>Speaking of gambling, can someone explain the numbers
racket to me?
>Did people really just pick a number and wait for
someone, somewhere,
>to tell them that their number had won? It sounds even
stupider than
>slot machines.
The numbers were pretty stupid, but they were stupid more
along lottery
lines than slots.
The winning number usually came from some supposedly reliable
and random
source, such as the final three digits of the total volume on
the stock
market that day. (Because that number was so large, the ones,
tens, and
100s digits were essentially random.) It had to be a public
number that
virtually anyone could find in the newspaper or on the
radio.
My personal favorite twist on the deal was the gimmick
supposedly worked
out by Abbadabba Berman for Dutch Schultz. A couple of books
claim that
Berman got the idea to switch the number to the final three
digits in the
racing handle at one of the New York area tracks. In theory
that should
have been random as well; since Schultz controlled key parts
of the track
himself, though, he and Berman could add in a final bet or
two to change
the official handle. That way, they could check to see if
there were any
numbers getting heavy play and keep themselves from getting
hit too hard by
any particularly popular number. (Some days, some numbers
just wound up
popular; 704 was supposed to be a hot choice on the 4th of
July, for
instance.)
The whole thing does sound silly to a non-lottery player like
myself, but
keep in mind that this was all tax-free money and that even
the biggest
gougers -- like Schultz -- generally paid much higher odds
than the lottery
does today. They say it was as easy to put a numbers bet down
here on
Chicago's West Side in the '30s as it is to buy a lottery
ticket today.
Every little store front around figured it helped out
business and held out
the chance of a pay-off, too.
Joe Kraus
Department of English
Northwestern University
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