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 ...
... News, 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 ... 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 interest into the Lottery ...
Famous quotes containing the words game and/or numbers:
“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made—no matter how indirectly—to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping presence, who shall dare to come in?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)