Largest Gambling Upswing Ever Documented

JAM

JAM

I am the storm
Silver Member

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Though today Archie Karas is known for turning 50 bucks into $40 million, he is also a pool shark. I do wonder if anybody knows some tales from his pool days.

After arriving in America, he worked at a restaurant in Los Angeles which was next to a bowling alley and a pool hall. There he honed his pool skills and eventually made more money playing pool than he did as a waiter. When his victims from the pool hall thinned out, he went to Los Angeles card rooms to play poker.


According to Wikipedia, they do mention he's, indeed, also a pool shark ---> HERE
 

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JAM said:
Though today Archie Karas is known for turning 50 bucks into $40 million, he is also a pool shark. I do wonder if anybody knows some tales from his pool days.

After arriving in America, he worked at a restaurant in Los Angeles which was next to a bowling alley and a pool hall. There he honed his pool skills and eventually made more money playing pool than he did as a waiter. When his victims from the pool hall thinned out, he went to Los Angeles card rooms to play poker.


According to Wikipedia, they do mention he's, indeed, also a pool shark ---> HERE
Click to expand...

Dee Adkins posted a story about them gambling on FB. I believe there are some stories on this site as well.
 
Isn't Archie the same guy that Freddie the banker (couldn't spell his last name if my life depended on it...) hustled up in the NE for loads of cash where he got paid in poker chips that were like 25K a piece?
 
archiewas living in his car,sleeping in his carwhen i met him
his pool was nothing special i asked him to play and we all know i play below average

we could not match up
he went on to win $40000000

we tried to match up again but he felt like i was better than him,in spite of what everyone tried to tell him

next timei met him.he was broke sleeping in his car

next time he offered to teach me how to win at craps
but the lesson was for him to take my $10,000 and split the profit

it looked like i was staking a crap shooter

after careful analysis i demurred
 
Really likable guy--although I don't know him real well. He's wandered into Hardtimes a couple of times over the years for action. Sold him a few cheap cues several years back with no hassles at all. I have great respect for him as a gambler.
 
JAM said:
Though today Archie Karas is known for turning 50 bucks into $40 million, he is also a pool shark. I do wonder if anybody knows some tales from his pool days.

After arriving in America, he worked at a restaurant in Los Angeles which was next to a bowling alley and a pool hall. There he honed his pool skills and eventually made more money playing pool than he did as a waiter. When his victims from the pool hall thinned out, he went to Los Angeles card rooms to play poker.


According to Wikipedia, they do mention he's, indeed, also a pool shark ---> HERE
Click to expand...

Archie's first love was pool. He realized pool didn't have real big action, so he turned to cards. He still played pool once in a while, if he could get a large enough game with a wealthy enthusiast. Archie was not a real strong player so he had to pick his games carefully. A few talented players were able to sneak up on him, including Freddie the Beard.

Even one of my pool teammates tried to move on him. He got a game with Archie and when the stakes reached a couple thousand a game, he turned it on thinking this is easy money. A few run outs later Archie pulls up and said, "You got me, didn't you?" The total take was $18,000. What my teammate didn't realize was Archie was good for over $100,000 at the time. Naturally, my teammates' backer was not real happy.
 
caught again

When I first heard about him running $50 into $40,000,000, I was awestruck....
then later I hear about how he keeps getting caught cheating (this is about the 4th time that I heard of), it makes me wonder if he was mainly cheating his way to the $40,000,000. Then for him to lose it all back; man, that is degen...
 
I used to play Archie one pocket in the early seventies. I gave him 11/4 for a decent amount per game. I was a regular winner at this game. One time he asked to play nine ball but I didn't have a clue what I could give him so he talked me into giving him the three out, seven ahead for 1k. They counted on the break for him.

I had no clue how this would wind up but gave him the game anyway for fear of losing the chance to continue playing one pocket. I got to the hill game a couple of times and thought I could win the set so I asked him to double the bet but after about 18 hours the weight was too hard to fade. I worked hard to win my games and he would get them back just by breaking the balls. I should have stipulated that only some of the balls would count on the break. He finally got me.

