Told You
IF THE SLOT MACHINE HASN"T PAID OFF ALL DAY, IT"S DUE Sorry, Mom. You"re a victim of what math professors call the "gambler"s fallacy." And while it"s possible that some olden-days mechanical slot machines may have responded to continuous play, today"s computer chipdriven slots have no "memory" of previous plays. That means every pull is a brand-new game. Slot makers even claim their machines could pay off 19 times in a row, or not for years. A corollary to the gambler"s fallacy is that things that happen in the long run should also happen in the short run. It ain"t so. Oh, and for those of you still a little green to the machines, a "95% average payback" doesn"t mean everyone who puts in $100 gets $95 back. Just think on it for a sec: a player who puts in $10 and wins $100 has a 900% payback. That means a lot of other players on the same machine are going to have a very small, or no, payback just to get the percentage back down to 95. There"s a reason the house always wins.
_05:: The Trench Coat Job It was past quitting time when two men wearing b.u.t.toned-up trench coats let themselves into the Seafirst Bank in Lakewood, Washington, a suburb of Tacoma. Flashing a gun, the pair stuffed 355 pounds of cash$4.46 millioninto sacks and made a clean getaway. Insane, right? The 1997 heist was actually the largest bank robbery in U.S. history, but this wasn"t the work of amateurs. Nope. Ray Bowman and William Kirkpatrick were real pros. In fact, between 1982 and 1998, Bowman and Kirkpatrick were believed to have robbed 28 banks around the country for a total of more than $7 million. Even more impressive: only once was there gunfire, and no one was hurt. A special FBI task force was formed, but it was stupidity that finally tripped them up. Kirkpatrick was stopped for speeding in late 1998 by a Nebraska state trooper. A search of the car turned up four handguns, fake badges, two ski masksand $1.8 million in cash. Meanwhile, Bowman had failed to pay the rent on a storage locker in Kansas City, Missouri. When the owner opened it, and found a virtual armory of guns, he called the cops, and they collared Bowman at his suburban Kansas City home a few weeks after Kirkpatrick"s arrest. The dapper duo was convicted in 1999, with Bowman getting slapped with 24 years, Kirkpatrick with 15.
Always Bet on the House:
5 Failed Attempts to Loot Las Vegas
Not all the bandits in Sin City are one-armed. Here are a few different ways people have tried to beat the odds.
_01:: A Little off the Top Here"s how it worked. In the 1970s, the Mob coerced the Teamsters Union into making loans to a San Diego businessman buying four casinos in Vegas. As hidden partners, Mob bosses then "skimmed" millions of dollars from the joints by rigging slots so they showed winners when there were none, or by fixing scales so they underweighed coins. One estimate had the wise guys swiping $7 million in quarters in just one 18-month period. In the end, though, federal wiretaps and informants broke the scam. The Feds even tapped conversations between mobsters in the visitors room at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and in 1986, a dozen bosses from gangs in Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Cleveland were convicted in the biggest Mob-Vegas case ever.
_02:: Playing Your Cards Right Blackjack is a beatable gamethat is, if you can count cards well enough to know when the deck favors the player, not the house. And while solitary card counters are relatively easy to spot for most casino security outfits, it took them six years during the 1990s to tumble to the strategy used by a group of MIT students. Using card-counting teams, complete with diversionary playersthe cavalier math-letes raked in millions. One player recounted walking from one casino to another carrying a paper hat stuffed with $180,000 in cash. Amazingly, the MIT ring was never actually caught in the act. Some members retired. A few others were ratted out by a team traitor and banned from the casinos, which learned a lesson about the concept of team play.
_03:: The Genius Like a football quarterback, Dennis Nikrasch needed his blockers. In Nikrasch"s case, however, they were blocking surveillance cameras while he worked his sweet computer magic on slot machines. Once the machines were rigged, the clever hacker vacated the premises, leaving it to confederates to win the jackpots. Cops have reported that the Nikrasch gang raked in at least $16 million between 1976 and 1998, even with a 10-year time-out while Nikrasch spent time in federal prison and on parole. When he was caught again in 1998, Nikrasch indicated that he"d share his secrets in return for a lighter sentence. He got seven yearsand apparently refused to talk. "I have no desire to explain anything to the public," he wrote to an Internet magazine in 1999 from jail. "Never smarten up a chump."
