"Double Down" is a true story, a terrifying roller-coaster ride deep into the heart of two men, and into the world of floating Gulf Coast casinos. When both of their parents died within a short time of each other, the writers Frederick and Steven Barthelme, both professors of English in Mississippi, inherited a goodly sum of money. What followed was a binge during which they gambled away their entire fortune-and more. And then, in a cruel twist of fate, they were charged with cheating at the tables.
Told with a mixture of sadness and wry humor, and with a compelling look at the physical aura of gambling-the feel of the cards, the smell of the crowd, the sounds of the tables-"Double Down" is a reflection on the lure of challenging the odds, the attraction of stepping into the void. A cautionary tale (the brothers were eventually exonerated), it is a book that, once read, will never be forgotten.

A casino manager fights discrimination, regulations and ever-changing state policies during his career.

Long recognized as the gambler's "bible," The Winner's Guide to Casino Gambling is the most comprehensive book in its field, covering blackjack, craps, roulette, baccarat, keno, slots, the side games, video poker, and others. You will learn: * How to play such games as Caribbean Stud Poker, Let It Ride (R), Chuck-A-Luck, and others * What theme casinos in Las Vegas, such as the MGM Grand, Luxor, and Treasure Island, mean for Gamblers * Which states have Native American reservation casinos, and which games are offered there * Where you can get in on riverboat gambling along the Mississippi and other great American waterways, how and where you can play the new electronic games Plus: a glossary of terms for each game, tips on self-control and money management, casino etiquette, methods of protecting your winnings, and much more-all supplemented with solid, timeless techniques to slant the odds in your favor and make you a winner! "A must-read book, written by the man many consider to be the greatest authority on gambling in the world."-Gambling Times Magazine "Edwin Silberstang knows more about gambling from the inside and outside than any of the other current writers on the subject. I wholeheartedly recommend his expert advice."-John Luckman, Publisher, Gambler's Book Club

A day at the races, with its colorful variety and fast-paced action, appeals to people from all walks of life. Not surprisingly, the idea of going home with a few more dollars than when one arrived is part of horseracing's charm. In this entertaining but substantive volume, two distinguished economists, who happen to be horseracing buffs, outline a tested strategy for placing bets that will increase the reader's chances of a happy outcome at the track.

The authors are the first to point out that getting rich at the racetrack is unlikely. They do maintain, however, that with attention to their systematic approach, the racing fan can achieve the best possible chance at winning. In the process, the reader learns some of the most important measurement techniques in the social sciences, as well as the basic methods of market analysis.

In 1950 Las Vegas saw a million tourists. In 1960 it attracted ten million. The city entered the fifties as a regional destination where prosperous postwar Americans could enjoy vices largely forbidden elsewhere, and it emerged in the sixties as a national hotspot, the glitzy resort city that lights up the American West today. Becoming America's Playground chronicles the vice and the toil that gave Las Vegas its worldwide reputation in those transformative years. Las Vegas's rise was no happy accident. After World War II, vacationing Americans traveled the country in record numbers, making tourism a top industry in such states as California and Florida. The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce saw its chance and developed a plan to capitalize on the town's burgeoning reputation for leisure. Las Vegas pinned its hopes for the future on Americans' need for escape. Transforming a vice city financed largely by the mob into a family vacation spot was not easy. Hotel and casino publicists closely monitored media representations of the city and took every opportunity to stage images of good, clean fun for the public - posing even the atomic bomb tests conducted just miles away as an attraction. The racism and sexism common in the rest of the nation in the era prevailed in Las Vegas too. The wild success of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack performances at the Sands Hotel in 1960 demonstrated the city's slow progress toward equality. Women couldn't work as dealers in Las Vegas until the 1970s, yet they found more opportunities for well-paying jobs there than many American women could find elsewhere. Gragg shows how a place like the Las Vegas Strip - with its glitz and vast wealth and its wildly public consumption of vice - rose to prominence in the 1950s, a decade of Cold War anxiety and civil rights conflict. Becoming America's Playground brings this pivotal decade in Las Vegas into sharp focus for the first time.

A winning strategy for the game of 21. The essentials, consolidated in simple charts, can be understood and memorized by the average player.

