“We are ready to take steps to combat and kill this evil thing,” Commissioner Bell said.

One Down, Three To Go

Paris, still in jail because he couldn’t raise his $28,000 ($327,000 today) bail, was the first to stand trial. There, the prosecutor introduced Paris’ full previous confession and had both Hapes and Filchock testify. Filchock admitted Paris had broached a fix with him, too.

The defense didn’t call any witnesses.

After 65 minutes of deliberating, the jurors, sequestered throughout the proceedings, found Paris guilty.

Case Against The “Conspirators”

The joint trial of Zarowitz and Stemmer, who’d pleaded innocent, and Krakower, who’d pleaded guilty, took place in March. Prosecutor George Monaghan accused the trio of “counseling and commanding” Paris in the attempted bribery of Filchock and Hapes, the Associated Press reported (Reno Evening Gazette, March 5, 1947).

As the state’s key witness, Paris testified to all of his related interactions with the defendants. (After his time on the stand, Paris received death threats.)

Patrolman Joseph Jove spoke to the contents of conversations he overheard through the 10-day wiretap on Paris’ phone leading up to the championship game. Jove’s testimony tied Stemmer, Krakower and Zarowitz to Paris’ bribing of the Giants footballers.

In his closing argument, Monaghan said, “A fine sport is now contaminated by lice and rodents. It is a good opportunity for this jury to delouse the sport and get rid of the lice that infest it” (Nevada State Journal, March 9, 1947).

The Final Fallout

The jurors found all three defendants guilty, and the judge gave them prison sentences. Krakower and Stemmer’s was five to 10 years. Zarowitz’s was up to three years. Subsequently, Paris was given a one year jail term, given his cooperation with the state.

Krakower and Stemmer appealed the ruling. However, in 1949 the Supreme Court of New York affirmed the lower court’s decision. 

As for the two Giants players, Filchock’s NFL suspension was for three years, between 1947 and 1950. Hapes’ was for life, which would earn the No. 3 spot in 2015 on WhatCulture.com’s list of the “10 Most Severe NFL Suspensions Ever.”

“They barred me for telling the truth,” Hapes told the press (Nevada State Journal, April 27, 1947). “Maybe I should have lied to them. I never did a thing wrong. I just made a stupid mistake by associating with Paris Alvin, gambler.”

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Which NFL teams do you predict will compete in this bizarre season’s (2020) conference championships?

Sources

Ad in the Nevada State Journal, June 26, 1935

1929-1941

In the early decades of legal gambling in Nevada, Reno’s McKay/Graham combine expropriated legitimate business owners’ casinos in Washoe County.

The local Mob, headed by William “Bill” Graham and James “Jim” McKay, strove to dominate and control gambling in Reno without competition. Thus, anyone who wanted to open a gambling club had to seek their permission first, and the duo may or may not have granted it. Those who failed to ask for entry into the exclusive fraternity suffered dire consequences. Most times, McKay and Graham stole the business outright, but sometimes they infiltrated it and caused its demise.

Here are the stories of some gambling clubs that fell victim to Graham and McKay:

1) Country Club (in Reno)

With the backing of an ex-Nevada investor, Charles Rennie opened the Country Club in June 1935 on Plumas Street (between what today are Moana Lane and Urban Road).* At the time, Rennie was the gambling licensee for the Town House in downtown Reno.

“It was one of the most dazzling, exciting, and glamorous clubs ever opened in Reno,” wrote Dwayne Kling in The Rise of the Biggest Little City.

The $250,000 (a $4.7 million value today) establishment featured a restaurant, dance floor, polo grounds and tennis courts. The Bridge Room casino offered  roulette, craps, 21 and slot machines. Following a debut for which 600 people made reservations to attend, the County Club was doing great business.

Graham and McKay sent one of their henchmen, Jack Sullivan, several times to tell Rennie he should talk to the duo, but Rennie refused, according to Al W. Moe in The Roots of Reno.

Then, only 1.5 months after the Country Club’s premier, Rennie announced he was abandoning it and returning to the Town House full-time. Eighteen days later, the Country Club closed. It reopened soon after with a Graham/McKay man, James Merrell, as the new general manager.

