Numbers Game
Numbers game, also known as a numbers racket, policy racket or Italian lottery, is an illegal lottery played mostly in poor neighborhoods in the United States and in The Bahamas, wherein a bettor attempts to pick three digits to match those that will be randomly drawn the following day. The gambler places his or her bet with a bookie at a tavern, or other semi-private place that acts as a betting parlor. A runner carries the money and betting slips between the betting parlors and the headquarters, called a numbers bank or policy bank. The name "policy" is from a similarity to cheap insurance, both seen as a gamble on the future.
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Some articles on numbers game:
... The 1948 film noir Force of Evil revolves around the numbers racket, with the plot hinging upon the workings of policy banks ... the banks in New York City by rigging the mutuel numbers to come up 776 on Independence Day ... Since everybody plays those numbers for the Fourth of July, the banks will go bankrupt filling the policies ...
... graphic slides featuring the Lottery and The Numbers Game logos would appear with the nightly results from the Boston and Tri-State (Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont) regions ... In response to the Mass Lottery's second major game, Megabuck$, WBZ, in conjunction, created Lottery Live, a series of hosted, 1 minute machine studio drawings done live ... Done in the style of a game-show format (albeit truncated), it meant to not only let viewers see the process of lottery results, but to generate excitement and ...
Famous quotes containing the words game and/or numbers:
“One of life’s primal situations; the game of hide and seek. Oh, the delicious thrill of hiding while the others come looking for you, the delicious terror of being discovered, but what panic when, after a long search, the others abandon you! You mustn’t hide too well. You mustn’t be too good at the game. The player must never be bigger than the game itself.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The forward Youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear,
Nor in the Shadows sing
His Numbers languishing.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)