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The frontier gambler is one of the most recognizable stock characters of the 19th century American frontier. Historically, gamblers were of both sexes, came from a variety of professions, social classes, and geographical backgrounds, were of many different nationalities, and were part of a well-respected profession. As the Western United States became increasingly populated and domesticated, the public perception of gambling changed to a negative one and led nearly all of the state and territorial legislatures to pass anti-gambling laws in and effort to "clean up" their towns. The gambler continues to be a captivating figure in the imagery of the west, representing the openness of its society and invoking its association with risk-taking.
The heyday of gambling in the West lasted from 1850-1910. Gambling was the number one form of entertainment in the west and nearly everyone living there engaged in it at one time or another. Cowboys, miners, lumberjacks, businessmen, and lawmen all played games of chance for pleasure and profit. Whenever a new settlement or camp started one of the first buildings or tents erected would be a gambling hall. As the settlement grew, these halls would become larger and more elaborate in proportion. Gambling halls were typically the largest and most ornately decorated buildings in any town and often housed a bar, stage for entertainment, and hotel rooms for guests. These establishments were a driving force behind the local economy and many towns measured their prosperity by the number of gambling halls and professional gamblers they had. Towns that were friendly to gambling were typically known to sports as "wide-awake" or "wide-open" for their acceptance of gambling. [1]
Most western citizens considered gambling to be a respectable profession and those who chose to make a living doing it, were respected members of society. "Gambling was not only the principal and best paying industry of the town at the time, but it was also reckoned among its most respectable," wrote Bat Masterson in 1907. [2] Professional gamblers ran their own games by renting a table at a gambling house and banking it with their own money. Because of this, many professional gamblers settled in one place. In order to be successful as an established businessman, a gambler needed to cultivate a reputation for fairness and running a straight game. These men were known as 'sports'. They did not drink, cheat, or swear. They paid rent and licensing fees, encouraged customers to run up bar tabs and did their best to act as, Historian Hubert Hoover Bancroft put it, "Reputable and respectable merchants."
Bancroft distinguishes between three types of professional gamblers: the 'free-floating professional', the 'established legit' and the 'recreational gentleman'. [3]
The California Gold Rush of 1849 created one of the largest draws for migrant gamblers and San Francisco soon became the gambling hotspot of the west. Famous gambling houses included the Parker House, Samuel Dennison's Exchange, and the El Dorado Gambling Saloon. Portsmouth Square was famous for the many houses that clustered closely around it.
Gambling was also popular in the many mining camps throughout California and the southwest. Gambling was so closely associated with the Gold Rush that the overland route to California that passed through Panama became known as the "Gambler's Route." [4] Dealers lay in wait everywhere, and it is said that many an expedition to the gold fields ended in camp before it even began. Mining towns outside of California developed large-scale gambling as well. Deadwood, Silver City, and Tombstone were all as well known for their many gambling halls and saloons as they were for their rich mineral deposits. [5]
Cattle towns in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska became centers of gambling as well. Thanks to the railroad and cattle industries, a great number of people worked in and around these towns and had plenty of money to wager. Abilene, Dodge City, Wichita, Omaha, and Kansas City all had an atmosphere that was convivial to gaming. Not surprisingly, such an atmosphere also invited trouble and such towns also developed reputations as lawless and dangerous places. [6]
Men were not the only ones who played at games of chance. Women placed their bets as well and the sight of petticoats at the table was normal. Many women played, dealt or ran their own houses. This choice of profession offered them the opportunity to attain monetary independence and social stature. One of the most famous was Eleanore Dumont, known more crudely in her later years as "Madame Mustache [7] ." Miss Dumont ran several different houses throughout her career in Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota. Another, Alice Ives, started gambling after the death of her husband. Known more popularly as Poker Alice, she was a popularly recognized figure in the west for her nearly forty-year-long career. Kitty LeRoy made use of her sex appeal and flamboyant personality as well as great gambling ability to become a force of nature in Deadwood. She had multiple husbands and did not hesitate to get rid of men once she tired of them. Perhaps they were lucky because Kitty also had a reputation for shooting men as well. [8]
Many nationalities and races were represented by frontier gamblers. Especially in California during the gold rush, prospectors came from all over the world in search of gold and naturally played games of chance. This included Mexicans, Chinese, Australians, and Peruvians. Anglo migrants to areas of the southwest with pre-established Mexican populations discovered gambling there waiting for them. Most towns had at least one or two gambling houses. [9] One of the most popular games, Monte, originated in Mexico and was adopted and later modified into three card monte. The Chinese were avid gamblers who brought a variety of games with them to North America, including Fan Tan and several different lottery variants. Chinatown in San Francisco contained a great number of gambling houses and was a popular destination for those seeking to play. [10]
