1940

“Apparently unaware that gold has been forbidden as a medium of exchange, a tall, dark complexioned cowpuncher walked into a [Reno, Nevada] gambling club last night and startled the dealer by casually dropping a handful of gold coins on the 21 table,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (May 18, 1940).

At that time, personal ownership of gold coins and bullion had been illegal for seven years. It was punishable with a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a fine of double the amount of the value of the gold retained.

Photo from Pond5.com: by Fireflyphoto

1958-1959

(Part I ran last week.)

The Nevada Tax Commission withdrew the gambling license of the New Star casino’s operators — Brent Mackie and Kenneth Henton — in July 1958 after investigators allegedly witnessed 21 dealers cheating customers in eight different ways at the Winnemucca casino.

Later that month, defense attorney Thomas Foley of Las Vegas, petitioned the district court to review the tax commission’s license revocation order on the grounds that it was “capricious and arbitrary” (Reno Evening Gazette, July 29, 1958). District Judge Merwyn H. Brown ordered the agency to defend its action.

Bias Alleged

However, Brown was automatically disqualified from hearing the case. This was due to Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) member, William Sinnott, alleging via an affidavit that Brown, also of Winnemucca, possibly was biased against the tax commission as he’d ruled on the side of the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas when its gambling license was in contention. 

The commission also was concerned Brown had become too close to Mackie and Henton when they’d owned the Mint Club casino in town previously.

“I’ve been booted off the case for an asinine reason,” Brown said (Reno Evening Gazette, July 30, 1958). “Frank Petersen [NGCB’s counsel] called and said he felt I was disqualified because a lady who has been my neighbor for 30 years owns a half interest in the building in which the New Star casino is located. I told Petersen that if that reason is valid, I can’t sit on any case because I have had friends here for 50 years.”

Legal Sparring Ensues

In August, District Judge John F. Sexton of Battle Mountain, Brown’s replacement, stated the license revocation was too strict, and as such, he lessened the penalty to closure of only the 21 game for 60 days and covering of the dice table for 30 days with time served taken into account. Mackie and Henton still could operate the slot machines.

Petersen, attorney for the gaming regulators, called the alteration “improper and prejudicial,” pointing out that Sexton must have determined cheating had taken place or he would’ve reversed the revocation (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 11, 1958).

“Sexton’s modification decision was another milestone in the evolution of Nevada’s thorny problem in policing the state’s multimillion-dollar legalized gambling industry,” noted the Nevada State Journal (Aug. 9, 1958).

Petersen appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court. In mid-August, that court sided with the tax commission, granted its motion to stay Sexton’s order, or in other words, reinstated the license revocation and casino closure.

One Last Tack

Mackie and Henton, however, continued to fight. Foley asked the high court to dismiss the tax commission’s appeal of the district court decision that eased the revocation order and, instead, to allow a motion for re-hearing of the testimony in the lower court.

That effort, too, was unsuccessful as the Nevada Supreme Court in September said it, not the district courts, was the final arbiter on appeals concerning state gambling regulation orders.

Foley again appealed to the higher court, the second time asking the revocation be overturned because evidence had been lacking and insufficient for the penalty to be imposed initially.

In court in December, the justices asked Petersen how the tax commission could function in a judicial capacity when there was a dispute over which witness to believe and the commission itself had not observed the witnesses. (Before 1955, the tax commission directly heard all hearing testimony but that duty was transferred to the NGCB when the legislature created the entity that year).

Petersen replied that the commission has the record of the gaming board hearing and determines the weight and credibility to be accorded to the various accounts.

Out Of Gas

In January 1959, the Nevada Supreme Court found that Sexton’s order to reduce the penalty was administrative rather than judicial. It also determined a reasonable cause for the revocation had existed. The final ruling was that Mackie and Henton’s gambling license for New Star would remain cancelled for the requisite year, and it was.

Gambling At New Star Revived

That didn’t mean a different party couldn’t obtain a license and run the gambling at New Star. In fact, that’s what happened.

In February, the tax commission granted a gambling license to Sumner and Doris Kirkby to operate 20 slot machines at the club. The next month, it approved Roland I. Benum of Las Vegas to run blackjack and dice games there, too, with a $25 table limit, a restriction that in July was removed.

In December 1960, Harold Larraguetta invested $40,729 in and assumed control of the entire casino operation, which he ran for four years.

