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

1934

A man named Hans Brucksmer played about $15 worth of nickels (about $300 today) in a slot machine at a place of business in Seattle, Washington and got only four coins back. He lifted the machine and took it to the local police station.

There, holding the device under one arm, he filled out a complaint form, claiming the machine had cheated him! (It’s unknown what he thought the machine’s purpose was.) Of course, no recourse was given to Brucksmer as his claim was meritless.

What did happen, though, was the police arrested and jailed the owner of the establishment for possessing illegal gambling paraphernalia.

Source: Reno Evening Gazette (Nev.), “Loses Nickels So He Complains Against Machine,” April 6, 1934.

1951

Gambling is the lifeblood of organized crime.

This was U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver’s conclusion after the Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, which he headed, concluded its investigation.

The Kefauver Committee’s work, in part, involved conducting hearings in 14 U.S. cities, during which they grilled (sometimes, unsuccessfully) about 600 witnesses, including big-time Mobsters, some of their associates and officials knowledgeable about Mob activity. The 15-month query shone a spotlight on gambling taking place at the time and for years before, most of it illegal, prohibited by law in most states.

The hearings were televised, and Americans tuned in, rapt. The broadcasts opened their eyes to the who, what,  where, when and how of gambling and other organized crime happening all around them. By March 1951, 72 percent of U.S. residents were familiar with the Kefauver committee and what it was doing.

Crackdown On Some Gamblers

As a result of the Senate committee’s findings, Kefauver recommended the federal government impose a 10 percent tax on all gambling. At the same time, U.S. residents, facing a likely federal personal income tax increase, expressed dissatisfaction at gambling operators (gamblers) paying little or no taxes on the loads of cash they made.

These two factors in large part pressured Congress to act, and it did in 1951 but not to the extent Kefauver had suggested. It imposed two taxes* on a subset of gamblers, individuals who received bets from people — bookmakers, numbers writers, and punch board and lottery operators.

The goal was to force these people to pay heavy taxes or go out of business, and in doing so, shrink the  gambling industry nationwide and generate a good chunk of revenue for the U.S.

Trio Of Mandates

One of the new federal levies, called the tax on wagers, was 10 percent of all gross receipts.

The other was an occupational tax, often referred to as the gambling stamp tax. It required wager takers to buy a special tax stamp every year by December 1 and display it in their place of business or, for those without such a location, on their person. The stamp cost $50 (about $525 today).

Anyone required to pay the special tax also had to register with the local Internal Revenue Bureau (IRB) collector and provide their name, home and business addresses and the name and home address of their partners, employees and clients. Once the bureau received the information, it provided a copy to local law enforcement officials and maintained its own public list of all gambling stamp purchasers.

These wagering-related taxes went into effect on November 1, 1951.

Failure To Comply

The penalty for not purchasing the $50 tax stamp was a fine of at least $1,000 ($10,300 today) but not higher than $5,000 ($51,500 today).

Gamblers who had a stamp but didn’t display it were fined, $50 for those who’d forgotten to do so and $100 for those who outright refused to do so.

Providing false information on the relevant forms was punishable by up to $10,000 in fines and five years of imprisonment.

Regarding the 10 percent tax on wagers, IRB Commissioner John B. Dunlap told the United Press that “cases of willful evasion or attempt to defeat the tax will be promptly referred to the department of justice with recommendation for criminal prosecution” (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 5, 1951).

Early Stamp Numbers

By the first deadline, December 1, 1951, a total of 7,706 gamblers had applied for the federal gambling tax stamp. The state of Washington submitted the most applications, at 1,412. Next was Montana, with 902. Nevada, where gambling was legal and wide open, accounted for only 33 applications.

It wasn’t long before problems with these latest federal taxes arose.

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Look for Part II next week.

* Congress enacted the two taxes on wage takers through the Revenue Act of 1951, which also temporarily raised federal individual income and federal corporate taxes.

Sources

Panguingue, or pan for short, is a rummy-type gambling card game. In fact, it descends directly from conquian, the patriarch of all rummy games. Pan calls for six, seven or eight players ideally but any number may play. Chips are used for wagering and scorekeeping.

Southeast Asia Origin

Panguingue is thought to have originated among the Tagalogs, natives of the island of Luzon in the Philippines, during the country’s Spanish period, between 1565 and 1898.

“Panguingue,” pronounced “pan-ginn’-gay,” is the English language version of the original Tagalog word, “pangginggi” or “pangguinggui.”

Pops Up In The U.S.

Pan was staple of the gambling halls during the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s and made its way to Nevada, Arizona, Washington and other western states.

The game often was played to pass the time, in bordellos, for example, by ladies of the evening while waiting for customers, and in gambling and pool halls, by laborers away from home.

It reportedly was in those prostitution houses that a unique, sexually suggestive lingo for pan developed. For example, “getting down” refers to placing a bet. The “tops” are the penalty chips players pay for opting not to play a round; the tops go to the round winner. “Being peckered,” is when a player, during a round, can’t make a play called a wagon (two of three cards in a spade valle card meld — see below for explanation) with a matching spade.

In Nevada, panguingue occasionally was found in the casinos throughout much of the 20th century, according to David Schwartz, author of Roll The Bones. In California, the Anti-Gambling Act passed in 1860 outlawed all games of chance in which bets are placed against a house, bank or dealer. Thus, panguingue was and, since, has been allowed.

