Casino Confidential

The Clermont Club, Mayfair, is one of the most elegant gambling establishments in the world, once a favourite retreat for Ian Fleming, the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Lucan. Today, the club operates a strict policy that requires players to apply for membership 24 hours before visiting, but its management wasn’t always so diligent.

In fact, the club’s first owner, John Aspinoll, teamed up with some of London’s most notorious gangland figures – including one Mr Billy Hill, who was fond of carving a V into his victim’s faces with a razor – to take his patrons for vast sums of money with a scam known as The Big Edge.

They ran the Clermont’s decks through a machine that fractionally bent the cards to denote their value, then wrapped them back in their cellophane and delivered them to the club. Readers were trained to interpret these tiny bends, and the house’s advantage increased to a 60:40 percent edge.

Over a few months this added up to millions. One of the gangsters involved described the scam as ‘like robbing Fort Knox and the Bank of England at the same time – just a lot easier.”

The fad for novelty bets was born when a Mr David Threfall predicted at 1000/1 that a man would walk on the moon by January 1, 1970.

David was over the moon with his £10,000 pay out – until he died crashing the sports car he’d bought with the winnings.

William Hill now take a bet a month that David shouldn’t have been paid at all: they’re giving odds at 500/1 that the moon landings were a Cold War hoax.

Amongst the passengers aboard the Titanic was Mr Piers Mason, a charismatic conman who’d bought passage with the sole intention of relieving the ship’s wealthy patrons of their fortunes.

He had a $50,000 stake and no idea how he was going to pull it off until, whilst losing $10,000 at cards, he overheard talk of two grandmasters on their way to a prestigious chess tournament.

Mason offered to bet his remaining $40,000 that his companion, Isabel, could play both grandmasters at once and gain a stalemate with at least one of them.

An admiral, thinking him one iceberg short of a disaster, accepted the bet; Mason’s only proviso was that spectators would watch just one game in case they disturb Isabel’s concentration.

A large crowd gathered to watch the madman’s fiancée lose abysmally, but she dashed between tables, countering every move until, after hours of play and mounting humiliation, one of the grandmasters offered a draw.

Mason’s ploy had the simplicity of true genius: when one grandmaster made a move, Isabel duplicated it on the other board, pitting the two grandmasters against each other. Even true genius couldn’t save Mason, however: he died clinging to a raft in icy waters.

Shakespear

During a 24 hour stint at the gaming tables of The Shakespeare’s Head in 1762, The Earl of Sandwich finally succumbed to hunger pangs but, unwilling to leave the table, asked staff for “a piece of meat between two bits of bread”. His fellow gamblers followed suit, and the sandwich was born.

Lunchtimes just wouldn’t be the same without a game of cards.