The next year, Rennie tried to take back his Country Club from the Mobsters, without success. Subsequently, on May 15, a fire erupted at 3:40 a.m., under a serving table in the kitchen according to the steward, the only person on the premises at the time. Fueled by strong winds, the conflagration reduced the facilities to rubble within two hours. The fire chief said the fire looked to have been set, but it never was proven. Despite promises by Merrell that the Country Club would be rebuilt, it wasn’t.

2) Monte Carlo (in Reno)

The Monte Carlo opened on June 19, 1931 at 216 N. Virginia Street and boasted varied casino games, 12 in all, including hazard, roulette, big six, craps, 21, draw and stud poker, panguingue, klondike and chemin de fer.

By the end of that year, it was shuttered. According to Harold Smith, Sr., who co-owned nearby Harolds Club, “No warning went to its owners. The clique simply infiltrated its thieves among the employees and stole the bankroll. The Monte Carlo Club was broke in three months.”

3) La Boite Amusement Palace (in Reno)

Clarence Shockey launched La Boite Amusement Park, a keno-pool parlor, on July 21, 1932, to great success. Three days later, a fire broke out in the garbage behind the building but was extinguished quickly, saving the business. On the eighth day after opening, Shockey uncharacteristically failed to show up at La Boite that night, and he never was heard from or seen again. The club re-opened under new management three days later. The full story is here.

4) The Cowshed (in Reno)

Shortly after Belle Livingstone opened The Cowshed, a nightclub offering gaming (21,  roulette, craps), dining and dancing, Graham and McKay sent in their goons to drive her out. They did. The full story is here.

5) Harolds Club (in Reno)

Graham and McKay tried to close down Harolds Club in 1937, about two years after it opened.

One day, William A. Justi, third ward city councilman and police committee chairman, showed up at Harolds with two other councilmen, Harolds co-owner Harold S. Smith, Sr. described in his book. “They were there to examine our big roulette wheel hanging from the ceiling,” Smith, Sr. wrote. “The city’s ordinance imposed a tax on each gaming wheel. The Third Ward councilman was trying to persuade his colleagues to collect the tax instead on each of our 43 roulette layouts since they were placed from a single wheel. Fortunately, he wasn’t able to sell his plan. Forty-three licenses would have put us out of business.

“The real showdown came just before 10 AM a few days later when Raymond [Harold’s brother and co-owner] and I were alone in the place. Seven men sauntered in, all big, all sashaying from side to side to knock over whatever, or whoever, got in their way. I had heard through the grapevine our place was going to be wrecked. I was ready, though I would have liked to have had more witnesses. The men headed straight for Raymond standing behind the crap table, when I reached under the roulette counter for my loaded .38.

“‘You’re not going to shoot any dice,’ I declared, ‘so just turn around walk out that door.’ Not a tremor of vibrato was in my voice. I simply couldn’t stand there, aware of Raymond’s vulnerable mastoidal ear, and let them tear my brother apart or wreck the store. Had any of them taken another step, I’d have put a bullet near his feet and the next one into him.

“They halted and turned to face me. Anyone, I believe, knows when an armed man means to use his gun. They could see by the line of my lips I would use mine. They knew, furthermore, as I knew, that unless I faced them down, Harolds Club was through in Reno. Every hoodlum in the area would take his turn at clobbering us.  We would be their mirth, out in the street dodging our furniture. If, on the other hand, they retreated before a gun, the psychological advantage was ours. We would have made our stand and the word would be all over town by noon. Public opinion might save us from further rough stuff. The seven men put their heads together in solemn pow-wow, turned stiffly and marched out the door. I took my clammy hand off the pistol grip and murmured a silent prayer.

“We were in Reno to stay though I continued to carry the gun and watch every shadow as I drove home nights.”

6) Cal-Neva Lodge (in Incline Village)

“Graham and McKay swept over Cal-Neva at Lake Tahoe in 1929,” Moe wrote in Nevada’s Golden Age of Gambling. As soon as they did, they offered gambling there, which was illegal until 1931.

The Cal-Neva also burned down in a blaze thought to be arson, in mid-May 1937, just before the start of the summer tourist season (the enterprise typically was closed between September and June). It was rebuilt and quickly, however. If Graham/McKay had the fire set, why did they choose that time? It may have had something to do with the opening of the nearby Ta-Neva-Ho.

