Gambling is the wagering of something of value on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three elements to be present: consideration, risk (chance), and a prize. The outcome of the wager is often immediate, such as a single roll of dice, a spin of a roulette wheel, or a horse crossing the finish line, but longer time frames are also common, allowing wagers on the outcome of a future sports contest or even an entire sports season.
Two-up is a traditional Australian gambling game, involving a designated "spinner" throwing two coins, usually Australian pennies, into the air. Players bet on whether the coins will both fall with heads (obverse) up, both with tails (reverse) up, or with a head and one a tail. The game is traditionally played in pubs and clubs throughout Australia on Anzac Day, in part to mark a shared experience with diggers (soldiers).
Arnold Rothstein, nicknamed "The Brain", was an American racketeer, crime boss, businessman, and gambler who became a kingpin of the Jewish Mob in New York City. Rothstein was widely reputed to have organized corruption in professional athletics, including conspiring to fix the 1919 World Series. He was also a mentor of future crime bosses Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Bugsy Siegel, and numerous others.
James George Snyder Sr., better known as Jimmy the Greek, was an American sports commentator and Las Vegas bookmaker. A regular contributor to the CBS program The NFL Today, Snyder predicted the scores of NFL games, which sports bettors used to determine the point spread. In January 1988, Snyder was fired by CBS after he made comments suggesting that breeding practices during slavery had led blacks to become superior athletes.
Nikolaos Andreas Dandolos, commonly known as Nick the Greek, was a Greek professional gambler and high roller.
Lester Ben Binion, better known as Benny Binion, was an American casino operator who established illegal gambling operations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In 1931, Binion was convicted of shooting and killing a rum-runner, Frank Bolding. In the 1940s he relocated to Nevada, where gambling was legal, and opened the successful Binion's Horseshoe casino in downtown Las Vegas.
Tilt is an American drama television series set against the backdrop of the (fictional) World Championship of Poker tournament in Las Vegas, and with the tagline "You're playing poker. They're playing you." The series first aired on January 13, 2005, and is the second original drama series from ESPN, following Playmakers. It was created by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who co-wrote the poker-themed feature film Rounders.
The numbers game, also known as the numbers racket, the Italian lottery, Mafia lottery or the daily number, is a form of illegal gambling or illegal lottery played mostly in poor and working-class neighborhoods in the United States, wherein a bettor attempts to pick three digits to match those that will be randomly drawn the following day. For many years the "number" has been the last three digits of "the handle", the amount race track bettors placed on race day at a major racetrack, published in racing journals and major newspapers in New York. In the loosest sense of the word “racket”, the numbers game is a common racket or ongoing criminal scheme among organized crime groups, especially in the United States.
Layne Flack was an American professional poker player from Rapid City, South Dakota, residing in Montana and Nevada.
Henry Orenstein was a Polish-born Jewish-American toymaker, professional poker player, entrepreneur and Holocaust survivor who resided in Verona, New Jersey. A survivor of five Nazi concentration camps and death camps, he emigrated to the United States as a refugee after the war, and later held more than 100 patents, including for the Transformers toyline. He made his fortune as a toy designer and manufacturer, and was inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame. His family includes his niece Lili Bosse, noted philanthropist and mayor of Beverly Hills, California.
California Split is a 1974 American comedy-drama film directed by Robert Altman and starring Elliott Gould and George Segal as a pair of gamblers. It was the first non-Cinerama film to use eight-track stereo sound.
Bwin Interactive Entertainment AG, formerly known as Betandwin, is an Austrian online betting brand acquired by Entain PLC. The group operated under international and regional licences in countries like Gibraltar, the Amerindian reserve of Kahnawake (Canada), and Belize; and Germany, Italy, Mexico, Croatia, Austria, France, and the United Kingdom in Europe. Bwin offered sports betting, poker, casino games, and soft and skill games, with most revenue coming from poker and sports betting. Bwin had over 20 million registered customers in more than 25 core markets. Competence centres were located in Vienna, Stockholm, and Gibraltar.
The Pittsburgh crime family, also known as the LaRocca crime family or the Pittsburgh Mafia, was an Italian-American Mafia crime family based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The LaRocca family is one of the original twenty-six Mafia families in the United States. The boss and last known "made" member of the family, Thomas "Sonny" Ciancutti, died in 2021.
The Kansas City crime family, also known as the Civella crime family, the Kansas City Mafia or the Clique, is an Italian-American Mafia crime family based in Kansas City, Missouri.
Joseph "Jo Jo" Corozzo, Sr. was an American mobster who was the reputed consigliere of the Gambino crime family of New York.
Luciano Catenacci was an Italian actor and production manager who worked on mainly Italian produced films during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Anargyros Nicholas Karabourniotis, commonly known as Archie Karas, was a Greek-American gambler, high roller, poker player, and pool shark famous for the largest and longest documented winning streak in casino gambling history, simply known as The Run, when he drove to Las Vegas with $50 in December 1992 and then turned a $10,000 loan into more than $40 million by the beginning of 1995, only to lose it all later that year. Karas himself claimed to have gambled with more money in casinos than anyone else in history and has often been compared to Nick the Greek, another high-stakes gambler of Greek origin.
Poker King is a 2009 Hong Kong comedy film co-written and directed by Chan Hing-Kai and Janet Chun and starring Louis Koo and Sean Lau.
Even Angels Eat Beans is a 1973 Italian comedy film written and directed by Enzo Barboni with Giuliano Gemma and Bud Spencer. It was awarded with the Golden Screen Award in 1974.
Eugenio Alabiso is an Italian film editor.
