Warren Nelson - University of Nevada, Reno

34 Warren Nelson
done in the same circumstances. Th at’s the way
the things went. Th ere was a lot of competition
between the diff erent clubs at that time.
About a year aft er Harrah’s Club opened,
Fitzgerald came to town and opened the
Nevada Club. And we were all enjoyin’ a pretty
good business. Th ere was a man that used to
work for me by the name of Emmett Shay
who ran the Keno game for Fitzgerald. Well
Fitzgerald was playin’ lucky with the Keno
game; and it was makin’ quite a bit of money,
and he thought maybe the percentage was
too high on this Keno game. Th e percentage
at that time I believe was about twenty—oh
about twenty-fi ve percent for the house. He
changed his tickets and wrote up—put a big
advertising campaign on— “Bonus Keno,” cut
it down to fi ft een percent. I looked and fi gured
out the percentages that they were using on
their Bonus Keno—I discovered that they were
dealing it at between twelve and fi ft een percent.
I went to Bill Harrah, and I said, “Bill, we
can’t compete with these people if we keep on
going the way we are; and if we do the same
thing they’re doing, we’re not going to make any
money.” I said, “Th e wages are gonna be nine to
ten percent, your taxes and so forth will be three
or four percent, and your paper and equipment
and supplies will be three or four more. We’ll be
losing money by dealing Keno this way.”
And he says, “Well I’ve handled these
things before in Bingo,” and he says, “only one
way to do this is to fi ght fi re with fi re.” He says,
“Just cut that percentage down lower.
I says, “How low do you want it?”
He said, “Make it so that it’s just even
money—that it’s no percentage against the
player.
I said, “We’re gonna lose a lot of money.”
He said, “Let me worry about that.” Of
course this was aft er we’d been open a year, and
they got a bankroll together just to begin with,
and we were dealing with a very short bankroll.
I sat down and fi gured out a set of fi gures
and the closest I could come was—to the
percentage that I was tryin’ to get to that—was
the player had a half of one percent, the best
of it. Th at’s an unknown thing in a gambling
house. But we didn’t go out and do it on our
own. I went to the Bank Club, and I went to
the Palace Club and to Harolds Club and told
them all what I was going to do. And they said
well let us talk to Fitzgerald one more time.
Th ey called, and he wouldn’t budge in what he
was doing. So we all the next day had Bonus-
Bonus Keno and dropped it down where the
player was getting the best of it. Needless to
say the business picked up.
Th e four of us, the Palace Club and the
Bank Club, Harrah’s and Harolds Club, were
dealing pretty lucky in not getting hit by any
big tickets. However, the Nevada Club got
very unlucky and were losing a lot of money.
Th ey’d get hit with these big tickets, and it was
really a sort of a catastrophe for them. Th ey
lost a lot of money in a very short time. Th en
they came back and decided we should get
together, the Keno bosses and the bosses—Bill
Harrah, “Pappy” Smith, Baldy West, and Jack
Sullivan. Th ese were the heavyweights of the
gambling at that time, and Lincoln Fitzgerald.
We were in Pappy” Smith’s office at
Harolds Club discussing it, and I think there
were only two underlings there, myself and
Emmett Shay. Fitzgerald said well I think
that twenty-eight—whatever the percentage
was, was too much, and I would like to see it
down to twenty-three percent or in that area.
And we kind of worked it out and went on
that basis. Everybody agreed, and we came to
an agreement, and I think we put it at about
twenty-three percent.
Emmett Shay had been my friend for quite
a few years. He’d done me some favors up in
Montana. I was very fond of him. And aft er
he came down here and he got to be a boss