7) Ta-Neva-Ho (in Crystal Bay)

When John “Johnny” Rayburn opened the Ta-Neva-Ho,** the Cal-Neva Lodge fire had raged two weeks earlier. “The opportunity to own his own club and enter the Nevada gambling scene caused Rayburn to sell the Buckhorn [restaurant]” at North Lake Tahoe,” wrote Bethel Van Tassel in Wood Chips to Gambling Chips.

However, suddenly McKay’s people were running not just the gambling at the Ta-Neva-Ho but the entire place. McKay himself got a gambling license for the casino for 21, craps, roulette, panguingue, slots and a race book.

The Mobsters’ thinking behind taking over the Ta-Neva-Ho likely was that gambling revenue from it would make up for monies lost during the Cal-Neva Lodge rebuild.

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* On the former Country Club property today is the Classic Residence by Hyatt senior living community.
** Rayburn later renamed the Ta-Neva-Ho the Crystal Bay Club.

Sources

Gambling and cheating at gambling go together like, well, coins in a slot machine or cards in a shoe. Seemingly, they always will despite various efforts — violence, laws/rules, surveillance, firings, procedures, technology and more — to thwart chicanery.

“The casino gambling business is especially susceptible to fraudulent schemes,” wrote Jerome Skolnick in House of Cards.

An Incongruous Trend

During the 17 years between 1931 and 1948, only four convictions on cheating charges were reported in the newspapers in Northern Nevada, and two of them were connected in a single case involving one club. This is despite cheating, by both players and operators/dealers, reportedly being rampant.

What It Means

One of the takeaways from this datum is that no amount or type of deterrents will stop people entirely from trying to cheat. “Operating a cheating and thieving gambling game,”* a gross misdemeanor, continued despite a substantial maximum punishment for it: a year in county jail plus a $1,000 fine (equivalent to about $17,000 today).

Also, the low conviction number suggests that prosecuting gambling cheating cases rarely were successful. Oftentimes, initial charges got reduced or dropped. Reduced charges often bore “little resemblance to the cheating one” and may have culminated in “a plea of guilty to disturbing the peace,” a state gambling official later would tell the Nevada State Journal (Aug. 22, 1968).

Further, the statistic highlights the common trend of gaming house operators managing  swindlers themselves, in their own ways, with severe beatings, breaking of bones, even shootings. Of the four successfully tried cases in Washoe County, one incident was reported by a club owner and involved cheating the house. Another was reported by a customer, and the remaining set was discovered by Reno police deputies; those involved cheating the customers.

One reason for meting out “justice” in-house perhaps was the gaming club owners/operators not wanting to risk jeopardizing their gambling license. If a charge of cheating at their business was substantiated, they could have gotten their license revoked for a year and, consequently, been unable to legally offer any games of chance. Once the 12 months were over, they’d have to apply for a new license, with no guarantee of being granted one.

Cases In Point

Here are the four cheating cases that, atypically, were addressed in and resolved through the legal system. 

1) 1939: George “Shorty” M. King, 49, and 2) George “Shorty” L. Coppersmith, 53, gambling operators at The Dog House at 130 N. Center St. in Reno

The two Shorties had leased the gambling concessions at the Dog House for four years. Previously, they’d co-owned the Tavern and at different times from each other, had a percentage interest in the Capitol Bar.

On the night of July 4, 1939, after two Reno chief deputies witnessed both dealers manipulating the roulette wheel, they left, returned when the cabaret was less busy and raided it. They dissembled the wheel right then and there and called in an electrician. He “traced connections from electromagnets in the rim of the wheel to push buttons along the edge of the table and a series of dry batteries concealed in a large foot rail under the table,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (July 6, 1939).

One switch was hidden in the wooden backstop of the wheel’s large money drawer. To activate it, one simply pushed on the drawer. The other button was concealed under a faux screw head on an edge railing of the wheel’s table. Using those electric controls, the operators could make the steel-cored ball fall within certain groups of numbers on the wheel.

Further, the technician noted the batteries hidden in the metal rail had to have been put there within the previous two months because they had May 1940 on them and batteries generally were dated one year ahead.