Sources

Photo from freeimages.com: by Steve Roberts

New Star (restaurant, casino, bar), Winnemucca, Nevada, 1960s

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 the request of Robbins Cahill, head of the Nevada Tax Commission, the state’s gambling regulatory agency at the time.

MacDougall spotted dealers cheating during games of 21 (blackjack) on two different days at the Winnemucca gambling house. In May, Fred Galster, an agent for the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), which investigated all cheating complaints, played the game at New Star for hours, and he, too, noticed the same deceitful activity.  

Array Of Infractions

The two witnesses observed the dealers employing the following cheating methods

• dealing seconds = dealing the second card in the deck

• turning the deck = turning a card over and dealing from the deck bottom

• one hand bottom = taking a card from the deck bottom to give the dealer 21

• copping the cut = picking up the cards in the same way they’re cut

• hi-low stack = picking up discards in such an order that the dealer gets two high cards and the player gets one high and one low card

• dealer’s stack = picking up discards in such an order that the dealer gets 21

• bubble peeking = bending the top card slightly to glance at it

• bridge = bending a card so players unconsciously cut at that card

• false shuffle = passing cards through a shuffle without rearranging their position

During the 1950s, Nevada gaming authorities cracked down on cheaters, typically revoking the gambling licenses of the casino operators, thereby closing their establishments for a year.

This was to portray to outsiders, federal lawmakers in particular, that the industry in The Silver State was honest and clean. One might argue they were extra vigilant during 1958 because Robert F. Kennedy was working diligently and blatantly to eradicate racketeering throughout the U.S., and gaming was an obvious place to root out such underworld activity.

Defense Offered

The NGCB ordered New Star casino’s operators — Brent Mackie and Kenneth Henton — to appear at a hearing to show cause why their gambling license should be maintained.

At the proceeding — during which MacDougall, Galster and numerous other people testified — New Star’s defense attorney, Thomas Foley of Las Vegas, denied his clients were guilty and asserted the NGCB had failed to prove the cheating charges. The primary defense was that MacDougall’s findings weren’t credible and, therefore, he wasn’t either. Foley argued MacDougall  had:

• Identified one of the allegedly cheating dealers by physical description but that man hadn’t worked then

• Testified that a certain allegedly cheating dealer was right-handed when in fact the dealer at the time was left-handed

Despite the discrepancies, though, the tax commission pulled Mackie and Henton’s gambling license in July, closing New Star’s casino.

But this isn’t the story’s end. Check back next Wednesday for the finale.

Sources

1936

An $11,800 gambling win (about $205,000 today) was the largest ever in Las Vegas to that point. The payout went to a man named A. “Blacksmith” Sweitzer after playing 21 (blackjack) for two hours, starting with a $5 wager.

“He ran a series of five phenomenal blackjack hands, in which he showed two ‘blackjacks’ — an ace and a face card — and drew ‘21’ to two ‘11-splits,’” the Nevada State Journal reported. “He bet $250 on each hand.”

Photo from freeimages.com: “Blackjack2” by Tracy Scott-Murray

1953-1955

In fall 1953, John “Fat Jack” Galloway was playing the card game, 21, at Leo Quilici’s hotel-casino, the El Rancho Hotel, in Wells, Nevada.

Fat Jack himself, in his early 40s, was the operator of a gambling saloon located 8 miles west of Fallon. Beforehand, he’d been employed as a dealer at Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas clubs and had served prison time on bunco and vagrancy charges in the early 1940s in California.

Leo’s son, Joe Quilici, 27, the El Rancho’s manager and a city councilman, was dealing to Fat Jack. Thinking Fat Jack was a tourist, Joe cheated him out of about $4,200 ($37,000 today); Joe’d often peek at the top card in the deck and deal the second card rather than the first.

After Fat Jack left the casino, another El Rancho dealer told Joe that Fat Jack was an undercover agent for the tax commission. Joe ran across the street to the Bulls Head Bar, and told his father, the proprietor, he’d been caught cheating. (Joe had been discovered dealing dishonestly previously, and his gambling license had been suspended but then reinstated. The same had happened to Leo for having cheated customers with a plugged slot machine that couldn’t pay out jackpots.)

