Latest / The Favorites Sports Betting Podcast / Great Moments In Gambling's History Part 4

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Great Moments In Gambling's History Part 4 · The Favorites Sports Betting Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Favorites, the podcast part of the Volume
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Podcast Network. I'm Chad Millman of the Action Network Today
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a different show. Simon, as everybody
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: knows from the last episode, is visiting with his family
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: in jolly old England. So I am joined because I
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: can't do this solo. I'm no Colin cowhard, I'm no
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: boss of the Volume Podcast Network. I can't go for
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: three hours mapping out my shows. Like it's a tree
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: with a lot of different branches, there's only one Colin Cowherd.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I need help. So joined by producer Matt Mitchell for
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the fourth installment in our series of Great Stories from
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Gambling's Wild History. As you guys know, I've mentioned this
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a few times. I'm working on this book, so I've
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: been traveling NonStop. I've been digging into archives. I got
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: a couple of great stories that I'm going to share
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: of things that I've learned, really really cool stories, and
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Matt is going to share some stories as well. Matt
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't even know what I'm going to talk about. So Matt, hi, buddy,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: are you excited?
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I couldn't be more excited. Chad.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: All right, So this is direct from my book I'm
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I'm giving a little bit away.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Chad Milman wrote a book.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: It's such a good story every time I tell it,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and Matt, I haven't even told you this. People like
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: freak out. One of the guys who was known as
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the bookmaker for the mafia, This guy named Ed Kurd
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: lived in Lexington, Kentucky. He was a guy who grew
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: up in Lexington, was enamored with the ponies, started going
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: to the tracks in Lexington, working in the stables, and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: very quickly got connected to a lot of different people
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: who were within organized crime and were also just regular
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: horse betters, and very quickly learned that he had a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: talent for betting on horses. He ultimately became known as
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: one of the best horse betters in the country, but
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: also started to help organize betting on sportes as it
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: was becoming more and more popular in the thirties and forties. Ultimately,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: because members of organized crime and the leaders of organized crime,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: they often came through Lexington to go to the tracks
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: and to vacation there. Like if you came through Lexington,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: oftentimes you were also going to Arkansas where they had
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the Springs Hot Springs Arkansas was famous for being a
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: casino town, a mini Vegas before Vegas, and a lot
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: of people would vacation there and get relief in the
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: hot springs and all this kind of stuff, right, All
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: this great just sort of really fun color about old
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: time betting history and betting stories. Anyways, Ed famously was
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: a bookmaker for the mafia and had this state in
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Lexington where it had a secret room, and the secret
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: room you had to get to it by pressing a
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: button in his den, a wall opened up, and then
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: you could go down a spiral set of stairs into
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: the basement where he had literally dozens of phone wires
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: coming into the basement where he was working his operation,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: running numbers and taking bets and moving money all across
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the country like he was at the center of the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: country doing this. It was insane. So I went to Lexington,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: and I was lucky enough that I called the I
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: found the guy who owns his house randomly like through
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: various connections and phone calls reporting Matt shoe, leather, gumshoe,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: That's what I do, right, So got in touch with
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the guy. I land, I'm talking to guy for ten minutes.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I'm in Florida. I'm going to Lexington in two days.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: I'm telling him what I'm looking for. He goes, why
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: don't you just come by the house. So I showed
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: up at the guy's house at nine point thirty in
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: the morning. Walks me in, never met the guy in
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: my life. Walks me in, total stranger. He goes, You're
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: not gonna believe this, walks me into the den, presses
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: the button, the wall opens up, takes me down the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: spirdal staircase into the basement. It looks exactly the same.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: They have not touched it. It is amazing. So that's
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: number one. I got to go and see a very
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: cool piece of sports betting history. What do you think
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of that?