King and Coppersmith were arrested and each assigned bail of $1,000 (about $18,000 today). The Dog House owners, Al Hoffman and Phil Curti, along with John Petricciani, then Reno’s Palace Club owner/operator, paid King’s bail in cash; Felix Turillas, then owner of Reno’s Silver Slipper and Northern Club, paid Coppersmith’s by check.

Why did Petricciani and Turillas chip in for the Shorties’ bail?

Ultimately, King and Coppersmith both were fined $1,000, but King also received a six-month jail sentence because he was listed on the gambling license as the wheel’s owner.

“The incident ended both men’s gaming careers in Nevada,” wrote author Dwayne Kling.

Hoffman and Curti claimed they hadn’t known a crooked wheel was being used in their club.

“The two men operated the crap table and the roulette wheel,” Hoffman said, referring to King and Coppersmith, “and the management got one-third of the profits. We didn’t have anything to do with installing the machine, or its operation” (Nevada State Journal, July 6, 1939).

Despite Hoffman’s denial, District Attorney Ernest Brown recommended that all gambling licenses pertaining to The Dog House be revoked, which required a unanimous vote by the county commissioners, but they didn’t pursue it.

3) 1943: Alfred Leo Rooney, 38, a 21 dealer at an unnamed club in Reno

The establishment’s owner reported to police that at his business, he’d caught Rooney, an employee, cheating while dealing 21. One of the game’s players was Rooney’s co-conspirator, who was interpreting the cards’ marks and winning … frequently. “The police allege that there was to have been a division of winnings between Rooney and the confederate,” the Reno Evening Gazette reported (Jan. 28, 1943). When police arrested Rooney, he claimed he was innocent.

Justice of the Peace Harry Dunseath held him over for trial and set his bail at $2,000 (about $30,000 today).

After deliberating less than an hour, the jury found Rooney guilty. Judge A.J. Maestretti sentenced him to six months in jail, no fine.

4) 1948: Clifford Sikes, 51, a 21 dealer at Dutch Garden** at 565 W. Moana Lane in Reno

Sikes had worked for 16 years as a dealer, at the Stag Inn, Cedars and Moana Springs Bar, before his stint at Dutch Garden.

On March 5, 1948, Sikes was dealing 21 to a table of men who all were friends, among them a Milton Brown. After Brown lost $25 (about $265 today) in about 15 minutes, another friend, Louis Ostanoski, who’d been watching the game, told Brown the cards were marked. To prove it, Ostanoski correctly guessed Brown’s cards without seeing them.

Sikes overheard the conversation and said he’d switch decks. He put the deck he’d been using in a drawer and started to unwrap a new one. Brown stepped around the table, retrieved the previous deck, fanned it out on the table and pointed to the marks — indentations in the corners of the eight cards. Sikes grabbed what cards he could and tore them up, but Brown pocketed the rest. Dutch Garden owner Fred Stengler offered to refund Brown the $25, but he declined.

Subsequently, Brown filed a complaint with the police and turned over to them, as evidence, the marked cards he’d retrieved. Sikes was charged with operating a crooked card game using a marked deck.

Sikes paid and was freed on $1,000 bail (about $11,000 today). On the stand at his trial, he denied knowingly having dealt marked cards. Sikes implied that the customers had marked the cards not him. He said he’d torn up the cards only because Brown had been mixing the old deck with the new. Stengler testified on his behalf.

Despite the defense put forward, the jury found Sikes guilty, in fewer than 15 minutes. Maestretti sentenced him to a $1,000 fine and six months’ jail time.

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* When The Silver State legalized wide-open gambling in 1931, it addressed cheating in that new law. It read, in part: “The use of marked cards, loaded dice, plugged or tampered-with machines or devices are expressly made unlawful.”

** The former Dutch Garden building today houses On Command 2, a pet boarding center, and previously was the Yen Ching Chinese restaurant site.

Sources

1935-1939

The reach of Reno, Nevada’s Mobsters into gambling during their heyday allegedly extended to a small Oregon hideaway for California’s rich and famous: Currier’s Village.

William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay are said to have operated the gaming at the secluded resort with “their friends from Los Angeles,” according to Al Moe in The Roots of Reno, perhaps mobsters there such as Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. (Despite trying, this writer couldn’t determine the specific games they ran there.)

