Nick The Greek

Nick The Greek
by Robin Harris

The following is a condensation of an article which first appeared in True magazine in September 1945, written by a close confidante of Nick the Greek. This edited version appeared in 1985. Enjoy this historical perspective of one of the most famous, well respected and intriguing gambling personalities of the 20th century.

When Nicholas Dandolas was a lad of 10, going to school on the ancient Greek island of Crete, he was sent home early one day as punishment for matching coins with his companions. His worried mother gave him a severe scolding, and concluded with the warning: "If you’re not careful, you’ll grow up to be a gambler!"

It is doubtful whether any parental fears in all history were more completely verified by subsequent events. Her erring son grew up to be the best known gambler of his time, renowned around the world simply as Nick the Greek,

There was a time when he detested that name. Anyone who referred to him in his presence as Nick the Greek was certain to be sharply rebuked. "My name is Dandolas," Nick would interrupt, and he’d spell it out slowly and deliberately: "D-a-n-d-o-l-a-s."

The page boy in the Brown Derby on Hollywood’s Vine Street, on of Nick’s favorite hangouts when in California, was a frequent offender. If Nick got a telephone call the boy often forgot himself and walked through the crowded room singing out: "Call for Nick the Greek! Call for Nick the Greek!"

Invariably Nick would correct him. But that was before the heroic Greek army, vastly outnumbered and outgunned, made a valiant stand against the invading Nazis early in the war. One day Nick was sitting in the Derby, engrossed in a newspaper story of the Greek Army’s bravery, when the boy came along and said, "Call for Mister Dandolas!"

Nick turned a cold eye on the youth. "From now on, son," he said, "You’d better call me Nick the Greek."

Professional gamblers as a class are libeled in the public mind. The words "professional gambler;" invariably call to mind either some gun-toting desperado, or a patsy, shifty-eyed card cheat who sleeps by day and fleeces the suckers by night.

This image was probably accurate in the days of the old Mississippi river boats, but today it is often unfair. Now your gambler is more apt to be a hard working fellow who spends more time at this vocation than the average businessman. He should combine the talents of a mathematician and a sports expert, and have the sleep defying ability of a ferry pilot in case there’s a big game and it lasts several days.

Nick the Greek dresses in excellent taste, always in suits of solid color and conservative cut. His linen is always spotless, and he has been known to go home and change if the slightest speck showed on his collar or cuff. A studied carefulness if apparent in his clothes; for example, he never permits his suits to be pressed with sharp creases. "That’s for actors," he’ll remark. "A gentlemen doesn’t dress that way."

Nick’s voice is deep and resonant, and his social graces are something to watch in awe. A movie starlet fascinated by the Greek once declared that he came as near to being a girl’s idea man as human flesh and blood could. "He is tall and handsome," she said. "He has more glamour than all the stars in Hollywood put together. He knows his way around like a real man of the world. And what’s more, he always seems to have a pocket full of thousand- dollar bills and if he likes you, he’ll give some to you. What more could a girl ask for?"

In the gambling trade Nick is regarded as something of an anomaly because his reputation has always been based on his enormous losses rather than his winnings. The other famous gamblers of recent times, such as Arnold Rothstein and Titanic Thompson, achieved their renown from big killings. Rothstein, for example, pocketed over $ 750,000 on a fixed race at Belmont Park. Titanic, who won the nickname for his willingness to plunge the whole works and go down with the sinking ship if necessary, nevertheless was always putting over huge betting coups in the old days.

With Nick it was always the other way around. The gambler’s grapevine for three decades has buzzed periodically with news of some tremendous loss by the philosophical Greek. Many of his fellows in the industry, while recognizing his abilities and admiring his nerve, look on him as something of a sucker.

This stems from Nick’s passionate pride in his position as the country’s number 1 gambler. He frankly delights as being known as a "great guy" from coast to coast. He is continually offering choicer odds than the next man, or taking on wagers which he has a less than fair chance of winning, just because he wants to be known for having more nerve than his rivals.

His most unsound practice, according to other men who follow the wagering business, is his practice of giving high action to players who have very little to lose. Gamblers never like to tangle with an opponent from whom they can’t win a substantial amount, but Nick is always risking his big roll against somebody’s small one.

Once he took the train in Los Angeles for a trip to New York. He loved to play cards on the train, but the only acquaintance he encountered in a canvas of the cars was Mike Lyman, a younger brother of the popular orchestra leader, Abe Lyman. In reply to Nick’s invitation to play some cards, Lyman responded frankly that he had only enough money for the trip and it would be foolish for the well-heeled Greek to waste his time.

Nick didn’t care. "Consider that you have a thousand dollars of credit with me," he offered. "I’ll trust you."

So they played almost constantly across the continent, trying all the popular two-handed games – casino, rummy, pinochle, etc. When their train drew into Grand Central Terminal, The Greek was out exactly $ 97,000.

