Celebrated Poker Man: Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928)

Did poker kill Arnold Rothstein? To many poker players deeply rooted in contemporary history, Arnold Rothstein is known as the man who fixed the 1919 baseball World Series involving the Chicago Black Sox and the Cincinnati Reds. It is by far America's most disgraceful scandals of game-fixing. But Rothstein was more than just a game-fixer. To criminologists, he was the spiritual father of America's organized underworld, having under his tutelage Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky - the very people who stood as the future of the American mob. He strictly operated in the background with his circuit of corrupt politicians, police, and judges. During the Prohibition, in fact, his bootlegging operations thrived through these connections.

Rothstein went by several nicknames; one of them was "The Brain." In a time when nationwide gangsters were disparate, unrelated, and operated on their own, he was ahead of his time in understanding the vitality of alliances. Forseeing the end of Prohibition, he began laying the groundwork for a single-bodied nationwide crime syndicate, and was diversifying ventures into drug and diamond smuggling, labor racketeering, and gambling. With gambling, it was like going back to his roots.

He was twenty when he began booking bets on prizefighting, horseracing, baseball games, and even elections. Later, he was able to make loans but in extremely high interest rates. In 1914, he entered bookmaking; and by opening a betting house, he made a fortune. By this time, the nickname "The Fixer" began to follow him. Five years later, two groups of people seeking his help to finance the game fix of the 1919 baseball World Series would inadvertently try to bleach this title in a sensational two-year courtroom trial. Though he escaped indictment from the beginning, his name continued to be attached in the testimonies of the witnesses.

So what's poker got to do with all these? Rothstein was exposed to gambling from childhood. Unfortunately, all the years of contact to its related activities had failed to inoculate his gambling impulses. In 1928, Rothstein participated in Broadway's poker marathon that lasted from September 8 to 10. Betting and losing more than he won, he found himself in debt with $320,000 - the very thought he never relished. He then refused to pay and declared the game fixed, not by him, of course. On November 4, he was rushed to the hospital with a gunshot wound in the abdomen. This occurred while he was playing poker in his suite at New York's Park Central Hotel. He died soon after, refusing to answer questions to identify his assassin.

Suspects abound: Hump McMannus, the owner of the Park Central Hotel suite which Rothstein occupied and to whom he owed $320,000; Nigger Nate Raymond and Titanic Thompson, California gamblers who beat him in the poker marathon; an ambitious Dutch Schultz, who was said to might have needed to remove Rothstein to expand his business; and his disciples, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, who gained everything after Rothstein's death.