In his 2017 article about Currier’s Village, writer Finn J.D. John wrote that, according to rumor, the resort’s developer and owner Roy G. Currier “had some connections in organized crime, which were helping him out with advice and maybe financial assistance with his gambling and fine-dining operations.”

Currier, however, didn’t need financial backing; he was a multi-millionaire, having made his fortune selling pills for various ailments under the Currier’s brand. He likely needed an experienced casino manager, gaming workers and perhaps an enforcer.

The extent of McKay and Graham’s involvement in the Lakeside, Ore. casino isn’t clear, but assuredly they were getting a portion, if not all, of the gaming-generated revenue there.

Any gambling that took place at Currier’s Village at the time was prohibited, as the only legal betting activity in The Beaver State then was parimutuel wagering on horse (legalized in 1931) and greyhound (1933) races.

“The casino action wasn’t very surreptitious at all. It didn’t have to be,” John wrote. “The whole place was on private property — Currier’s very own 160-acre townsite. No cops, no district attorneys, and of course no liquor-control agents were allowed in Currier’s Village.”

Various Attractions

Along with gambling, the summer resort offered fine dining (entrées included fillet mignon with mushroom sauce; roast young tom turkey, walnut dressing and cranberry sauce; and special cut New York sirloin steak), dancing and live entertainment (The Ink Spots, Sons of the Pioneers and more) in the 40-by-90 foot Pier Café situated at the end of the Tenmile Lake pier. Outdoor opportunities included fishing, horseback riding, swimming, boating and water skiing.

Currier’s Village drew the likes of Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Lily Pons, Charles Laughton, Sydney Greenstreet and Roy Rogers, who paid $250 a week (about $4,700 today) to stay there, in the 36 luxurious cabins, electrified and heated by steam from nearby hot springs, with garages and designated parking spaces.  

Possible End Of The Run

In 1939, Graham and McKay were convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to serve years in the U.S. Penitentiary Leavenworth. Coincidentally, that same year, Currier sold Currier’s Village to a San Diegan named Edward Jackson. That year most likely marked the end of the partnership among the three men related to gambling at Currier’s Village.

Sources

1967

The North Lake Tahoe gambling house had been running smoothly for eight months since Arthur “Art” L. Wood, developer of the Incline Village master-planned community, had assumed ownership of it earlier in the year. He’d acquired it along with the lakefront restaurant and bar components of The Sierra Tahoe in Nevada from then owner Calvin Kovens and afterward, renamed the gaming entity Incline Village Casino.

Caught In The Act

On a day in mid-October, employee Clayton P. Gatterdam was working there as a craps stickman, responsible for calling the dice rolls and moving the dice around the table. While a game was in progress, he pulled misspot dice — ones without certain numbers — a few times from a hidden pocket in his apron and swapped them for those in play to increase the player’s chance of winning. One of his dice, for instance, contained two ones, two fours and two fives.

Two members of the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), the investigative gambling regulatory arm that reports to the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC), witnessed Gatterdam cheating! At the time, the NGCB happened to have been conducting a random, clandestine, undercover check of the Incline Village Casino.

Gatterdam had arranged in advance with an acquaintance to collude in the swindling and split the winnings. The co-conspirator was to bet at Gatterdam’s craps table, and Gatterdam was to insert the misspot dice to facilitate one or more wins.

“[We was] going to try to put the dice in and take the place off, shoot the bankroll. We was going to try to beat the house,” Gatterdam said in his statement to Wood’s attorney. He also admitted to having been a “crossroader,”* or cheater, for the previous 20 years. (About 1.5 years later, Gatterdam again would be caught using misspot dice but in London, England.)

Protocol Followed

Consequently, the NGCB closed the Incline Village Casino — standard procedure — and filed a formal complaint against its operators, Wood, who owned 90 percent, and Benjamin “Benny” Lassoff, the bartender there who owned 10 percent. Neither of them had been on the premises when the trickery occurred.

The NGCB recommended the NGC revoke Wood and Lassoff’s gambling licenses. That’s just what it did; it pulled them for a year.

“These procedures were established for two purposes, to protect players against cheating and to protect the reputation of the state,” stated an editorial published in the Las Vegas Sun (Nov. 3, 1967). “Should it ever become established that the state allowed a cheating operation to continue one minute after irregularities are detected or even strongly suspicioned, the fat’s in the fire for sure and there’ll be a field day for the ever-ready critics of our major industry.”

