McGill Club in later years

1928

A woman named Gladys Anderson sued the McGill Club in McGill, Nevada for $5,000. It was the amount she claimed her husband had lost there playing poker.

The district court, however, dismissed her case because it lacked a cause of action (a set of facts sufficient to justify a right to sue and receive compensation from another party).

1940

After some angry husbands in Los Angeles, California complained their wives were gambling away the grocery money, two vice squad officers raided the Monday night birthday party of Ann Dicker, a 73-year-old great-grandmother, at which she and seven guests were playing poker. (The policemen had climbed up the drainpipe to stealthily reach her second-floor apartment.)

The surprise intrusion yielded a pot of $2.70, “as it was a five-cent limit affair.”

The ladies were arrested, taken to jail and fined $10 apiece. (It was Dicker’s third arrest and fine for illegal gambling.)

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“A disgusting travesty on justice,” the police commissioner said of the arrests (Reno Evening Gazette, Aug. 15, 1940).

1938

Esquire* Harry T. Clifton was a wealthy Englishman who owned racing stables and often visited Southern California.

During his visit there in April 1938, he gambled with Lew Brice and Tommy Guinan in a Long Beach hotel.

Brice was the brother of comedienne Fanny Brice, and a former stage dancer and comedian in his own right. Guinan was the brother of Mary Louis “Texas” Guinan, an exuberant actress and speakeasy owner during Prohibition.

The three and two other men began with a friendly game of bridge. They moved to poker, in which Clifton was “slightly conversant.” During one 12-minute game, the Brit lost $150,000 (about $2.6 million today)!  He bet it all on two pair — kings and jacks. Brice won the pot with a winning hand of three of a kind — sevens.

To pay his debt, Clifton wrote two checks — one for $100,000 on a London bank account and the other for $50,000 on a New York one — which he gave Brice.

You Did What?

When the esquire relayed the story to his confidante, Violet Greener, the pastor of the Mystic Agabec temple in Hollywood, she suggested he’d been duped. She advised him to stop payment on the checks.

Clifton’s attorney filed an injunction in court to do just that because:

• Brice had won the $150,000 by trickery

• Brice had misrepresented his ability to pay such an amount had he lost the game

• Clifton lacked the funds to cover the amount

The judge granted a temporary restraining order against Brice, which halted the checks from being processed.

Stud V. Draw Query

Meanwhile, investigators for the district attorney’s office looked into the case, trying to determine whether the poker game was of the stud or draw** type. This mattered because the former was illegal but the latter was allowed in California.

Clifton, Brice and Guinan recounted different stories. Whereas Clifton noted the game was stud, the other two said it was draw. As for the amount in the big pot, the debtor maintained it was $150,000, Guinan said it was $100,000 of Clifton’s money and Brice contended it was $40,000.

Later, it came to light that Brice owed a Danish actress/pianist $100,000 from a legal judgment four years earlier, perhaps his motive for allegedly swindling Clifton.

D.A. investigators sought two ladies who had celebrated with Brice and Guinan after the game to see if they could say what type of poker it had been. They also wanted to talk to the man who dealt the game, a George Lewis, but he apparently had gone to Texas supposedly to “look after some oil interests” (Nevada State Journal, May 5, 1938). It’s unknown whether the investigators found and spoke to those individuals.

Unexpectedly, Brice suddenly agreed to waive all rights to the $150,000, perhaps fearing he could be prosecuted because they had in fact played stud, the illegal version. He said he’d leave it to Clifton to act honorably regarding payment.

To Hearth And Home

A few days after the big losing game, Clifton’s wife Lillian, former Boston society lady, phoned the Los Angeles police from England and asked them to do whatever they could to help the man save his money until she got to California.

“Keep your eye on my husband and that ghost woman,” she said, referring to Greener. “Put him in jail, if you have to” (The Morning Avalanche, May 10, 1938).

The police captain nicely told her they had no reason to detain her beloved.

In May, Clifton and his attorney requested the D.A. drop the matter, which he did.

Deciding it best to return to England, the esquire, unshaven and appearing disheveled, went to the airport. Greener accompanied him to see him off. Her daughter met them there and told Clifton she’d received two phone calls from a man who said, “We’ll get you and everyone concerned in this matter” (Nevada State Journal, May 12, 1938).

Clifton told reporters he planned to rest for a while in New York before sailing back home. He kissed Greener and boarded the plane.

In a postscript, late that year, law enforcement officers in San Francisco arrested and jailed Brice on a vagrancy charge. The judge, however dismissed it with the warning that Fanny’s sibling not get into card games in that city.

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* Historically, in the United Kingdom, esquire was a title of respect bestowed on men of higher social standing, above the rank of gentleman and below that of knight.

** In draw poker, all of the cards are dealt face down whereas in stud, some are dealt face up.

Sources

1939

A Fred Martens, or “Fritz the Rooster,” sat at a table in a Las Vegas gambling house playing poker with some men. After a streak of bad luck, he seemed headed for a possible straight.