Generally, though, pan didn’t catch on in the States to the same extent of its cohorts — faro, poker and blackjack/21. That may have been because some games of chance players found it boring.

“Panguingue, to some persons, is a dull and deadly game. Many do not see anything to get excited about, at least from a gambling angle,” The Spokesman-Review noted (Feb. 1, 1935).

Part Of American Culture

The game is said to have been first recorded as part of American lexicon in 1905, in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Another early reference, according to a Miami Herald columnist (Aug. 19, 1945), was in the 1910 book published in Manila, When the Krag is Laid Away, by Chancey McGovern. The passage read: “… when the mujer of the house was too busily preoccupied with the intricacies of panguingue [sic]. (The Filipina woman’s national game. As much as ten cents is lost by some unfortunate housewife in a single afternoon’s playing.)”

Card Deck Variations

For pan games in the Philippines, players used 8 Spanish, 40-card decks, each comprising four suits of these ranks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Jack, Cavalier and King.

Typically in the U.S., the same number of 52-card decks were used but the 8s, 9s and 10s were removed so they included only and all ranks equivalent to those in a Spanish deck.

The number of decks used, however, could vary, often by locale. In the state of Washington, for instance, 10 was the norm.

Sometimes, players removed additional suits from the decks to change the odds. Along with the 8s, 9s and 10s, they may have excluded one suit of spades, one suit of spades and the 3s, 5s and 7s, etc. Historically, throughout California, for example, eliminating two suits of spades from each deck was common.

The Game Rules

Each player antes up 1 chip.

Rotating to the right (versus the more common left), each player is dealt 10 cards, 5 at a time. The remaining cards are placed face down, forming the draw pile. The top card is flipped over, face up, next to the draw pile, to start the discard pile.

Next, every player, again to the right, decides to stand (play) or drop (fold). The droppers forfeit their ante, pay the tops and place their cards at the bottom of the draw pile.

The game objective is to create melds with one’s cards. The first player to meld 11 cards wins the round.

Possible melds are a) 3 cards of the same rank in the same suit; b) 3 cards of the same rank in different suits; and c) 3 consecutive cards in the same suit. With rank melds, aces and kings are the exception; any 3 form a meld.

A winning pan hand

To play, each player draws 1 card, either from the top of the draw pile or the top of the discard pile. With a card from the draw pile, the player must immediately incorporate it into a meld and place the meld face up on the table (an open meld). If he can’t do so, he must place the card face up on the discard pile.

If the player chooses a card from the discard pile, it must be added to an open meld. Otherwise, it must be discarded.  

Caveats: If the card discarded by the previous player is one that fits an open meld of the in-turn player, the in-turn player must draw and use that card.

On every turn, players must discard a card so they always have exactly 10 cards in hand, except on a winning turn when they must have 11.

When a player wins a round, he/she collects the tops, the pot and chips from every other active player according to these conditions:

• For melds of valle, or value, cards (3s, 5s and 7s) in different suits: 1 chip
• For meld of valle cards in the same suit: 4 chips for spades, 2 for others
• For melds of non-valle cards in the same suit: 2 chips for spades, 1 for others
• For melds of 3-2-Ace or King-Queen-Jack: 2 chips for spades, 1 for others

For more comprehensive coverage of the game rules, refer to The Great Panguingue Blog, Hoyle’s Rules of Games or, if available, Peter Burke’s How to Play Pan (Panguingui), the World’s Most Fascinating Card Game (1941).

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Have you ever played pan? What do you think of it?

Sources

“Pigeon Jailed for Gambling”

Two New York Police Department plainclothesmen arrested a pigeon that then was forced to spend the night in the Bronx police station. Five other such birds, on the lam, were wanted. Two men also were apprehended.

The capture went down on the roof of a tenement house. When officers approached the human suspects, they noticed one of them was holding a closed paper bag. They instructed him to open it, and when he did, two pigeons flew out. Each policeman went for a bird. One pigeon was caught, and the other got away.

All three suspects, Homo sapiens and Columba livia domestica, were believed to be policy runners. Policy, also called numbers, was an illegal type of gambling then, popular in poor and working class U.S. neighborhoods, in which bettors guessed the numbers that would be drawn randomly at a future time and wagered on their choices. Runners carried the gambling slips and money between the various betting spots and headquarters.

The human runners used the fowl to transport the tickets, secured by a band around their leg, from several outposts to a clearinghouse. The pigeons delivered them to that building’s roof, of course.

“Parking Meter Puzzle to RAF—No Jackpot”
Florida, Dec. 16, 1941

The chief of the Fort Myers Police Department spotted several cadets of the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force taking turns inserting nickels and pennies into numerous parking meters lining Broadway Street.

“You’re wasting your time, boys,” he said to them. “You only get credit for one hour at a time.” He explained how the meters worked and their purpose.

One of the British servicemen said, “We wondered why it didn’t pay off. We thought it was an American gambling device.”

“Swallows Dice, Jailed”
Washington, July 23, 1934

When police raided an illegal gambling den in Kingston, one of the players present swallowed the dice. In court after his arrest, the judge gave him 30 days to “digest” and produce the dotted cubes.

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Sources

1934

When police raided an illegal gambling den in Kingston, Washington, one of the players present, Raymond Johnson, swallowed the dice. In court after his arrest, the judge gave him 30 days to “digest” and produce the dotted cubes.

Unfortunately, it’s unknown how everything turned out in this case.

Photo from freeimages.com: by Katinka Kober