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Stranger? Let's you right into your right into the house. Incredible,
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: you're an America's guest and.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Honest to god, I was shocked. And you know what's funny.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: When I was down there, his wife comes down and
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: she's looking at me, and she looks at her husband.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: He goes, now, honey, I did not check him out,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: did not do one Google search. I just sort of
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: felt like I'm going with it and any here he is.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Just this guy with his big gold full of whatever
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: exotic olive oils, eating macadamia outside of a little satchel,
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: He's no threat.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: He just sounded like such a sad sack, like if
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: he wasn't going to get into this basement, he might
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: not be able to write this book. So I'm just
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: gonna let him in. And he couldn't have been more lovely.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not naming any names. I'm going to save it
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: all for the book. That's part number one. The other thing,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: you know what, you tell your story and I'm going
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: to go back to something else I've learned incredible.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a testament to how unintimidating you are and
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: such a mensch that someone would meet you and go,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: you know what, let me just take you over my house,
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: show you my secret rooms I'm burying you were, let
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: me take you to the fucking catacombs of my house.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: It's no problem. You're trustworthy. You're wearing your little fedor
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: with your press little bit exact part in it.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, honestly, God, it was great. I was
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: more than more than grateful.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Well, Chad, I've got a treat for you today. I'm
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: going to tell you two stories featuring two absolute gambling
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: maniacs from the nineteenth century. I think they will resonate
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: greatly with our audience, who's also full of degenerates this
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: kind of aspirational behavior. So first person we're going to
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: talk about is brother Elijah Skaggs, the preaching Pharaoh Dealer. So,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: as we've discussed in previous episodes, Chad, in the early
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, they were like three gambling hotbeds. You had England,
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: specifically London. You had high end European resorts like the
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: German spa towns, and you had America. And in each
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: of these hot beds you had like one game that
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: was by far the most popular. In England, that national
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: game was has a dice game that would become basically craps.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: In the European resort towns, they had my personal favorite
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Roulette because I'm obviously very very classy. And in America
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: the national game was Pharaoh f a r o called
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: the Game that Won the West, and again not the
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Ancient Grain, but a game a gamble game.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Called which the Ancient Grain, which I just got to say,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: it's making a comeback and it's so good for you
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and it packs in so much nutrients I've been eaten
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of Pharaoh, and you can mix it. It's
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: great with olive oil. I just want to make that PSA.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I knew that get into the Pharaoh game. I knew
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: it would get you all hot and bothered. We talked
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: to ancient grains, even though so I you say ancient grains,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I'm in a different zone,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: trying to.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Try to control your emotions as we go through this.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Now, the game rambling game Pharaoh, it seems like an
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: absolute blast chad. So like poker, you don't need a
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: lot of stuff, and unlike Roulette, you could play it
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: virtually anytime, anywhere. But like Roulette, it involves virtually no
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: skill whatsoever. And when you play Pharaoh, you play against
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: a dealer, and that dealer can be located in a
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: casino the way you'd like picture it when I say dealer,
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: but a Pharaoh dealer could also just be an independent person,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: like an independent contractor, traveling from town to town. Because
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: everything you need to play Pharaoh fits in a single kit.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: In America, these were typically small mahogany boxes, and on
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: the boxes would have a picture of a Bengal tiger
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  Speaker 2: that was the symbol of Pharaoh. Inside these little boxes
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: was a layout. It was everything you needed. It was
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: a tray of chips and a deck of cards, and
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: like a little felt fold out that you just place
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: on a table and it would have pictures of the
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: thirteen different cards on it from two to ace. And
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: this is an audio medium, Chad primarily, So in the
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: spirit of painting a picture, I'm going to use you
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: as our model for the roving Pharaoh dealer. So you
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Chad Norman. First, you learn how to deal Pharaoh. Next,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: you get a little bankroll of cash or a partner
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: who has cash.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Scet question, Yeah, go ahead in this in this play,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: do I get a speaking role?
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Oh for sure? For sure. Yeah you'll be paid. Yeah,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: you get paid. You'll get a union scale because you
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: have a speaking role.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Just let me know when it's time for my line.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Because I got a I think I got one.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Well, suddenly it's very easy for you to now start
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: going town to town as like a mobile casino. You
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: have your little cat. You get everything you need. Maybe
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: you make a deal with a local bar. Maybe you're
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: setting up shop in a hotel. Maybe you have a
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: little well maintained mustache. Maybe you're wearing a snappy little
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: vest with a little pocket watch. Maybe you look incredible.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Maybe you have a little phrase you say like, go ahead.
