ALWAYS BET ON THE BUTCHER by UNR Oral History

ALWAYS BET ON THE BUTCHER
by UNR Oral History
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At the beginning of the Great Depression of the 1930s, eighteen-year-old Warren Nelson lost his job with the Park Hotel in Great Falls, Montana. Nelson used a family connection to join a quasi-legal gambling business operating in the back rooms of a local cigar store. As Nelson set about learning the craft of gambling, Nevada was creating a legal and political environment in which he and many of his colleagues would flourish. In March 1931, with passage of AB 98, Nevada became the only state in the nation that sanctioned the operation of gambling casinos. This presented a great opportunity to professional gamblers working elsewhere, largely outside the law. A number of pioneers in the business - people such as Bill Harrah, Pappy Smith, and Benny Binion - were attracted to Nevada by the prospect of being able to operate without having to bribe officials and without being subject to closure every time the political climate changed. In Montana Warren Nelson learned how to set up and operate a Chinese lottery game called keno, and in 1936 a fellow Montana gambler who had relocated to Reno asked him to come and put a keno game in John Petricciani's Palace Club. Keno wasn't new to Nevada in 1936, but, as he was to do many times in many different areas over the next fifty years, Nelson refined the concept, and introduced a game that was more exciting and more successful than any that had previously been seen locally. Nelson is undeniably an operator who was influential in the evolution of casino gaming. He was always on the lookout for better ways to operate, to attract customers, and to satisfy them - quick to recognize a good idea, he was never reluctant to try one, modify it, refine and improve it. This, then is his story. 218 pages, hardbound, indexed, February 2003.

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