The day after Fat Jack and Joe’s gaming encounter, Dudley Kline, 61, allegedly paid Leo a visit at his saloon. Dudley was second in charge of the Nevada Tax Commission’s gambling division that, since 1948, had been tasked with keeping games of chance in the state honest. Dudley told Leo that Joe had swindled a tax commission agent and that he, Dudley, might be able to help. Then he left.

Fat Jack then paid a visit to Leo several hours later. After deceptively introducing himself as a tax commission agent, Fat Jack reiterated that the problem of Joe cheating him could go away for $3,000 ($27,000 today), an amount he said he had to split with another person, presumably Dudley. Leo paid him the full amount.

In February 1954, after an investigation in which the Quilicis were the only witnesses, Dudley and Fat Jack were arrested. They were bound over for trial and released on $5,000 bond each.

Elko County District Attorney Grant W. Sawyer, who’d learned of the incident from an anonymous tipster, asserted that Dudley was an accessory before the fact to extortion but charged him as a principal because he supposedly “set the stage” for Fat Jack telling Leo that he, Fat Jack, was a commission member (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 11, 1954). Sawyer similarly charged Fat Jack.

Despite Dudley denying knowledge of any blackmail attempt, Robbins Cahill, the tax commission’s secretary, fired him. 

“The circumstances of this case dictate that we continue to dig. We are going to turn over every spade full around and weigh it carefully,” Cahill said (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 11, 1954).

Without a choice, Leo Quilici closed down the gambling at his two properties — standard procedure when cheating has been discovered.

Pursuit Of (In)justice

Sawyer’s charges against Dudley were dismissed twice. Two different judges, first in district then in justice court, granted Dudley a permanent writ of habeas corpus based on insufficient evidence to warrant holding him for trial.

In a third attempt to convict Dudley, Sawyer, in early 1955, filed an appeal with Nevada’s Supreme Court, challenging the writ.

“I have searched my conscience and I honestly believe there is evidence to hold [Dudley] Kline for trial,” he said, denying he was attempting to persecute him (Reno Evening Gazette, Aug. 13, 1954).

At that point, Fat Jack was awaiting trial pending the outcome of Sawyer’s appeal on Dudley’s case. He closed his gaming operation.

The higher court upheld the original writ, saying “there was no error in the conclusion of the district court that Kline had been held to answer without reasonable or probable cause or in the order discharging him from custody by reason thereof” (Nevada State Journal, April 14, 1955). This ended the legal ordeal for Dudley. Despite the outcome, though, he wasn’t reinstated on the tax commission.

Within the week, Sawyer dismissed the extortion charges against Fat Jack, believing the state wouldn’t be able to adequately prove a guilty verdict.

Was Dudley guilty or, perhaps, framed by Fat Jack and the Quilicis?

Sources

August 5, 1943 Help Wanted ad

1937-1970

Card dealing was a male-dominated profession in Nevada’s casinos until 1937, when Harolds Club, in Reno, put the first woman at a 21 table to deal.

Co-owner Harold Smith previously had been hiring women, mostly family members, for other jobs on the gambling club floor — chip stacking and roulette wheel spinning, for instance — but never dealing.

Smith’s concern had been that women would be too-easy targets for cheaters and, consequently, the casino would get fleeced. (A total of up to 10,000 silver dollars sat on the various tables during a typical night.)

Smith, though, soon realized women could hold their own, and both genders enjoyed gambling with a “pretty, smiling dealer” (Lima News, Aug. 4, 1943).

With World War II and the resulting shortage of men to employ, women filled the gap at Harolds Club. By that time, 90 percent of the employees there were female. Smith launched a school to train women to become professional dealers. They learned how to deal cards, spin wheels, rake in chips, compute payoffs and watch for cheaters’ tricks, among other skills.

Smith advertised in local newspapers’ Help Wanted sections for recruits in ads indicating, “Men Please Do Not Apply” (Nevada State Journal, Aug. 4, 1943). The pay was $25 per week while attending his school, then up to $60 per week when hired. Students ran the gamut, and included housewives, divorcées (women living in Nevada the requisite six weeks to get an expedited divorce), telephone operators, school teachers, sales clerks, stenographers and newspaper reporters.

By 1943, casinos throughout Northern Nevada were hiring graduates of Smith’s school.

Slow To Change

It was the opposite in Las Vegas. Although women worked as dealers in nearby towns such as Henderson and North Las Vegas, none did on the Strip or in downtown Sin City until 1970, nearly three decades later.