Business Left Hanging

Wood pleaded with the NGC to let him keep his license, saying he’d do whatever it would take. No dice. 

“I think this thing was handled unfairly,” Wood said. “But [the NGC] is the boss” (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 5, 1967).

Unable to run the casino, Wood sought to lease or sell his majority interest in it and even unload the restaurant and bar components he owned as well, if necessary.

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*A crossroader is a casino cheater; the term, which originated in the Old West, denoted someone who practiced their trickery at saloons located at crossroads.

Sources

1851

Roving gambler William “Lucky Bill” B. Thorington’s stint in Hangtown (today Placerville, California) was brief because he literally thimblerigged a prominent local out of $1,500 to $2,000 (more than $39,000 to $52,000 today) and that angered the men in the camp.

Despite a potential lynch mob after him and his companion card sharp Sidney Charles, the duo managed to escape alive and unharmed then secreted themselves for a while in the woods.

A Carried Grudge

However, the story goes, when the two later came out of hiding and caught a stagecoach on the Sacramento road, a man already onboard recognized Thorington. While extracting a bowie knife from his person, that passenger threatened to cut out the gambler’s heart because he’d swindled a brother out of all of his money. He was referring to Lucky Bill’s trickery in Hangtown.

When Thorington went for his pistol, the vengeful passenger stopped him, saying they should take it outside, meaning off the coach.

The passenger threw his knife at Thorington while he was disembarking, the blade of which lodged between two of his ribs. While falling to the ground, Thorington fired a shot, hitting his foe in the shoulder.

“Both were taken to Sacramento where they received treatment and recovered,” Robert K. DeArment relayed in Knights of the Green Cloth.

Photo from Wikipedia

Late 1840s-1858

A list of Western United States’ gamblers would be incomplete without William “Lucky Bill” B. Thorington.* A thimblerig master, he plied his craft in the Western mining camps and towns from Sacramento to Ragtown, Hangtown to Salt Lake City, during the late 1840s and ’50s.

Thimblerig, also known as the shell game and three shells a pea, involves maneuvering a small ball of some kind, perhaps of wax or buckskin origin, underneath three cup-shaped receptacles, like thimbles or walnut shells, after which a player bets on which of the three cups the object is under.

Why So Fortunate

Thorington garnered the moniker “Lucky Bill” and became renowned as a gambler who won way more from thimblerig than he lost. That wasn’t due to honest play, though; the charismatic New Yorker was proficient at luring opponents and cheating them in this swindle of a game.

Wherever he went, there were potential victims, people who wanted to play against him, sure they could win and win a lot. And he would take advantage, conning them out of their money and valuables.

“There was always a crowd around him,” Robert K. DeArment wrote in Knights of the Green Cloth.

Thorington was so good at thimblerig, he earned about $24,000 (more than $600,000 today) in Sacramento in only two months’ time in the early 1850s.

How He Worked

The thimblerig ploy involved hiding the small ball in one’s palm before the cups were shuffled around. After the player chose a cup and it was shown it wasn’t the right one, the gambler deftly slipped the orb back under one of the unselected cups at the time of the reveal.

Two techniques existed for picking up and transferring, in Thorington’s case a cork pea, to one’s palm: using a finger or using a fingernail. Thorington relied on the latter and accordingly, always kept his nails long.

In perpetrating the con, he capitalized on his physicality and personality. He reportedly was imposing, about 6’1″ and 200 pounds, handsome, confident, likable and verbally gifted. With a baritone voice he’d entice would-be players this way:

“Here, gentlemen, is a nice, quiet little game conducted on the square, and especially recommended by the clergy for its honesty and wholesome tendencies. I win only from blind men; all that have two good eyes can win a fortune.

You see, gentlemen, here are three little wooden cups, and here is a little ball, which, for the sake of starting the game, I shall place under this one, as you can plainly see — thus and thus and thus. And now I will bet two, four or six ounces that no gentleman can, the first time trying, raise the cup that the ball is under; if he can, he can win all the money that Bill, by patient toil and industry, has scraped together.”

Man With A Conscience

Thorington often returned some of the loot he won off of his subjects, usually with the admonition to never bet against someone playing their own game. Perhaps his own losses, which could be sizable, most often from the hugely popular card game faro, of which he was an enthusiast, inspired his benevolence in this regard.

