Over the years, can you fathom how many American gamblers have gained and lost fortunes? Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people have risked something in the hopes of gaining a profit from the likes of new USA online casinos.
Related: The launch of legal iGaming in Canada and the benefits to the Canadian economy
The vast majority of these punters lost their money. When there are so many to select from, narrowing the list down to the three most successful gamblers in history may seem impossible.
Unfortunately, success tales are scarcer than one might expect. Our top three most influential gamblers in US history are listed below.
Titanic Thompson
His real name was Alvin Thomas. Since Titanic could drown anyone, he was dubbed “Titanic Thompson” for his lifetime of successful gambling.
Titanic Thompson was a fearless man who gained his fortune by betting millions of dollars on games of chance like poker, craps, pool, golf, and horseshoes.
He was one of the most well-known gamblers of the 20th century. Thompson was a gambler who placed wagers on a wide variety of games and activities, including poker, golf, billiards, and even target shooting. Even when he did bluff, he was able to win most of the time. Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet on Everything, a new biography written by Kevin Cook, compiles Thompson’s wild tales.
American gambler: Archie Karas
Archie Karas’s interest in gaming goes back to his early years. Nickolas, Anargyros’s father, was a poor construction worker, thus the boy often had to resort to shooting marbles to put food on the table.
The youngster was making great spending money by betting frequently and coming up with his own “gambling” games to play with his neighbors.
One day, Archie Karas took $50 and traveled to Las Vegas, laying the groundwork for a magnificent career in gambling that would see him win $40 million and then lose it all.
The Greek American gambler, who became known as “The Greek,” had 50 bucks and a head full of confidence, born of an innate fearlessness and the pure blind determination that propelled him to the top.
From the time he started investing in 1993 until the beginning of 1995, he amassed a fortune of $40,000,000. They were all talking about “the new Nick the Greek,” and Archie kept on his persistent desire. During these three years, he struck fear into the hearts of Razz’s and later poker’s biggest personalities. Big poker players eventually stopped wanting to play against Archie Karas because of his intimidating reputation.
Elmer Sherwin
There is a less than one in ten million chance of winning the Megabucks jackpot, as stated on the game’s official website. Elmer Sherwin, who won their jackpot not once, but twice, might have been the luckiest person in the area at the time.
For all of Megabucks’ existence, no one has ever won that much money except Sherwin. He earned approximately $25 million between his two jackpots, which were nearly sixteen years apart.
The excitement of the casino was something Sherwin had always looked forward to, and he spent a lot of his time there. He first entered a casino as soon as he was old enough to do so, but he finally hit it big financially when he was almost seventy-six.
Top image by Michał Parzuchowski/Unsplash
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