Warren Nelson - University of Nevada, Reno

drawing the numbers through the whole
twenty, so all the time somebody would have
a better chance to win. Th is was not true.
My knowledge of mathematics, from Father
Rooney, stood me in good stead and has
many times since because I know that when
a formula comes up it cannot be refuted, that
that’s the way it is and there’s no way you can
change numbers. Th e percentage was there
and nobody could change it.
We ran that way for several months. I got
an idea about a cage I had seen in southern
California where they used pingpong balls.
I thought that would be a lot easier for the
people to see. I went to Los Angeles and they
had a cage that they used on the beach for
bingo. We altered it some and used it. It’s still
the same way we’re drawing the balls now.
Th e limit then was two thousand dollars
per game; now it’s twenty-five thousand
dollars. Th e game has changed and grown so
much. It’s sort of my baby because that’s where
I cut my teeth in the gambling business, and
I’ve always stayed very close to the Keno game.
Th e third or fourth day that I worked for
Mr. Petricciani, he was working on a small
bankroll and we knew it. Th e limit was two
thousand dollars, and we were writing ten
cent tickets and maybe taking in two or three
hundred dollars a day. By the time we would
pay the wages there would be a winning of
fi ft y or sixty dollars a day for the fi rst few
days. It didn’t look that good even though it
was picking up.
Th ere was an old Chinaman who worked
down on the line for the girls—ran errands
and picked up the towels and things. I can’t
remember his name; he was a real famous
guy, laughed all the time. He played a fi ft y
cent ticket and got an eight spot that paid nine
hundred dollars. When I looked at that ticket
I almost fainted. I thought, how am I going to
go to this man I barely know and ask for nine
Palace Club, 1936-1942
17
hundred dollars. I felt that he might think we
were ripping him off because that was a lot of
money in those days.
I fi nally got up my courage and went to
Mr. Petricciani and said, “We got hit for a fi ft y
cent ticket, and I need nine hundred dollars.”
He said, “Yes my boy, come on in the
offi ce.” He took me in and reached in the safe
and gave me nine one hundred dollar bills. I
asked if I could have ten dollar bills. He asked
why, and I said it looked like more money. He
gave me nine hundred dollars in ten dollar
bills. I went and got my Chinese friend and
took him on the outside of the counter and
counted down—ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fi ft y,
sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety and one hundred.
Did the same nine times. Th ose bills strung
along the counter probably looked like ten
thousand dollars. I think that as much as
anything else has made the genie go forward
because from then on it’s been always up; the
game has gotten progressively better.
We had a lot of diff erent kinds of tickets
and learned a lot about it. Nobody else in
Reno opened a game for about a year. It really
built up the Palace Club; it came along better
and better all the time.It drew crowds and
nobody else could run the game. Finally, a
couple of boys from Butte came down and
opened one in the Bank Club. One opened in
Harolds Club, but Harolds Club wasn’t very
profi cient and people used to go in there and
write phony tickets. Th e people there didn’t
know how to check so they had quite a time
running the game.
However, our end of it was very
professional. We knew the business well.
All the people that I brought with me from
Montana were young people, but they knew
the mathematics and we were very fast and
very proud of how fast we could write tickets
and how fast we could check them; so it was
really a going thing.