1956-1959 A thief absconded with $2,000 (about $17,500 today) from the Club Primadonna casino in Reno, Nevada on the first Friday of May 1956. The missing 10,000 dimes, 2,000 quarters and 1,000 half-dollars, the reserve fund for the club’s slot machines, were taken from a wooden cabinet in the basement. Only two employees had keys…
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’ —…
1974-1983 A revolt of the performers — athletes in this case — threatened to close a popular attraction at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas — jai alai. Unique to the Strip at the time, it was designed as part of the Nevada resort’s entertainment package to lure visitors into the casino. Jai alai…
Today A casino is a place that houses and facilitates various gambling forms, according to the English, but a casino or kasino is an officers’ mess hall to the Germans, Spanish and others. In Italian, the language of origin, the word derives from casa (house) and translates to little house. Casino first referred to a…
1855-1856 Charles and Arabella “Bell” Cora were a colorful, rich and well-known San Francisco couple whose lives jolted into misfortune one Saturday night in 1855. He, 39, had made his money from dealing faro in Northern California mining camps and the city during The Gold Rush. Prior, he’d broken numerous faro banks in Louisiana and…
1955 At least 10 hotel-casinos on the Las Vegas Strip offered entertainment, typically marquee names like Liberace and Mario Lanza, who’d played Sin City time and again. The Royal Nevada, though, changed it up with a first. They put on the musical, Guys and Dolls, featuring a number of the original Broadway cast members, including Vivian…
1966 Suddenly, in the fall, the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) directed 41-plus casinos to cease operation of specific electronic blackjack machines because they were “experiencing difficulties when played so as to render the devices more liable to win or lose” (Nevada State Journal, Oct. 21, 1966). These 101 devices, available in gambling rooms in Las…
1911 At midnight on June 19, a ban on slot machines took effect in Sacramento, California. The new law made it a misdemeanor to have the devices in one’s possession or on one’s property. The machines were collected from cigar stands and saloons and removed in wagons to be sent to a locale where they…
1946 A tastefully attired gent in his 40s sat at a craps table around 7 p.m. on a March Tuesday and began to wager with bundles of $1,000 ($12,000 today). After betting Harolds Club’s house limit for a while, which yielded $7,500 a point on a win, management waived it. The game lasted 36 hours,…