You can't play Major League Baseball and bet on a game; just ask Pete Rose. Don't try running a betting ring in the NHL, either. Want the surest ticket out of NCAA sports? Betting's the way to do it. In stark contrast, however, the United States Golf Association officially sanctions betting among players during their games. And it's not just the pros who bet. Every man, out with his buddies, asks at the first tee, "Shall we make this interesting?" Yet there has never been a betting scandal in organized golf."Money Golf" is the first book that tells the complete story of golf's unique association with wagering and how that relationship evolved. It features anecdotes from fifteenth-century Scots to Tiger Woods and all the smooth-swinging flatbellies, movie stars, athletes, politicians, women golfers, Joe Six-Packs, hustlers, and sharks in between. It also serves as a primer for novice golf bettors, providing explanations of Calcuttas (betting auctions), odds-making, on-course games, and the art and history of golf hustling. It even highlights movies and books that include golf wagers, showing that even writers understand the marriage of the two.Wagering on golf has been part of the game since it migrated to the United States in 1888. All of the early icons of American golf bet when they played-Francis Ouimet, Walter Hagen, and Gene Sarazen. Even Bobby Jones, the simon-pure amateur, wagered on his game. Sam Snead and Ben Hogan always had a little something on the side; so did Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Gary Player. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson learned how to bet on golf when they were little kids. All the personalities, stories, and history of betting on birdies are included in"Money Golf."

Thinking, and betting, like the pros "Most people in sports betting are looking at things the wrong way." - Peter Webb, founder of Bet Angel "Some people only ever seem to want to hit the sexy six, and not take the singles" - Compton Hellyer, founder of Sporting Index This is a book that teaches you how to bet on sports with the same discipline and mindset as the professionals. Lots of books and websites give advice on profitable strategies - and tipsters and systems proliferate. But this is the only guide that helps you make your trades and bank your wins for the long term, avoiding the perennial dangers of overconfidence, irrationality and emotion. However successful your selections, you are never safe from crippling losses until you know how to bet with the clear head and calm approach of the masters. The simple fact is that most people betting on sports lose over the long term. Performance errors currently hamper the majority of bettors: they lose their bets because they first lose their heads.The only answer is to think differently. With chapters ranging across motivation, performance analysis, the betting process and going pro, this book is the definitive guide to achieving this: - Use dozens of exercises to sharpen your thinking and refine your betting processes. - Share in the exclusive insights of professional sports bettors, who reveal for the first time how they have built successful gambling careers. - Benefit in every chapter from one-to-one training from the author, a professional sports and trading performance coach. Sports Betting to Win is your own personal course for establishing a firm psychological foundation for long-term betting success.

Straight Flush is the true story of a group of University of Montana frat brothers who turned a weekly poker game in the basement of a local bar into one of the largest online poker companies in the world. At its height, the group's online empire was bringing in revenues of over a million dollars a day. The industry they launched grew so huge so fast, and in such a grey area of US and international law, at first it was never really clear whether their actions were legal or criminal. From setting up their operations in Costa Rica, to their efforts at building a veil of legitimacy in Vancouver; from embracing a hedonistic lifestyle of girls, drugs and money to becoming some of the richest people in the world; from engaging in operations against their competitors that sometimes escalated into near all-out wars to the legal battles that finally resulted in one of them heading to prison and another living life on the run - Straight Flush is an exclusive look behind the headlines of one of the biggest stories of the past decade.