“Generosity to old friends and destitute travelers often distinguished Lucky Bill,” Sally Zanjani wrote in From Devils Will Reign.

For example, one night his thimblerigging earned him a traveler’s source of livelihood, four oxen. All the man had left was $60 (at least $1,500 today). For the cash, Thorington sold him back one yoke, returned the other one and erased the man’s gambling debt.

“His generosity and his seeming inability to lose in gambling or business were making Thorington into a character of Herculean stature,” wrote Michael J. Makley in The Hanging of Lucky Bill.

His Later Days

In 1852 or 1853, Thorington would make a permanent home in Genoa, Nevada, where his industriousness would involve owning two ranches, constructing a toll road, operating a trading post, building a hotel and occasionally running his thimblerig scam on people passing through.

Only a handful of years later, on June 23, 1858, vigilantes would cut his life short for his alleged part in a murder unrelated to gambling.

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* Nineteenth century author Bret Harte based his character Jack Hamlin, a gambler, on William B. Thorington. Hamlin appears in Harte’s short stories, including “The Convalescence of Jack Hamlin,” “A Protegee of Jack Hamlin’s” and “Mr. Jack Hamlin’s Mediation.” Harte is best known for his work depicting Western frontier life during the California Gold Rush.

Photo from Pond5.com: by Exopixel

Sources

1969

For a week in May, the leader of a group of U.S.-based gamblers rented the Villa Casino, which overlooked Hyde Park in West London, along with two craps tables, the latter for $2,500 (about $17,000 today) and 10 percent of the profits.

They offered a gambling trip to England for $960 ($6,500 today) for roundtrip air fare, a week’s hotel accommodations and $960 worth of chips. Such packages, or junkets, to that country had been popular. Travelers paid one amount for airfare, meals and lodging but individually covered all wagers beyond the allotted amount.

The gambling syndicate’s guests, 40 American high rollers, mostly from the Boston, Massachusetts area, flew into town by charter on Monday, May 12.

Suspicious Activity

During the many games of craps the vacationers played, the croupiers, at crucial points, swapped the dice for misspot ones, in this case dice with two sides bearing the same number of spots. One of these dice men was Clayton P. Gatterdam, a 48-year-old ski school proprietor from Fort Worth, Texas. Gatterdam* was a reputed crossroader, a hustler who traveled around, cheating others at gambling for money.

By using crooked dice at the Villa Casino, the operators fleeced the players out of about $26,400 ($181,000 today) over three days! 

Caught Bang To Rights

On Thursday at around 1 a.m., police burst into the pink, cottage-style building and arrested seven of the hosts. They were charged with involvement in the management and organization of unlawful gaming and conspiring to cheat and defraud. Gatterdam was charged also with possession of seven pairs of misspot dice. (Gambling was legal in England at the time, but cheating by those who ran it wasn’t.)

Undercover police agent and gambling expert, Detective Constable Brian Gillard, 26, had infiltrated the Villa Casino crowd and had watched the games for days before requesting the raid. It’s unknown how initially he’d become aware of the shady goings on.

Intended To Swindle

In a preliminary hearing the following Wednesday, the seven arrestees pleaded innocent. The magistrate agreed to bail of 15,000 pounds, or $36,000 ($247,000), apiece provided they give their passports to police and check in with them daily.

“The bail is the highest set in London for some time,” reported the Orlando Sentinel (May 16, 1969).

At their trial in mid-July at Old Bailey, officially called the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, all of the defendants pleaded guilty. They admitted to having conspired between April 1 and May 15 to obtain property belonging to others dishonestly through deception with dice in craps games. They also admitted to being involved in conducting games in such a way that the odds weren’t favorable to all players equally.

Gatterdam was sentenced to three months in prison. The six others were fined $4,800, $6,000 or $7,200 ($33,000, $41,000 or $49,000), for a total of $33,600 ($230,000). All were discharged on the condition they don’t cheat at gambling again in England in the subsequent two years.

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* About 1.5 years earlier, in October 1967, Nevada Gaming Control Board agents caught Gatterdam using misspot dice in craps games while working as a stickman at the Incline Village Casino at Lake Tahoe.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons