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,…
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…
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:…
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 above-ground establishment of its kind since…
1887 A newspaper blurb touting the availability of gambling in Reno, Nevada titled, A Feast for the Gamblers, read: “Those who delight in gambling sports can be accommodated in Reno … no less than thirty-one games are in full blast. They comprise seven stud poker, two wheel games, one rouge-et-noir, one Ichi ban, six faro,…
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…
1952 When Ernest J. Primm owned the Monterey Club, a poker house in Gardena, California (a Los Angeles suburb), he claimed on his state income taxes the losses of his shills, up to $500 ($4,500 today) a month, as expenses or losses — illegitimate deductions. Seven years later, it caught up with him. The state’s Franchise Tax…
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…
1905-1941 Imagine in the early 1900s, a block about the length of a football field, in the Mojave Desert in Nevada where gambling, drinking and prostitution prevailed free from law enforcement’s intrusion, and where fights erupted often and killings were common. And because the days were so hot, it came alive at night when locals…
1908 Two deputy sheriffs in the mining camp of Rawhide, Nevada,* were on the take. For a regularly paid fee, they allowed establishments to operate legal games without a license and/or run banned ones as well. Sometimes they allowed gambling houses that paid heavy license fees on some games to conduct others without paying for a…