Suddenly, though, he suffered a heart attack and died, right in the chair.

One of his opponents yelled to the owner, “Call a doc,” and the game proceeded; several pots were won and lost.

Only one interruption in the gambling occurred when, on the physician’s arrival, the table had to be shifted to remove the corpse.

Happy Halloween!

Photo from pond5.com: “Symbol of Death in Poker Hand” by oiasson

Company’s West Coast headquarters in San Francisco, California

1913

During an era of reform in the United States, the American-Hawaiian Steamship Co. tried to discourage gambling by raising the freight rate on poker chips transported from New York to the West Coast by 50 cents.

It bumped the cost from $1.75 to $2.25 per 100 pounds (from about $42 to $54 in today’s values).

1954-1962

Each time her husband, Ernie Kovacs, lost big at poker, actress Edie Adams bought herself a chinchilla coat or antique harpsichord.

When the bills for those purchases arrived, he’d say, “We can’t afford this!”

She’d respond, “Simple, just stop gambling.”

Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1967-1986, Billy Rose Theatre Division: “Edie Adams”

Embassy Club interior

1936-Present

If it weren’t for gambler Ernest J. Primm’s nerve and fortitude, California’s nearly 90 card clubs wouldn’t exist today.

With a gambling license from the City of Gardena (in Los Angeles County), he opened a poker room there in 1936 — the Embassy Club. It was the first aboveground establishment of its kind since The Golden State’s anti-gambling legislation had been enacted in 1860.

Players, who competed against each other, not the house, each rented a seat for $1 ($17 today) and chips — which is how the business made money.

Primm viewed the enterprise as legal given the existing state and local gambling laws. California’s Anti-Gambling Act banned all banking* and percentage** games involving cards, dice or any other devices, along with 11 specific games. Non-banking poker wasn’t excluded.

Unlike Primm, law enforcement officials viewed even non-banking poker as illegal. Captain George “Ironman” Contreras, head of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s vice squad, for instance, believed the commercialization of the game was wrong despite no regulations against it.

“I don’t object to draw poker in private homes, but I feel it is improper in clubs where the proprietors charge a fee for the tables,” he said (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 7, 1938).

Round One: Is Poker Legal?

A year after the Embassy Club debuted, four men — three players and one employee — were arrested, charged with illegal gambling and taken to trial. It resulted in California Attorney General Ulysses Webb, in 1938, reaffirming the Supreme Court decision from 41 years earlier that gambling doesn’t violate the state’s laws unless there’s a house percentage or banker for the games.

The judge acquitted all of the defendants due to insufficient evidence based on Webb’s ruling. Primm kept operating his establishment, and other similar clubs sprang up in the county.

Round Two: Another Test Case

Yet, despite his own ruling, Webb pursued closure of these poker palaces with the help of Southern California law enforcement groups.

“My opinion, right or wrong, doesn’t justify gambling,” Webb responded, reported the Los Angeles Times (Nov. 5, 1938.)

In November 1938, Webb ordered the shuttering of card rooms in Gardena, Hawthorne, Redondo Beach, Ocean Park and Long Beach — all in Los Angeles County. Many closed willingly. Sheriff’s squads stormed those that didn’t (Primm’s Embassy and two Hawthorne clubs), seized their equipment and padlocked the doors.

“Capt. Contreras said yesterday’s raids should result in a test case to determine if draw poker is legal in California. He said owners will have to seek Superior Court writs to regain their paraphernalia,” reported the Los Angeles Times (Nov. 7, 1938).

Another trial ensued, which involved Primm and other operators, who were victorious. The judge acquitted them and mandated their gambling equipment be returned.

Round Three: A Different Tack

Webb and his supporters, though, persisted in their anti-poker efforts. They next sought legal closure of the clubs for being public nuisances, targeting the Embassy Club for the precedent. Primm and his co-owners again were prohibited from conducting gambling on the property until the court ruling. At that hearing, the judge ruled on Webb’s side, determining the clubs met the definition of public nuisances and, thus, were subject to abatement proceedings.

“A house which is open to the public as a gaming house at which large numbers of persons congregate for the purpose of betting on a game is a public nuisance even though the game itself might be innocent and harmless,” he said (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 3, 1939).

He issued permanent injunctions against all of the poker parlors in Gardena and Hawthorne, forcing them to halt all activity. This remained in effect for two years.

Total Knockout: Poker Allowed

In the interim, Primm and his co-owners of Gardena’s Monterey Club filed an appeal, which the State District  Court of Appeals heard in 1941. The jurists determined that non-banking poker was legal!

“Neither playing draw poker or maintaining a place where it is played being an offense, it follows that the city of Gardena was authorized to license and regulate the operations of such pastime within its corporate limits,” Associate Justice Thomas P. White wrote in the opinion (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 29, 1941).