Nick opened his suitcase, counted out 97 thousand-dollar notes, and handed them over to his astonished but happy opponent. Gamblers will tell you that no other man in the business would have paid such a debt under those circumstances.

Lest this apparent discrepancy in the ratio between winning and losing give the impression that the Greek was always on the unlucky end, it must be remembered that he won big money often. "But," as one of his long-time rivals expressed it, "Anybody can win in gambling and take the money gracefully. There are few who can lose and pay up without a squawk of some kind, and Nick is the champion of champions at that."

Although Nick has been on the most intimate terms with all the biggest gang leaders in America, the only record of Dandolas being arrested was the result of a police raid on a joint in Chicago. It occurred on November 21, 1920, and the newspaper accounts of Dandolas’ appearance in court provide a somewhat incongruous end to the episode. The Greek and several other gambling customers were all taken into custody on the customary chargers of vagrancy and having no visible means of support, the statue under which bums and beggars are always judged. The judge held them all on $ 500 bail.

Nick reached under his coat and produced a money belt. From it he extracted a handful of thousand-dollar bills and put up bail for the whole crowd. At the request of the reporters who surrounded him as he left the courtroom, he counted the money in the belt, and there was better than $ 350,000.

The one gambler in the whole country who most nearly matched the fabulous Dandolas as a personality was Titanic Thompson, and for several years the two were great buddies. Titanic was a steel-nerved westerner out of Oklahoma, and was an excellent card player at any game from rummy to bridge.

Titanic was always framing up freak bets with which to clip suckers. As an example, The Greek cites an episode in which even he was victimized. Titanic and he were walking down Broadway one day when they passed a peanut stand.

"I’ll bet I can throw one of these peanuts to the top of a six-story building," he remarked to The Greek. It was a windy day, and Nick knew such a feat was impossible. He bet $ 500 against Thompson, who proceeded to throw the tiny nut straight and true to the top of a building that loomed above them.

Dandolas learned later that Titanic had a special peanut in his pockets for such wagers; it had been carefully broken open, filled with lead, then glued back together. For a man like Titanic, it was a simple matter to palm the real peanut and throw the lead-filled pellet.

Nick didn’t mind such peccadilloes on the part of Titanic, for he found the Oklahoman good company, and even admired his ingenuity. In later years, however, their friendship came to an end.

Though Nick started out playing a form of poker known as "propositions," he later found a game that was not as slow,and thus more his speed.

It was the celebrated past- time of shooting craps. The dice soon found an energetic press agent in Nick, and old-time gamblers agreed that it was The Greek that made it really popular.In those days it was regarded as a rather low form of gaming, and only the sawdust dives included craps tables in their layouts. The game had been introduced to America along the toughest joints along the lower Mississippi and was looked down upon by the proprietors of the snooty establishments.

Nick liked his action rapid, and craps, where one roll can tell the story, was just his dish. He would go to one of the tough spots which had craps tables and announce to the assembled players that he was ready to roll, say, any amount up to $ 50,000. One roll of the dice cost him $ 325,000 in which was probably the largest crap game in history. At any rate, The Greek made a lasting contribution to Americana by lifting the dice game to its present eminence.

In sports betting, Nick has always been partial to baseball. Nick has been very successful at baseball wagers, chiefly because he makes such a study of the game. He examines the past performances of every player in the league he happens to be betting, until he gets to know the idiosyncrasies of each man. He knows on a dark day against certain type of itching, pretty much what a certain batter will do.

It is surprising how often ball players run to form, and after a detailed study such as Nick makes he has a definite edge on the bettor who leaves those things to chance. Nick says baseball runs just true enough to form to be an ideal gambling game, because there are still enough upsets to make it interesting.

As in the old craps shooting days around Chicago, at baseball games Nick as a rule stands off a big crowd, sometimes all the other gamblers on the scene. Betting on the games isn’t the simple matter it seems. It isn’t just a question, with serious diamond bettors, of betting on the outcome of the game. They bet on everything that happens during the game: will the next pitch be a ball or a strike, what will the batter do, and so forth. There is action every minute.

Nick defined his own philosophy one night in New York, better than anyone else could. He had been running into his usual bad Manhattan luck in a dice game and had lost $ 50,000.

Leaving the game, he met a girl and took her to Reisenweber’s, a fashionable nightery of the time. As he led her out to the dance floor, laughing and making suitable small talk, two men who had lost a few thousand in the same game caught sight of The Greek while they were bemoaning their own loses.

"How do you do it, Nick?" asked one of the men. "You lose fifty grand, and it doesn’t mean a thing." "I tell you, boys" answered Nick, "the greatest pleasure in life is gambling and winning. The next greatest pleasure is gambling and losing."