Archie was always a gentleman and showed a lot of class. I talked to him after he had lost all of the millions back and I asked him "Archie what were you thing about losing all that money back" He then told me that he was trying to win controlling interest in that casino. One thing a lot of people don't know is that he speaks fluent Spanish.

He then asked me if I wanted to stake him for 3k in a private game that night. I declined thinking that the 3k might be gone in less that 10 minutes because of the way he played.
 
JAM said:
Though today Archie Karas is known for turning 50 bucks into $40 million, he is also a pool shark. I do wonder if anybody knows some tales from his pool days.

After arriving in America, he worked at a restaurant in Los Angeles which was next to a bowling alley and a pool hall. There he honed his pool skills and eventually made more money playing pool than he did as a waiter. When his victims from the pool hall thinned out, he went to Los Angeles card rooms to play poker.


According to Wikipedia, they do mention he's, indeed, also a pool shark ---> HERE
Click to expand...

Archie was a regular around the LA action rooms in the 70s/80s and we played many times. You could not hustle Archie. If you were not one of the guys he wanted to play that day he would have nothing to do with you. If he did want to play you, he was relentless trying to match up a game. We both hung around the pool room at Five Points Bowl in El Monte and The Golden Cue in Rosemead before it moved to South El Monte.

Archie would break cues sometimes when he went off and early in his pool playing days that was often. He could get the nuts because he was such a good score and sometimes just get helpless and go off with the best of it. He finally got over it but he was a go off for quite a while. He liked to play with Tad cues and one day after booking a loser at the Golden Cue, he snapped it over his knee and threw it in the trash can. One of the regulars was an electrician who wired all the machines for Tad. He took the cue to Tad and had it fixed and it became his playing cue. Some time later Archie had a new Tad, went off again and snapped the cue again. He was getting ready to throw it away and looked at John, the guy who now had his old cue, and took the cue outside and layed it against he curb and jumped on it, breaking it in several places. He brought it back into the pool room, dumped it in the trash can by John and said "Fix that".

He was and is quite a character and spiced up he action wherever he went.
 
I've got a story about Archie (a fairly long one) in my new book, including a synopsis of how he won all that money and what he did with it. We ended up playing for a thousand a game in my poolroom. He had about 50K in his pockets at that time. I won't tell you here how it came out, but we played three times in one week.
 
jrhendy said:
Archie was a regular around the LA action rooms in the 70s/80s and we played many times. You could not hustle Archie. If you were not one of the guys he wanted to play that day he would have nothing to do with you. If he did want to play you, he was relentless trying to match up a game. We both hung around the pool room at Five Points Bowl in El Monte and The Golden Cue in Rosemead before it moved to South El Monte.

Archie would break cues sometimes when he went off and early in his pool playing days that was often. He could get the nuts because he was such a good score and sometimes just get helpless and go off with the best of it. He finally got over it but he was a go off for quite a while. He liked to play with Tad cues and one day after booking a loser at the Golden Cue, he snapped it over his knee and threw it in the trash can. One of the regulars was an electrician who wired all the machines for Tad. He took the cue to Tad and had it fixed and it became his playing cue. Some time later Archie had a new Tad, went off again and snapped the cue again. He was getting ready to throw it away and looked at John, the guy who now had his old cue, and took the cue outside and layed it against he curb and jumped on it, breaking it in several places. He brought it back into the pool room, dumped it in the trash can by John and said "Fix that".

He was and is quite a character and spiced up he action wherever he went.
Click to expand...

Oh, my! :eek:

I'm always interested in legal matters, and I just learned about Archie's recent legal battle on this. Naturally, I had to dig a little deeper and find out more. The only thing I can say is it really is a small pool world sometimes. :)

Nikos the Greek is making a name for himself. The Greeks are on the rise. ;)
 
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