That year, the Silver Slipper, a Howard Hughes-owned casino, hired the first — 47-year-old Jean Brady, who had years of experience from dealing at other Silver State gambling houses.

Sources

1935

Although it was a Ponzi scheme, its lure of big money was too strong for many Renoites to resist. One chain letter business, the Opportunity Club, popped up overnight as part of the nationwide craze in 1935. In five days, it garnered more than 5,000 participants (about one-quarter of Reno, Nevada’s population then).

“The business has been well organized and every section of the town has been invaded with ‘investors’ seeking to attract their friends into a ‘sure thing,’” reported the Nevada State Journal (May 15, 1935).

How did it work? A customer bought two copies of a letter from a broker for $5 (an $86 value today). He then sold them to two people who signed for and received two more letters from the broker. Each of those two sold their letters to two other individuals and so on. Each letter contained six names. The payout for the top name getting 64 people to buy each of his two letters was $256 ($4,400 today). That amount was $320 minus the per-letter 20 percent broker fee of $32. One name moving to the top of a letter would put $12,288 in the company’s coffers.

While it sounded enticing for the public, it wasn’t. The deal depended on an individual getting 128 (64 per letter) people to pay the $5 apiece at the broker’s office. That would move him up one spot on each letter. The payout also required 128 people for each of the other five names on the letter, or 640 individuals, also paid $5 apiece in person Further, an individual couldn’t get the reward until he advanced to the top of two letters.

The Weak Link

When District Attorney Ernest Brown learned of the racket, he demanded the Opportunity Club cease operations immediately and threatened its manager, Ralph C. Perrin, and other principals with prosecution if they didn’t comply. Brown declared such a business fraudulent because it involved an element of chance and, therefore, violated Nevada’s anti-lottery law, in which it defined:

“A lottery is any scheme for the disposal or distribution of property, by chance, among persons who have paid or promised to pay any valuable consideration for the chance of obtaining such property, or a portion of it, or for any share or any interest in such property upon any agreement, understanding, or expectation that it is to be distributed or disposed of by lot or chance, whether called a lottery, raffle or gift enterprise, or by whatever name may be known.”

The following morning, Perrin applied for a gambling license. That night, the sheriff noted a sign on the club’s door, “Operating with Permission of the Sheriff” — a false statement. On the D.A.’s orders, the sheriff closed the club and arrested Perrin and three others. All were arraigned and released on their own recognizance pending an upcoming jury trial.

A second chain letter brokerage — the Golden Chain Letter Club — was about to open but given the heat on Opportunity never did.

Perrin asserted the chain letter business:

• Wasn’t a lottery as chance didn’t play a role
• Didn’t have the chance of any investor losing (ha!)
• Didn’t involve a drawing

If the business were a lottery, they argued, then so were other types of currently licensed games, such as roulette, keno, 21, horse racing, etc.

They gathered petition signatures of people who believed similarly. Perrin claimed to have received 1,500 signatures from less than one day’s effort. In the meantime, many who’d bought letters asked the D.A.’s office what would happen. Would officials ensure the investors got what the broker promised them? Would they lose their money? At that point, it totaled about $25,000, which Perrin said was being held for investors in a trust.

Taken To A Jury

Five days after Brown ordered the club closed and with chain letter activities finally halted, the Opportunity Club trial began. Two days in, Justice of the Peace James Sullivan declared Brown’s complaint against the defendants defective, thus ending the case. Brown said he’d issue a new complaint against the men only if they restarted the business. Opportunity’s lawyer said the men intended to operate if the city granted them a gambling license — a long shot.

Three days later, the city council, also believing the chain letter gig was a lottery, denied Perrin a gambling license. He then tried to obtain one from the neighboring city and his hometown, Sparks. It, too, for the same reason, refused to grant it. That was the final break in Northern Nevada’s chain of chain letter enterprises. It’s unknown what happened to the money investors already had paid to Opportunity.

Photo from pond5.com: “JOIN Chain Links” by 5@iqoncep

Sources

Gwyndolyn Conger Steinbeck

1948-1950

Tragedy struck when the wife of famed American novelist, John Steinbeck, was in Reno, Nevada for a quickie divorce from him after 5½ years of marriage.