Continuando con su serie de libros en las matemticas de juegos de azar, el autor muestra como un juego de reglas simples como la ruleta es idneo para un modelo de matemtica compleja cuyas aplicaciones generan sistemas mejorados de apuestas que toma en cuenta el criterio de juego personal de un jugador. El libro es prctico y terico, pero es principalmente dedicado a la aplicacin de la teora. Cerca de dos tercios del contenido son listas de categoras y subcategoras de sistemas mejorados de apuestas, junto con todos los parmetros que pudieran representar el criterio primordial en una estrategia personal de probabilidades, utilidades y prdidas. La obra contiene material nuevo y original nunca antes publicado. El captulo de matemticas describe las apuestas complejas, la funcin de utilidad, la equivalencia entre las apuestas y todas sus propiedades. Todos los resultados tericos estn acompaados de ejemplos concretos, sugerentes y pueden ser entendidos por cualquier persona con un mnimo de conocimiento matemtico porque solamente involucran habilidades bsicas de algebra y teora bsica de conjuntos . El lector puede tambin elegir saltarse las matemticas e ir directamente a las secciones que contienen las aplicaciones, donde l o ella pueden elegir los resultados numricos deseados de las tablas. El libro no ofrece las tan llamadas estrategias ganadoras, aunque habla de ellas desde un punto de vista matemtico. Lo que si hace, sin embargo, es ofrecer sistemas mejorados de apuestas y ayuda a organizar las elecciones del jugador cuando apuesta a la ruleta, de acuerdo a factores matemticos y estrategias personales. Es un manual de ruleta imprescindible para estudiar antes de colocar sus apuestas en el giro ya sea de la rueda de la ruleta europea o americana.

Roberto DaMatta, one of the foremost Brazilian anthropologists, and his colleague Elena Soarez approach the question of gambling in popular culture in general and its treatment in social anthropology in particular. They focus on the "animal game," a kind of popular gambling entertainment or lottery within Brazil in which locals bet on a list of twenty-five animals. They argue that the success of this game, which originated in 1882 with the founding of the first zoo in Rio de Janeiro, and the social release the game provides are significant aspects of Brazilian social history and of the Brazilian "identity." Within the animal game, players "totemize" and identify with various animals. DaMatta and Soarez use this identification as a lens through which to view Brazil's modernity, society, the significance of gambling, and even the role of animal images in Brazilian and Western society. Appearing for the first time in English, this well-written work moves smoothly between comprehensive analysis and field observations of specific behaviors and practices, such as the lucky tricks and devices invested with magical thinking by those who play the game. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, Brazilian studies, and Latin American cultural studies.

These seven precedent-setting case studies taken from the files of the Nevada Gaming Control Board and Commission illustrate vital issues addressed in the first decade of Las Vegas' megaresorts.

An elegant and amusing account of how gambling has been reshaped by the application of science and revealed the truth behind a lucky bet (Wall Street Journal). For the past 500 years, gamblers-led by mathematicians and scientists-have been trying to figure out how to pull the rug out from under Lady Luck. In The Perfect Bet, mathematician and award-winning writer Adam Kucharski tells the astonishing story of how the experts have succeeded, revolutionizing mathematics and science in the process. The house can seem unbeatable. Kucharski shows us just why it isn't. Even better, he demonstrates how the search for the perfect bet has been crucial for the scientific pursuit of a better world.

Steve Wynn is the former owner of the Bellagio -- Las Vegas's latest monument to conspicuous consumption whose hotel and casino contain over $300 million in fine art and $1.5 billion in Wall Street money. He's a mogul whose empire at one point included the Mirage, the Golden Nugget, and Treasure Island. But how did he gain and wield his tremendous power in Nevada? And why did a confidential Scotland Yard report prevent him from opening a casino in London? When this biography, written by a local reporter, was first released in 1995, Steve Wynn brought suit against its original publisher and forced him into bankruptcy. Now available in paperback, the inside story of the biggest phenomenon to roil Las Vegas since Hoover Dam gives readers an intimate glimpse at the real business that's conducted beyond the gaming tables.

For nearly five years, he was known as the 'Darling Of Las Vegas'; the biggest high roller to hit Sin City in decades, a hotshot, twenty one year-old kid with a seemingly unlimited bankroll and an even more unlimited lust for big money action. His name was Semyon Dukatch, and stories swirled in his wake. Some said he was a Russian arms dealer, others a pop star from Eastern Europe. But the truth was even more unlikely: he was a twenty-one year old graduate student who had a plan that would one day make him richer than anyone could possibly imagine. The Darling of Las Vegas quickly became a legend in the casino world. He is the only person banned from the island of Aruba. He was held, at gunpoint, in a cave in Monte Carlo and told that if he ever returned, he'd be murdered. And he made millions of dollars playing blackjack, using three simple techniques that gave him the edge, techniques that are revealed in this book for the first time. This is his story, the ultimate true story of Las Vegas, the book Vegas doesn't want you to read...