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  Speaker 1: Pharaoh, Pharaoh, get you Pharaoh.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Perfect. Yes, you've nailed it. The way you avoided talking
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: about ancient grains and you're selling in your cell job
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: is perfect.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Well, this is what I feel like. The reason I
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: said it is because it could be a little bit
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of a bait and switch where I could get people
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: who are interested in gambling, and like I'm speaking to
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: the insiders and they're coming in and they're like, oh
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: my god, I get to play Pharaoh. How incredible is that.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: But if they don't know, they could just be a
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: little peckish and be coming by for a bowl of
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Pharaoh and they're hungry. I'll be like, oh no, I
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: mean the game. Let me show you. And then they're
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: so entranced by my sales job. All of a sudden
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: they're playing the game and I'm making bank.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: A natural salesman. So yeah, getting that out so quickly incredible.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: We're truly painting a picture I could.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Have survived by my in the late eighteen hundreds.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: So you and your wiles, you can head out west,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: you can go down south, very easy for you to
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: find a place to set up shop because there's lots
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: of money in it, so people are happy to see
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Pharaoh dealers. And I won't dive into the rules, but
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: like as a game, I'll just note that it's quiet,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: it's fast, it takes up very little space, and it's
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: still very exciting. And best of all, you could be
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: saved and illiterate Old West Minor with like lead poisoning,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: and you could still learn the rules and remember them
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: pretty easily. So it's it's really like a perfect game
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: for the era. So that's the backdrop. The stage is set.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about our boy, Elijah Skaggs. So Elijah's born
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: and raised in backwoods Kentucky. It's part of a huge
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: extended family. Everybody's gambling, the whole family, the whole area.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: So he learns how every game works. He loves it.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Who wouldn't. He eventually learns all the tricks of the trade.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: He learns how to cheat as a dealer, stacking the deck,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: bottom dealing all that stuff. By the time he's twenty one,
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: he's won a pile of cash off everybody he knows,
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: in town and he's like, you know what, I'm taking
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: my show on the road, and he understands strong personal branding,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Chad like you. He dresses in a plain black frock coat,
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: plain suit, white shirt, yeah yep, white shirt, high collar.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: He looks a lot like a preacher, so he gets
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: the nickname the Preaching Pharaoh Dealer, which he loves because
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: he feels an almost religious zeal for this game because
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: the thing he loved most about it was it's a
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: game that's entirely in control of the dealer. If you
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: master the deal, you could control the entire game. So
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Skekes packs up. First, he hits up Nashville that he
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: spreads out to all up and down the Eastern seaboard,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: and if he ever catches a fellow dealer, toll in
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: the fast one that he's never seen, he bribes these
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: guys very handsomely to teach him because he's a lifetime
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: learner chat just like us, love of learning. He's traveling around,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: he's cheating his way into a ton of money, but
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: he realizes he could only make so much as one guy,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: and that gives him an incredible idea. Ched he goes
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: down to New Orleans. He sets up an operation, and
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: he's going to run America's first gambling syndicate.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: He's going to scale.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's exactly right. So Elijah goes into all
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: the casinos. He's looking for young gambling recruits. He gathers
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: them up, He teaches him. He trains them relentlessly on
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: how to cheat as pharaoh dealers, because he's very good.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: So he's good, he's a good professor. Once these guys
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: are all trained up, he sets them up in teams
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: of two. But he then assigns every one of these
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: duos with one of his dozens and dozens of cousins
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: who serve as essentially the roving pit boss, and he
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: dispatches them all across the country. He pays all the expenses,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: and the dealers can keep twenty five percent of what
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: they rake in after expenses. And it works, Chad Norman,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: it works perfectly. At their peak, he had one hundred
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: dealers running this remarkable nationwide racket, and the money is
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: just pouring in. And what did you just say, what's
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: the first thing he does with the money?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Chad gambles it.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: No, he scales, he scales the operation. He scales more.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, I was wrong.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: I'd be like, he's an incredible He'll we'll get to
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: the gambling in a second. But he's still an invest mode.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: He's a businessman.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: He is a businessman first. He funds his own gambling