In 1948, while establishing residency in The Biggest Little City, Gwyndolyn “Gwyn” Conger Steinbeck developed a relationship with Leonard Wolff, a wealthy, former U.S. Army Air Forces bombardier during World War II. The 28-year-old man worked at a local hotel, had a son around a year old who lived with his estranged wife and his family owned a department store in his hometown of Denver, Colorado.

On a Friday night in October, a month after Wolff was granted a divorce decree on the grounds of desertion and mental cruelty, he and Steinbeck went to a late dinner with Wolff’s parents at the Mapes hotel-casino. Just after midnight, the younger Wolff and Steinbeck left the elder Wolffs and visited with acquaintances in the casino. At 3:30 a.m., the two stopped for a drink at the West Indies club, south of town.

While there, Steinbeck entertained herself at the slots, and, for hours, Wolff played 21. He ramped up his betting to $100 a hand and for all seats at the table. At one point, he asked for a new dealer, and Newell Benningfield, the owner, took over.

Steinbeck grew tired, laid down in Wolff’s 1946 Ford sedan outside and “blacked out,” she later said (Oakland Tribune, Oct. 27, 1948). Wolff ultimately lost $86,000 (an $851,000 value today) and wrote three checks — one for $7,000, one for $29,000 and one for $50,000 — to cover the loss.

“I hope these checks are good,” Benningfield told Wolff. The debtor said the smaller one could be cashed immediately but not the others as he first had to arrange his finances to cover them.

At about 10 a.m. on Saturday, Wolff dropped Steinbeck off at the ranch where she was residing. Also that morning, Benningfield tried to cash the $7,000 check, but the bank refused because Wolff’s signature on it lacked the middle initial he’d always included.

The Unthinkable Occurs

Within 45 minutes of Wolff dropping off Steinbeck, passersby spotted his car wrecked, all of its tires flat, in the rocks about 200 feet off to the side of Mt. Rose Highway, south of Reno. They stopped to help, but Wolff waved them off.

Soon after, another driver pulled over and discovered Wolff inside the car, dead, with a bullet hole in his temple and a 0.38-caliber pistol at the scene.

Sheriffs ruled the incident a suicide, speculating that the recent divorcé first had tried to kill himself by running off the road and when that failed, had shot himself. He hadn’t been drunk or drugged, blood tests later revealed.

The coroner, Laurance Layman, agreed with law enforcement officers that criminal involvement hadn’t been a factor and further opined: “I don’t think the gambling had anything to do with Wolff’s death,” (Nevada State Journal, Oct. 29, 1948).

Wolff’s family, however, initially suspected foul play but, later, according to Layman, accepted that the fatal injury had been self-inflicted.

Early on, authorities questioned Mrs. Steinbeck and concluded she didn’t know anything about Saturday morning’s events. Seven days after Wolff’s demise, she got her divorce on the grounds of extreme mental cruelty, along with custody of her and John’s two children, ages 2 and 4.

Within the week, the coroner’s jury determined Wolff had died of a gunshot wound to the head, but didn’t specify how it’d happened.

Benningfield Wants His Money

Wolff’s estate was valued at about $34,000 ($337,000 value today). In February 1949, Benningfield filed a claim for $86,000 against it, which its executor, First National Bank, rejected.

In response, the West Indies owner sued in district court but, again, was denied the money because gambling debts weren’t collectable through legal action in Nevada. He appealed in May to the Nevada Supreme Court, which heard the case later that year.

In early 1950, the higher court concurred with its lower counterpart, which meant it was definite: Benningfield couldn’t recoup the $86,000.

Sources

Photo: by Luigi Corbellini

1961

It was hot inside and outside Harolds Club in Reno, Nevada on a Wednesday afternoon in the early summer of 1961.

Indoors, people gathered around to watch high-roller Lonnie Joe Chadwick on a winning streak. In his two-day spree playing 21, he already had cashed in about $30,000 to $50,000 ($239,000 to $398,000 today) and still had numerous $100 chips in front of him. He continued to bet the $500 limit at each of the gaming table’s seven spots.

Suddenly, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents appeared, interrupted Chadwick’s gambling rush and confiscated his more than $18,000 in chips!

Previously, they’d informed him that the federal government had “closed out his taxable year as of that time and the chips on the table were under levy for payment of taxes for the period” (Nevada State Journal, June 10, 1961) and had given him three-and-a-half months to file a return — which he hadn’t done.

