The work begins with the author's twenty-five years of experience as a professional gambler and confidence man, detailing how he preyed upon the unwary from the Atlantic to the Colorado canyons. Having lost his fortune, his sister, and the peace of his home to the gaming table, the author resolves to atone for his wrongs by laying bare the mechanics of deception. The historical survey traces the vice from ancient Egypt, Persia, and Hindoo mythology, where gambling was intertwined with religious ceremonies and statecraft, through the classic decline of Greece and Rome, to the licensed dens of Homburg, Baden-Baden, and Monte Carlo. The second portion of the work provides an unreserved disclosure of dishonest artifices employed in modern games.
The author examines the intricate mechanisms of faro boxes, the marking of cards by strippers, bibles, and pinchers, and the use of cold decks and false shuffles in poker. Short games like roulette, keno, and rouge-et-noir are analyzed to demonstrate how the mathematical percentage invariably favors the bank. The volume extends its reach to the frauds practiced at country fairs, gold brick swindles, and confidence tricks such as three-card monte and the shell game.
A significant section is devoted to the evils of turf-betting and the stock exchange, comparing bucket shops and grain corners to traditional gambling houses. Throughout the narrative, the author combines his personal confessions with moral arraignments by contemporary clergymen, presenting gambling as a hereditary vice that subverts social order, invites suicide, and destroys the soul. The account concludes with the tragic story of the author's domestic life, marked by poverty, the loss of his wife and child, and his wrongful imprisonment, serving as a solemn warning to the youth of the republic.