Gamblers preferred fast-paced games allowed them an opportunity to turn a profit quickly. Faro was the most popular game of the time and was known as the "King of all games." It was not the only game people played, and monte, Vingt-et-Un (twenty-one), roulette, chuck-a-luck were all popular ways to take a risk. Poker was not initially popular because of its slow pace but gradually increased in popularity as time went on. Not all games required playing cards. Dice games such as craps were common as were games involving a wheeled device, such as roulette or hazard. Saloons and gaming tables were not the only places to bet however, and westerners had a well-deserved reputation of being willing to bet on anything. Horse races became an enormously popular means of wagering, and foot races and boxing matches provided a similar opportunity. Fights between animals were popular as well; cockfighting, dogfights, or even a panther vs. bear battle. [11]
The popular stereotype of the frontier gambler presents a tall, thin male wearing a mustache. He is well groomed and wears a tailored suit, usually of black. Usually having a southern background, the frontier gambler is presented as a gentlemen in manner and custom and is concerned with maintaining his honor. The gambler possesses a calm demeanor and is cool under pressure, but when crossed instantly becomes a cold-blooded killer.
Gambling and gamblers are featured in many, many western books, movies, and TV programs and this high occurrence reflects the ubiquity of the activity in western society. The high frequency of these scenes reveal the close association between the west and gambling that continues today, an association just as strong as that of the west with cowboys or lawmen. Gambling is a convenient plot device; it may be used in the background, a setting for character discussion, or the motivation behind the plot. For example, scenes depicting high-stakes card games or gunfights over those games are so common as to be cliché.
The persistent presence of gambling in western mythology shows a strong association with the risk-taking and chance that were involved both in coming to the west and in everyday life there. In a sense, those who chose to leave their lives and come west were taking a huge gamble just to begin with. Gambling is also strongly associated with extralegal activity and to have that activity practiced so frequently suggests a popular association of the west with a state of lax legal and moral codes.
A game of chance is in contrast with a game of skill. It is a game whose outcome is strongly influenced by some randomizing device. Common devices used include dice, spinning tops, playing cards, roulette wheels, numbered balls, or in the case of digital games random number generators. A game of chance may be played as gambling if players wager money or anything of monetary value.
The Western is a genre of fiction typically set in the American frontier between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the closing of the frontier in 1890, and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada.
Texas hold 'em is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt face up in three stages. The stages consist of a series of three cards, later an additional single card, and a final card. Each player seeks the best five-card poker hand from any combination of the seven cards: the five community cards and their two hole cards. Players have betting options to check, call, raise, or fold. Rounds of betting take place before the flop is dealt and after each subsequent deal. The player who has the best hand and has not folded by the end of all betting rounds wins all of the money bet for the hand, known as the pot. In certain situations, a "split pot" or "tie" can occur when two players have hands of equivalent value. This is also called "chop the pot". Texas hold 'em is also the H game featured in HORSE and HOSE.
Faro, Pharaoh, Pharao, or Farobank is a late 17th-century French gambling game using cards. It is descended from Basset, and belongs to the Lansquenet and Monte Bank family of games due to the use of a banker and several players. Winning or losing occurs when cards turned up by the banker match those already exposed.
Deadwood is a city that serves as county seat of Lawrence County, South Dakota, United States. It was named by early settlers after the dead trees found in its gulch. The city had its heyday from 1876 to 1879, after gold deposits had been discovered there, leading to the Black Hills Gold Rush. At its height, the city had a population of 25,000, attracting Old West figures such as Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, and Wild Bill Hickok.
The American frontier, also known as the Old West, and popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last few contiguous western territories as states in 1912. This era of massive migration and settlement was particularly encouraged by President Thomas Jefferson following the Louisiana Purchase, giving rise to the expansionist attitude known as "manifest destiny" and historians' "Frontier Thesis". The legends, historical events and folklore of the American frontier, known as the frontier myth, have embedded themselves into United States culture so much so that the Old West, and the Western genre of media specifically, has become one of the defining features of American national identity.