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: house in New Orleans.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Hire ahead, He's hire and ahead, he's getting ahead.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: He's got a brother. He wants to run a similar
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: racket out in California. And they're not even a state yet.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: You could do whatever the fuck you want out there,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: he goes. Sounds good. He bankrolls his brother to open
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: up an operation on the West coast. And I know
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: you'll like this. He's a patron of the gambling arts.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Chad Elijah funds inventors to help him cheat. He pays
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: inventors to fund new like gambling devices, new crooked pharaoh boxes,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: and all sorts of stuff like that, and in return,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: he gets exclusive usage for one year and then they
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: could sell to whoever they want. And that works too,
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: can't he can't stop making money. By the time this
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: guy is forty years old, his inventor pials have flooded
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: the market with crooked faraoh boxes. All those dealers are
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: known as cheaters. It doesn't matter. He's two decades into
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: this racket and he retires. This absolute son of a
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: bitch is a multimillionaire in the goddamned eighteen fifties converting
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: to today's dollars. Yet we're talking about a guy worth
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: like one hundred million dollars today just through cheating at
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: a huge scale. The classic corporate American success story. Herbert Asbury,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: the journalist and bettic expert who wrote the original book
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Gangs in New York. He said of Elijah Skaggs that
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: more than any other individual, he likely had the single
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: biggest influence on the spread of American gambling nationwide. This
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: guy was an incredible operator.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: I've got a nickname for him.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Oh lay it on me.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Elijah Skags, the scaling syndicate selling swindler.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Incredible. See you got a literation, I mean a natural
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: author's brain, always working overtime.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Check literate podcast.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: It's an incredibly literate podcast, and showed I'm sure you're
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: thinking house the story end? Does that have a happy ending?
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Of course Skags enjoyed a luxurious retirement and then then
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: mid retirement he made his two biggest gambles. The first
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: was buying an enormous Louisiana cotton plantation, and the second
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: was investing millions and millions of dollars into that's right,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Confederate war bonds. So spoiler alert to any two hundred
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: year old listeners, the Confederacy would go on to lose
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: the Civil War, Elijah would lose his entire fortune, and
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: he died pretty close to penniless in Texas at eighteen ninety.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: And that's the story of Elijah Skagg's America's Crooked Pharaoh King.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Elijah Skaggs, gambling pioneer, scaling syndicate, selling swindler that.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Are at war bonds not a good investment.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Here's what's interesting, and it connects directly to my story
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: as I'm researching this book, is how so many businesses
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: today were born of illicit, ill gotten gains. Right. You
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: could look at the whole gambling industry and say this
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: is built on the back of illegal activity. Right. The
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: predominant purveyors of gambling products through the early nineteen hundreds
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: until the nineteen eighties was organized crime and the mafia.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: And slowly but surely, as more and more states legalized
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: various forms of betting, that transitioned away from being the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: dominant source of revenue for organized crime into being legitimate
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: businesses that have created Caesars, MGM, DraftKings, fandul Action Network. Right,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: all of these used to be completely illegal businesses that
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: were dominated by organized crime. Professional sports, Matt, What if
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: I told you that some of the biggest brands in
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: professional sports were founded by sports beetters. What if I
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: told you that.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Sounds like high risk tolerance zealotz ched Matt. New York Yankees,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: I've heard of them.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: The New York Yankees founded by a man who was
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: known as a degenerate gambler who prominently fixed games. Was
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: so known for fixing games, he built what was at
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the time the largest casino in New York on thirty
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: third Street in Manhattan. And people had to wonder, as
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: he's sitting in the casino, are the players also fixing
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the game so he can continue to make money at
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: his casino? New York Yankees founded by a gambler? How
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: about the New York Football Giants still owned by the
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Marra family. Tim Merra, famous famous better went to Belmont,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: won five hundred dollars at the track the next day,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: bought the New York Football Giants, Detroit Lions founded by
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: a gambler, Cleveland Browns founded by a gambler. Chicago Cardinals
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: still owned by the Bidwell family. Bill Bidwell famously a
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: gambler with significant hold on Was it Bill Bedwell or
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: was it Charles Bidwell?
