75%
80%
USA
Canada
Australia
UKNick Dandolos: Professional Greek Gambler
Disclosure: At GamblingSites.com, our mission is to connect you with the best gambling sites and informational resources available. If you click one of the links on our site, we may earn a commission payment at no extra charge to you.
Nick Dandolos was what one may consider a well-rounded gambler, as he excelled at betting on horses and playing poker throughout the early to mid 1900s.
His friends called him, “Nick the Greek,” and his reputation spread across Europe as being a world-class gambler. For his many accomplishments, he was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1979, nearly thirteen years after he had passed away.
In addition to his excellent gambling skills, Nick was also admired for his contribution to various charitable causes over the years. Nick once said,
Where It All Started
Nick Dandolos was born in Crete, Greece in the late 1800s. He was raised in a privileged family and was always taught the importance of education. Even at a young age, his parents forced him to learn multiple languages and work on his literature skills.
In his teen years, Nick was given the opportunity to attend the Greek Evangelical College where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Thanks to this degree he would later be known as, “The Aristotle of the Don’t Pass Line.”
Nick’s grandfather had always been a huge influence in his life and when he turned eighteen years old, his Grandfather offered to financially back him if he moved to America.
His grandfather sent him $150 a week to cover the costs of his housing and food in hopes that this experience would help him find a successful career in the business field.
Little did his grandfather know that Nick never would become a business man nor would he ever return to his home country. Nick spent several years in Chicago working part time jobs and struggling to get by.
Forming a Partnership
During this time in Montreal, horseracing was becoming increasingly popular and it was almost unavoidable if you were visiting the city. Soon after arriving, Nick stepped foot on a racetrack for the first time and could feel the adrenaline rush just from being there.
It wasn’t long before Nick was introduced to Phil Musgrave, a famous Canadian Jockey who also knew a thing or two about horserace betting. Nick quickly caught on to his methods and soon became a gambling expert, using the math skills he learned in school to help him determine what his odds were of winning a particular bet.
He started using the money his grandfather sent him to fund his gambling endeavors.
In less than a year they collectively made over half a million dollars which obviously made people believe that they were somehow cheating the system.
In order to keep their reputations pure and to avoid Phil losing his job, they decided it would be in their best interest to part ways. By this time, Nick was passionate about gambling and wasn’t ready to give up that lifestyle, so he headed back to American casinos to try his luck out there.
To Nick’s surprise, he did find a great deal of success, especially when it came to playing poker.
Nick travelled all over America, visiting every casino along the way. He played in cities in Illinois, New Orleans, New York, and of course, Nevada.
The first time Nick experienced Las Vegas, he was overwhelmed by all the choices he had when it came to gambling facilities. Everywhere he gambled, he made sure he first studied the odds and probabilities of winning in that casino according to their house edge and other contributing factors.
This helped him find a great deal of success at the tables, but luck was certainly not always on his side.
A Streak of Bad Luck
One of Nick’s most famous quotes was,
Not only was Nick known for losing large sums of money at a plethora of casinos across the country, he was also known for losing large sums in more intimate competitions. There are a few infamous accounts where Nick lost a significant amount of cash through gambling.
The first occurred in 1949 and it was against a well known poker player by the name of Johnny Moss. Backed by the support of Benny Binion, they agreed to dedicate five months of their lives to playing every known variant of poker in front of a live audience, which is said to have inspired the World Series of Poker that was established nearly twenty years later.
Unfortunately for Nick, this competition lost him over $2 million which was a devastating blow to his bankroll.
One of Nick’s favorite card games to play is probably something you have never heard of: Faro. This Old Western card game is practically extinct in today’s society and it certainly wouldn’t be a common game to see being played at any nearby casinos.
Nick was overly confident in his skills when it came to this game, so it was no surprise to hear that he asked the renowned movie producer, Carl Laemmle, to financially back him for a three month long Faro competition. Luck was certainly not on Nick’s side that entire tournament and he ended up losing all of Laemmle’s money.
Nick was also asked to compete against an up and coming professional gambler named Ray Ryan at both the luxurious Flaming Resort and the Thunderbird Resort. They played five-card stud poker and lowball draw for over fifteen days straight before deciding to call it quits.
Many people found it hard to believe that this tournament even took place but several witnesses have confirmed the rumors. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were performing at the Flamingo around the time that this tournament occurred. Jeanne Martin, Dean’s wife, claimed that she used to watch them play while she was swimming at the pool.
When their two week playing session was over, Nick lost over $500,000 in what he was sure would be an easy win.
After doing a little investigating, Nick realized that Ray had hired someone to hide on the roof of the building in such a way that he could see Nick’s hole cards and then relay that information back to Ray through a small hand-held transmitter.
Running to the Mafia for Assistance
Nick was beyond furious to think he might have been deceived, so he turned to the Mafia for help by calling up his old friend and famous mobster, Caifano. Although he was only five feet tall, Caifano was very intimidating, being known to many as “The Enforcer.”
Without hesitation, Caifano and a few of his accomplices hunted Ray down and roughed him up a bit in order to persuade him to pay back a portion of his winnings to Nick.
This incident caused Caifano to be captured by the police and thrown into jail on a ten year sentence for accounts of fraud and extortion.
Rumor has it that Nick was able to get most of his money back and no one dared to cheat him again.
A Possible Connection to Einstein
People who knew Dandolos personally claim he was an amazingly charming man who seemed to know something about everybody. Rumor has it that when Albert Einstein came to visit Las Vegas for the first time, it was Nick the Greek who had the privilege of giving him the grand tour.
To avoid having Einstein getting shunned for being a scientist, Nick supposedly told everyone that he should be called “Little Al from Princeton,” and that people need to fear him for he controls the state of New Jersey.
This whole ordeal is only speculation but all we know for sure is that Einstein visited Las Vegas during a break from his time at Princeton around the same time that Nick the Greek was living there.
His Last Days
Since Nick never got married and had a family of his own, he was a very generous person when it came to spreading his wealth.
When he passed away on December 25th, 1966, many people drove to California to attend his memorial service.
After Collier’s Magazine published a long article describing the millions of dollars that Nick the Greek had won and lost over the course of his career along with his willingness to share his profits, he became known to everyone as, “The King of All Gamblers.”
Nick the Greek (in Literature)
Nick’s life has inspired several books that are available for you to read today. Ted Thackrey wrote the book titled, Gambling Secrets of Nick the Greek, in 1968 that was depicted the strategies Nick used to make his millions.
Amazon gave this book 4.5 out of 5 stars and one customer in particular said this in regards to the book,
Harry Mark Petrakis wrote a book titled, Nick the Greek, in 1978, which is based on Nick’s life.
Overall this book didn’t get great reviews, as many readers were complaining about the many details in this book that were fictional and the lack of detail concerning the ladder years in his life.
The last place where Nick the Greek can be found in literature is in the autobiography of Richard Feynman, a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist, who mentioned that Nick the Greek is responsible for teaching him how to play poker using unique strategies.