James Butler Hickok, better known as "Wild Bill" Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West known for his life on the frontier as a soldier, scout, lawman, cattle rustler, gunslinger, gambler, showman, and actor, and for his involvement in many famous gunfights. He earned a great deal of notoriety in his own time, much of it bolstered by the many outlandish and often fabricated tales he told about himself. Some contemporaneous reports of his exploits are known to be fictitious, but they remain the basis of much of his fame and reputation.
Cheapass Games is a game company founded and run by game designer James Ernest, based in Seattle, Washington. Cheapass Games operates on the philosophy that most game owners have plenty of dice, counters, play money, and other common board game accessories, so there is no need to bundle all of these components with every game that requires them. Cheapass games thus come packaged in white envelopes, small boxes, or plastic resealable bags containing only those components unique to the game - typically a rules sheet, a playing board printed on card stock, and game cards banded by magazine-cutout "sleeves". This allows the company to produce games for prices well below the market average. Later, Cheapass started offering some higher-quality, full color games under the "James Ernest Games" brand.
Bartholemew William Barclay "Bat" Masterson was a U.S. Army scout, lawman, professional gambler, and journalist known for his exploits in the late 19th and early 20th-century American Old West. He was born to a working-class Irish family in Quebec, but he moved to the Western frontier as a young man and quickly distinguished himself as a buffalo hunter, civilian scout, and Indian fighter on the Great Plains. He later earned fame as a gunfighter and sheriff in Dodge City, Kansas, during which time he was involved in several notable shootouts.
The makeup of poker's dead man's hand has varied through the years. Currently, it is described as a two-pair poker hand consisting of the black aces and black eights. The pair of aces and eights, along with an unknown hole card, were reportedly held by Old West folk hero, lawman, and gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok when he was murdered while playing a game. No contemporaneous source, however, records the exact cards he held when killed. Author Frank Wilstach's 1926 book, Wild Bill Hickok: The Prince of Pistoleers, led to the popular modern held conception of the poker hand's contents.
Johnny Moss was a gambler and professional poker player. He was the first winner of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event, at the time a cash game event in which he was awarded the title by the vote of his peers in 1970. He also twice won the current tournament format of the WSOP Main Event in 1971 and 1974. He was one of the charter inductees into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1979.
Luke Lamar Short was an American Old West gunfighter, cowboy, U.S. Army scout, dispatch rider, gambler, boxing promoter, and saloon owner. He survived numerous gunfights, the most famous of which were against Charlie Storms in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, and against Jim Courtright in Fort Worth, Texas. Short had business interests in three of the best-known saloons in the Old West: the Oriental in Tombstone, the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City, and the White Elephant in Fort Worth.
In the United States, gambling is subject to a variety of legal restrictions. In 2008, gambling activities generated gross revenues of $92.27 billion in the United States.
A Western saloon is a kind of bar particular to the Old West. Saloons served customers such as fur trappers, cowboys, soldiers, lumberjacks, businessmen, lawmen, outlaws, miners, and gamblers. A saloon might also be known as a "watering trough, bughouse, shebang, cantina, grogshop, and gin mill". The first saloon was established at Brown's Hole, Wyoming, in 1822, to serve fur trappers.
Richard Clarke, born in Yorkshire, England, was a United States frontiersman, Pony Express rider, actor, and armed forces member who was widely considered by the American public to be the original inspiration for Deadwood Dick.
Kitty Leroy was a dancer, gambler, saloon owner, prostitute, madam, and trick shooter of the American Old West.
Monte Bank, Mountebank, Spanish Monte and Mexican Monte, sometimes just Monte, is a Spanish gambling card game and was known in the 19th century as the national card game of Mexico. It ultimately derives from basset, where the banker (dealer) pays on matching cards. The term "monte" has also been used for a variety of other gambling games, especially varieties of three-card poker, and for the swindle three-card monte.
Eleanor Dumont, also called Eleonore Alphonsine Dumant, was a notorious gambler on the American Western Frontier, especially during the California Gold Rush. She was also known by her nickname Madame Moustache due to the appearance of a line of dark hair on her upper lip.
The card game of poker was developed in the United States at some point during the early 19th century, drawing its name and basic concept from much earlier European games. Since its early beginnings, poker has grown to become an extremely popular pastime throughout the world.
James H. Leavy was an Irish gunfighter in the Old West. He is remembered today by Western historians for participating in at least two instances of a quick draw duel. In his time, Leavy was one of the most notorious gunmen in the Old West known for challenging other gunmen to a duel. He is featured in the book Deadly Dozen, written by author Robert K. DeArment as one of the twelve most underrated gunmen of the 19th century West.