“Gambling is neither unlawful per se or a public nuisance per se in California. Playing at any game, even for money, is not in itself an offense at common law. The offense, if any, must be created by statute, and can only be punished as the statute directs,” White explained.

Finally allowed to operate hassle free, card clubs in Los Angeles County thrived for decades, particularly those in Gardena, which evolved into California’s mecca for such gambling between the 1940s and 1970s. At one point, more revenue from these clubs went to that city than any other in California, and its poker version called Gardena jackpots is named after the locale, where it was hugely popular during the same period.

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*Banking games = those in which bets are placed against a house, bank or dealer
**Percentage games = banking games with relatively disproportionate odds

Sources

Gamblers, 1800s

1860s & 1870s

In Virginia City, Nevada’s heyday, gold miners and magnates alike sought out R&R — gambling, hot springs soaking and dining — at the nearby Steamboat Springs resort south of Reno, a stop on the Virginia & Truckee Railway. Hundreds of people visited daily.

“It was there that the Comstock kings ate and drank, played poker, discussed mining schemes and transacted stock deals involving millions of dollars,” (Reno Evening Gazette, March 19, 1908).

Sign denoting a faro bank inside

1825-1958

The hottest game in the Old West between 1825 and 1915, faro is pretty much extinct in the United States today.

If you’ve never heard of it — and you aren’t alone there — it’s a fast-action, one-deck card game in which innumerable players compete against a bank rather than one another. (Learn the rules of faro and play.) 

The game, also called farobank, has been around since the Middle Ages, but the version played in the U.S. sprang from 17th century France. Le faro is French for “pharaoh,” taken from the picture on the back of the cards used in the game.

Faro grew in popularity during the 19th century in America where, oftentimes, dealers traveled with their equipment, offering a bank for games where they could.

It was a common pastime in The Silver State’s mining towns, such as Virginia City. Nevadans referred to it as “bucking the tiger,” which derived from the picture of a tiger displayed on walls outside saloons denoting a faro bank inside.

During Prohibition, much of gambling nationwide went underground. Whereas most games resurfaced after ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933 — poker, blackjack, slot machines and more — faro didn’t.

“Despite its long history, in modern times even references to the game of faro have all but disappeared. For example, books, Western films, and popular Western TV shows of the 1970s all disregarded faro in favor of poker,” wrote the authors of In the Pursuit of Winning.

Faro lived its last days in Nevada. By the 1950s, only a few casinos offered it. One was the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas, which made the game available through 1955. People could play it in Reno until 1958 at the Ramada Hotel Casino and until 1964 at the Golden Hotel.

Too Little Profit

What led to faro’s demise? Primarily, the small house edge on it, experts speculate. Ultimately, casinos preferred games that afforded them a greater margin. Because faro favored players more than any other game of chance, they could win a lot, as the following quote suggests.

“The men who “buck the tiger” are waxing fat these days,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Oct. 20, 1904). “It is stated that there is not a gambling house in town that is making money. This is not because the games are not being played, for every night the rooms are crowded and each table is surrounded by eager players. The fact is the players are winning, steadily.”

Sources

1906-1909

An underage young man, Master Wadell, gambled at various games from poker to faro and lost big over the winter of 1906-1907.

His preferred playhouse was the Sixty-Six casino in the mining town of Rhyolite, Nevada. Subsequently, he sued the club’s three owners for what he claimed were his total losses — $10,000 (about $240,000 today).

During the trial in 1909, testimony revealed the proprietors allegedly had cheated repeatedly at various games, thereby swindling him out of large sums. None of that mattered, though, as the question before the court was whether or not a minor had the right to recoup money lost from gambling.

Wadell’s attorney argued that the defendants must repay Wadell as Nevada law prohibits casino proprietors from allowing minors into their establishments, never mind letting them gamble. He said that rule stood regardless of whether the individual said he was of age or looked it.

In the case of Wadell v. the Sixty-Six, the club owners’ counsel argued the law stated if an individual claimed to be 21, he couldn’t, after losing in a gambling house, take advantage of his own fraud and sue to recover his losses. Further, no statute existed that allowed for the recovery of money lost from gambling, he said.

Nevada law at the time — when some kinds of gambling were legal — stated that it was a misdemeanor for any gambling operator to knowingly allow anyone under age 21 to enter or play in their licensed club. (Previously, as of 1869, the legal gambling age had been 17.) To further protect minors, lawmakers in 1897 had allowed for parents of a minor to collect, in a civil action, between $50 and $1,000 from proprietors who’d allowed that child to spend time or play games in their gambling rooms.

In what was the first case of its kind in The Silver State, the jury found in Wadell’s favor in the amount of $2,762.40 (about $66,000 today).

“The decision makes a landmark in Nevada litigation and was one of the most hotly contested and longest cases ever tried in the state,” The Tonopah Sun reported (Reno Evening Gazette, June 8, 1909).

Sources