Gambling Anecdotes - Short and Sweet
“50-50” |
“Wilson Mizner: Leather Upper”
While playing a round of poker with Wilson Mizner one evening, a friend of the writer’s hauled out his wallet and added it to the pot. "I call you," he declared. Mizner calmly removed his right shoe and added it to the pot as well. "If we’re playing for leather," he declared, "I raise!"“When in Rome...?”
"Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, made history when she made a bet [with Mark Antony, Roman consul in Egypt] that she could eat at one meal the value of a million sisterces. One million sisterces was many years’ wages for the average worker. Everyone thought that her wager was impossible. After all, how could anyone eat so much at a single meal?"Cleopatra was able to eat a meal worth so much by putting a million sisterces worth of pearls [according to Pliny, a single pearl] into a glass of vinegar. Then she set the goblet aside while the dinner was served. The vinegar dissolved the pearls. At the end of the meal, when it was time for her to fulfil her gamble, she simply drank the dissolved pearls."
“Slick Dealer?”
How did H. L. Hunt, an uneducated shepherd and short-order cook, become one of the world’s richest men? He won his fortune (in oil leases) in a poker game in Dallas in 1921.“5, 16, 24, 27, 37, 44”
In 1987, baseball fan Robert Heuer won $2,250,000 in the New York State lottery. His winning numbers? 5, 16, 24, 27, 37, and 44: the numbers worn by his favorite players: Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Willie Mays, Juan Marichal, Casey Stengel and Willie McCovey.“Nixed Blessings?”
Legendary high stakes gambler Johnny Moss once played a round of golf against a wealthy businessman, offering the mark his standard proposition: Moss would play from the back tees, while his opponent would begin each hole on the green, playing from a spot on the putting surface of Moss’ choosing. "I was so good from the fairway I always got inside of them on my approach shot," he recalled. "I made millions on that golf bet."But one day in Las Vegas the blind hog had found the acorn, as gamblers (and golfers) like to say: The sucker had the hustler on the run. "I think I was down about a quarter-million going into the last few holes," Moss recalled. "Fact was, the other guy was in trouble." Serious trouble. Moss’ backers happened to be a unsavory characters who advocated simply killing his opponent and calling it even.
When Moss made birdie on the last hole - a shot which cost the other man about $100,000 - the latter began complaining and hollering. "Moss!" he cried. "You’re the luckiest man alive!" Moss’s reply? "No, sir, you are."
These gambling stories courtesy of: Anecdotage.com