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: I don't want to defame any I think I think
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Bill was the song.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Charlie Bidwell, former Cardinals owner, made a fortune opening racetracks.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Also he was Let me just make sure I get
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: this right. He was a known associate of al Capone,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: non gambler, known racetrack owner Pittsburgh Steelers still owned by
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the Rooney family. Art Rooney once famously won two hundred
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars betting on the horses, owned a saloon, allegedly
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: bought the Steelers with gambling winnings. What's interesting about this?
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: By the way, Lamar Hunt who obviously the Chief's founder.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: He was the son of H. L. Hunt. HL Hunt
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: was an oil man in Texas. It is widely known,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: like there are stories about this in I've got a
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Newsweek issue of Newsweek from nineteen sixty that includes the
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: biggest sports betters in the world. H L. Hunt is
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: listed as one of those sports betters in the oil field,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: at the poker Tales to tables everywhere else, very well
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: known as a sports better list goes on, Man, it's
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: amazing to me. And I think that your point is, Look,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: when people were buying these teams and these professional leagues
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: were starting in the late eighteen hundreds early part of
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds, it wasn't the Titans of industry. It
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: wasn't the Vanderbilt, it wasn't JP Morgan, it wasn't the
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Rockefellers who were going to take their industrialist riches and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: invest in these nascent sport leagues that were made up
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: of you know, blue collar workers and people who largely
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: weren't educated and were known as sort of people hanging
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: out in barrooms in Brawlin. They weren't going to invest
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: in these professional sports leagues. The only people who were
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: going to do it were sports freaks who were probably
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: betting and had a high tolerance for risk. And that's
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: why so many of these teams were founded by professional betters.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: And it could offer something that they you can't buy,
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: which would be a you know, bragging rights, a championship,
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: something that you'd have to, you'd have to earn your
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: way into which I think still happens to this day.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Correct, give me one more story, Matt Mitchell.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: All right, this is the story of John Better Million Gates,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: the most notorious big money gambler in American history. And
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: that's that's our buddy. Dave Schwartz so said with some authority.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: So John Gates is an absolute degenerate, absolutely love to gamble.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: If you look up, his face looks like it belongs
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: on us currency, looks like Rutherford B. Hayes. It looks incredible.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: And one of my favorite things to do with this
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: stuff chat is learning how these old like gambling whales
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: how they get rich in the first place, because that's
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: a that's always interesting to me because he didn't come
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: from a wealthy family, and with John Gates, that's a
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: really that's a fun place to start. So just as
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Eliza skags our boys buying his Confederate War bonds, our
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: guy John Gates is being raised on an Illinois farm
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: just west of Chicago, and he hates it. And if
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: any of those two hundred year old listeners of ours
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: are near you, they'd happily tell you he hated it.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Because it's hard and it sucks, like there's no mystery
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: about why working on that farm wouldn't be appealing. One summer,
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: he gets paid by a neighbor to clear some timber
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: from the property. Then he gets to keep the timber
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: and he cuts it up and he sells it as
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: firewood down at the railroad station. It's actually pretty savvy racket.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Get yourself paid twice, right. He hates that too, because
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: it's really hard and it also sucks. So eventually he's
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: hanging down so much down the railway that the railroad
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: workers are like, hey, do you want to come play
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: in our card game? And they teach you how to
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: play Pharaoh, which he likes right away because it is
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: very fun and pretty soon John's like, man, playing cards
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: is way better than working. I like this a lot more.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: He gets good at playing poker, he wins some money,
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: and basically he's like, I'm not I'm not running this
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: work racket anymore. This sucks. Playing cards is way more fun,
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: which like, same, same dude, I feel you. Eventually, though,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: he meets a nice girl, he has to get a
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: real job because you know, he wants to marry her
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: and all that can't just be a guy that plays
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: poker behind a locomotive. So after a couple fall starts,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: he gets up. He's trying to run a hardware story.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: It goes under. But when he's doing that, a salesman
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: comes in and introduces him to a brand new invention
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: called barbed wire. He sees this invention and he's like, man,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: this shit is dope. Everyone's gonna need this. So he goes, Okay,
