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.

Read more about Numbers Game:  History, Policy Dealers, Policy Reformers, Timeline, In Popular Culture

Famous quotes containing the words numbers and/or game:

    Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they’re attached to dollar signs—unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendents who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.
    Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)

    The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art ... is merely romantic fiction.... The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.
    Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)