“I’ll sue,” Chadwick said.

Although unusual, IRS representatives had made this move in the past in a Las Vegas casino, which was legal. A federal law allowed the Treasury department to declare the end to a person’s tax year when it appears they may not pay their income taxes otherwise. The agency rarely invoked the law and only in special cases. It’s unclear why it had done so with Chadwick; the law banned agents from disclosing reasons to the public. The IRS, however, had notified Chadwick beforehand of the assessment against him.

Business Repercussions?

The incident sparked some casino owners to wonder:

• Can the IRS truly legally take such action?

• Do we have to honor the chips the IRS seizes?

• Could this IRS practice negatively affect my business?

• Will the high rollers gamble underground as a result?

• Will it reduce the amount in gambling taxes going to the city, state and federal governments?

“We want to allay any fears of the clubs that this is any sort of harassment,” said Dalmon Davis, the IRS director for Nevada (Nevada State Journal, June 10, 1961). “This is an isolated incident, but there is no assurance it will not occur again if the situation warrants.”

The IRS gave Chadwick another three months to file a return, which he did only minutes before the deadline.

Sources

Illustration from pond5.com: “Uncle Sam and the USA Flag” by Batareykin

1861-present

Since becoming a U.S. territory, Nevada has undergone periods of full, partial and no legalization of gambling. Here’s a timeline of what types of games of chance legislators allowed or disallowed and when:

1861: GAMBLING ABOLISHED: The initial Nevada Territorial Legislature banned the dealing, running, opening, conducting or playing of any game of faro, monte, roulette, lansquenet or rouge et noir or any banking game (where the player bets against the house) played with cards, dice or any other device for anything of value.

1865: Anti-gaming law reiterated: In the first legislative session after Nevada joined the Union in 1864, lawmakers replaced the territorial law with a state statute outlining a similar ban.

1869: Gaming partially legalized: Nevada legalized only the games outlawed in 1861 and mandated operators be licensed.

1873: Lotteries prohibited: Lawmakers banned lotteries, which were defined as any scheme for the disposal or distribution of property, by chance, among paying players.

1875: Additional games legalized: The legislature approved keno, fantan, 21, Diana, and red white and blue.

1885: Legal/illegal games changed: An amendment allowed stud-horse poker, or percentage, with a license. It outlawed roulette.

1901: Slots deemed illegal: The state prohibited the playing or offering of nickel-in-the-slot machines or similar devices.

1903: Bookmaking allowed with license: A new act made it legal, with appropriate licensure, to engage in, conduct or carry on any bookmaking on horse races, prize fights or any games conducted outside of the state.

1905: Slots deemed legal: The state repealed the anti-slots law, thereby legalizing them with required licensure.

1910: GAMBLING ABOLISHED: The anti-gambling act went into effect at midnight Sept. 30, 1910. It disallowed all gambling mentioned in prior acts and amendments along with tan, fantan, seven and a half, hokey pokey, craps, klondike, whist, bridge whist, five hundred, solo and frog.  It also forbade any gambling games in which the operator, for making the game available, received compensation or reward or a share of the money or property wagered. It banned offering or playing slot machines along with all kinds of bookmaking.

1915: Some gambling excepted: The legislature legalized poker; stud-horse poker; five hundred; solo; whist; parimutuel betting on horse races; slot machines for the sales of cigars and drinks; and social games only played for drinks and cigars served individually or prizes up to $2 in value.

“Gambling on casino or old maid is a serious crime, a felony,” noted the Nevada State Journal (Sept. 28, 1930). “But on poker or solo or whist it is all right. Betting on a dog race is felonious, but the same bet on a horse race is clothed with the sanctity of the law.”

1931: WIDE-OPEN GAMBLING LEGALIZED: Lawmakers passed a liberal gaming law that remains in effect today, which legalized all forms of gambling except lotteries and which required licensing of operators. Along with slot machines, the law listed the approved games: faro, monte, roulette, keno, fantan, twenty-one (blackjack), seven and a half, big injun, klondike, craps, stud poker and draw poker. The law permitted slot machines; any banking or percentage game played with cards, dice or any mechanical device or machine; and any game in which the operator receives compensation or reward. It also removed the rules surrounding social games.

Sources