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: let's do it. I'm gonna I'm gonna quit the hardware
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: store and I'm should go do like this is this
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: makes perfect sense. He understands immediately the value. He goes,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna go to work for one of these guys
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: that sells this. He goes down to Texas and all
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: the ranchers meet him and they're like, holy shit, John
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Gates is incredible. He's just a degenerate like us that
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: wants to gibble with us all day. So he's becoming
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: very popular.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: And he's got bales of barbed wire.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing, Chad Gates new. These ranchers have
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: a big problem on their hands, right, and do you
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: remember Favorites contest winner Daniel from Bowbell's North Dakota very well.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: He was one of our highlights.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: I hope he's listening right now because he is an
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: absolute gem of a guy.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Do you remember what he spent his forty thousand dollars
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: prize money on tractor? I believe cattle. He bought cattle.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: So our pal Daniel would definitely have understood the problem
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: these ranchers are facing. They own tons of open range now,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: which is kind of brand new. They need a way
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: to close in these enormous parcels of open land. They
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: need to keep livestock out of other people's crops because
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: that costs them money. They need to keep their livestock
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: off the fucking railroad tracks because that screws with everybody.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: And that are miles apart from each other, don't get
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: it on. They don't produce enough cabs, so using any
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: normal fence material like wood would literally bankrupt ranchers. You
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: can't make a fifteen mile fence out of wood out there.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: So Gates is like, great, I'll just explain this to
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: everybody in Texas and they are like, absolutely not. We
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: don't want any of your barbed wire. And they either
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: think it's some kind of trick, or that it'll hurt
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: their animals and it won't work, or that generally it's
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: just some kind of racket that Yankees are trying to
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: run on the South, because there's still a lot of
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: distrust there from any of you know, Yankee big ideas,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: which I know you can't blame them, I get it.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: So Gates stops playing cards. Elitist. It's an elitist in
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: degit exactly. So Gates stops playing cards for like one second,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: and he's like, I've got an idea. I'm gonna make
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: this big, insane bat. He stages a cattle stampede in
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Military Plaza in downtown San Antonio, which is still there
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: as like a public demonstration, and it proves that barbed
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: wire is a safe and effective tool that they can use,
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: and it works perfectly. He makes a fortune in sales,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: and he goes to the owner of the company. He's like, hey,
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: I'm killing it. I want to go into business with you.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Let's be partners. The owner says no. He goes, all right,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: I'm out. He goes to Saint Louis. He finds another
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: guy making barbed wire, and he says, hey, let's go
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: into business together. They sell even cheaper and they're killing it,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: and eventually gates old boss sues them for using identical equipment,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: and for the record, it was very similar, but it
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: was not identical anyway. Gates and his partner know that
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: if they get served papers, they're going to have to
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: shut down, and if that happens even for a little bit,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: they're cooked. So they come up with another insane gamble.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: While hiding for process servers, like in a bad nineties movie,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: they rent a small building directly across the Mississippi. It's
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: their new headquarters, and in the middle of the night
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: they hire dudes to take all their machinery down to
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: the river, load it down to a ferry, push it
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: across the river, and dock it on the opposite bank
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: in East Saint Louis, Illinois, outside of the court's jurisdiction.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: It pays off. They continue operating. They continue making barbed wire.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: John Gates is a genius. Blah blah blah. Company gets huge.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: They eventually merge with US Steel, owned by JP Morgan.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Gates becomes a bazillionaire and becomes enemies with JP Morgan,
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: the richest and most powerful person probably in American history,
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: which is another whole hilarious story. But that's how Gates
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: becomes this kind of loaded guy. Stock markets crushing he
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: and Vassi makes more money, and now now Chad he
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: can get out of his mind gambling. He is gambling
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: amounts of money that made me think, oh, that's just
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: how it was back then with these robber barons, and
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: the other robber barons are like, no, that's not how
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: this works. This is not how any of us are.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: This is insanity, and I'm gonna show you how. First thing,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: he's like, you know what, I'm gonna need a clubhouse
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: to gamble in. So he pays thirty thousand dollars a
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: year for a giant suite at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: He lives in Chicago, but he's like, I'm making money
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: in the stock market, it makes sense for me to
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: keep a place to Waldorf Astoria. The hotel hates his
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: guts because he's literally using it as a private gambling clubhouse.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: The suite has a private entrance, private elevator, and still
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: the amount of noise him when his buddies are making
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: is like out of control. True robber baron Fat cat behavior.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: This guy has a South side Chicago mansion that's still there.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: It's just on the other side of the ninety Express
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: from raite Field where the White Sox play. Not where
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: i'd build my mansion today, but that's fine. He'd gather
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: up his Chicago buddies and they'd get on the train
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: to New York City to party at the Waldorf. And
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: there were reports that these guys would go on benders
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: where they'd play a cash poker game for four uninterrupted
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: days and nights. They'd start in Chicago at the train station,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: they play for the two day overnight train ride, they'd
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: freeze the game, they'd move into the suite at the Waldorf.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: They played two more full days and nights with millions
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: of dollars changing hands, huge amounts of money. And I'm
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: looking to see, like, oh, I'll paint the picture. I'll
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: look up where it was taking place. This is as
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: they're still planning Union Station and Grand Central Station. That's
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: how long ago this was. His wife obviously knows she
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: married a fucking gambling demon, but she reportedly didn't like it,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: like these week long gambling free for alls were like
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: that's a little much for her. So she tried to
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: break them up. But instead of just trying to limit
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: these benders to like a couple days, Gates learned a
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: trick that I think I assume you've done several times, Jed.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Let me know if this sounds familiar. In a soon pocket,
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: he'd keep a few giant, loose diamonds, and if his
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: wife was really mad at him, he just fish went
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: out and say, hey, honey, I just won this, why
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: don't you do something nice with it? And she'd just
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: walk over to Tiffany's and they'd have it sat and
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: that would usually buy him like a day and a half,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: just like you would say.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: That's that's how we live, Matt.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean everyone needs to buy time. Everyone's time
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: is valued in a different way, Chad.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Except instead of diamonds, I give her bowls full of farah.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know that's my vote language.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: You're so mad at me. It seems like you're hungry,
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: but you don't want the bloat. Have I got great
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: news for you? There are reports of him betting the
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: equivalent of one hundred thousand dollars on coin flips multiple times.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: He won it close to a million dollars out a
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: single horse race, which is how he got the nickname
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Bet a Million Gates. There's no indication he would actually
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: good at betting on the ponies, but the president of
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: the jockey club eventually asked him to please limit his
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: bets to ten thousand dollars a race because the sheer
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: scale of his wagers was starting rumors that the races
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: were fixed. And when our guy, Dave Schwartz calls him
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: the most notorious big money game, blurred history, like, that's
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: the kind of behavior that earns that title. When operators
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: are like, bro, you are betting so much money, all
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: reasonable people are thinking this guy must be cheating, because
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: what is happening is like unimaginable. But I'm gonna end
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: the story of John Gates with my favorite anecdote, because
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: he bets on something so insane that I never even
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: considered it. On at least two separate, fully witnessed occasions.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Once on a train ride from Chicago to Pittsburgh and
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: again in a clubroom at the wald up Astoria, John
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Gates and another man bet the modern equivalent of almost
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: one million dollars on which of two rain drops on
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: a window go to the bottom of the window first
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: both times. Gates one, and that's the story of John
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: bet a Million.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Gates, John bet A Million Gates, Elijah Skaggs, two Americans
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: infamous for their ability to wager insane, uncomfortable amounts of money.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Matt Mitchell as always bringing the color, bringing the flavor,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: bringing the Pharaoh directly to our listeners. The Favorites will
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: return with our next episode on Tuesday on the Action
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Network YouTube page. We're talking NBA draft. Downloads from Spotify,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Apple Pods wherever you get your pods, Rate review, subscribe,
• 34:46
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• 34:48
  Speaker 1: a gift. Until next time.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: I Love you.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Action Network reminds you please gamble responsibly.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: If you or someone you care about has a gambling problem,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: help is available twenty four to seven at one eight
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: hundred gambler