_04:: The Mechanic Starting in 1980 in the back of his TV repair shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tommy Glenn Carmichael invented, refined, then manufactured devices for cheating slot machines. Tommy"s bag of tricks ranged from coins on strings to light wands that blinded machine sensors, fooling them into dropping their coins. For most of two decades, Carmichael and his partners raked in millions of dollars. But his luck finally ran out when federal agents tapped his phone and heard him discussing a new device that would rack up hundreds of credits per minute on slot machines. In 2001, Carmichael was sentenced to about a year in jail, and was ordered to stay out of casinos. In 2003, he told an a.s.sociated Press reporter he was developing a new gadget, called "the Protector." It was designed to stop slot cheaters.
_05:: And If All Else Fails...
Jose Vigoa was one c.o.c.ky crook. After doing a five-year stint from 1991 to 1996 for drug dealing, Vigoa decided to change career paths in 1998. Well, only slightly. As the mastermind of a string of armed robberies over two years that rocked the Vegas Strip, Vigoa armed his outfit with high-tech weapons, body armor, and sophisticated planning. In fact, the Vigoa gang hit up the MGM Grand, the Desert Inn, the Mandalay Bay, and the Bellagio. Not looking to slack off, they even robbed an armored car in between gigs, and killed the two guards. Vigoa was tripped up, however, when video cameras at the Bellagio caught him without a mask during the robbery. He was sentenced in 2002 to life without parole, proving crime doesn"t pay, even in Vegas.
My Kingdom for a Horse?
3 Really Bad Historical Trades
We"ve all made deals from time to time that we"ve instantly wished we could take back. But take heart, friends! Gather round and hear the tales of some of the worst barters in human history. With so much numbskullery to choose from, there"s bound to be someone who made a worse bargain than you did.
_01:: Ephialtes Sells Out the Spartans n.o.body really remembers Ephialtes today, but for centuries after his treasonous deeds, Greeks would spit at the mere mention of his name. Here"s how the story goes. In 480 BCE, about 7,000 Greek soldiers, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, were holding off King Xerxes" Persian army of over 200,000 men at the narrow pa.s.s of Thermopylae. Not exactly the greatest odds, but the troops were buying time for the allied Greek states to gather their armies and oppose the Persians. Enter Ephialtes, a local ne"er-do-well, and now renowned snitch. The Greek traitor decided to show the Persians a secret path around the pa.s.s, which would allow them to attack the Greeks from behind. A splendid little secret indeed. Facing attack from both sides, Leonidas sent most of his allies home, and he and his Spartans fought to the death. Of course, Ephialtes was supposed to have been rewarded handsomely for this tattling, no doubt with land, gold, and t.i.tles. But when an Athenian fleet destroyed the Persian navy at Thermopylae shortly thereafter, he had to flee the Persian camp without a penny to his name. After all, King Xerxes wasn"t exactly in the rewarding mood at the time. On bad terms with the Persians, and wanted by the Greeks for his treason, the rascal fled to the wilds of Thessaly, where a few years later he was murdered.
_02:: The Dutch Buy Manhattan for a Pittance In 1626, Peter Minuit, a representative of the Dutch government, bought Manhattan Island from an Algonquin tribe for 60 guilders. The old story about the Dutch buying the joint for 24 bucks" worth of beads is unlikelythere is no evidence that beads were part of the deal (iron tools were probably much more valuable to the natives). Nevertheless, considering the fact that a s...o...b..x-sized apartment on the isle today sells for more than most people make in a lifetime, it seems that the Algonquins somewhat undervalued their own real estate. Only in America.
_03:: Cincinnati Gets Hosed: The Christy MathewsonAmos Rusie Trade Forget the Curse of the Bambino. Compared with this gaffe by the Cincinnati Reds, Boston"s decision to trade Babe Ruth (and the subsequent 86-year curse) looks like a carefully orchestrated work of managerial genius. In 1900, the Reds traded relative newcomer and Renaissance man Christopher "Christy" Mathewson to the New York Giants for the ailing "Hoosier Thunderbolt," Amos Rusie. Following this brilliant move, Mathewson won 372 games for the Giants, including more than 20 games in 11 different seasons. He won wide renown as one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. Rusie, on the other hand, pitched in three games following the trade, losing one and winning nonefollowing which he promptly retired.
Touch of Evil Manhattan for beads? No. The worst trade made between the Europeans and the Native Americans was much more gruesome: Europeans brought smallpox to America, which the Indians traded for syphilis!
An Offer I Can"t Refuse:
6 Generals Who Switched Sides
in the Hopes of Reward
Military turncoats come in all shapes and sizes, motivated by all sorts of considerations: power, revenge, disillusionment, and, most often, the sound of a little extra coin. But not every turncoat seems to bear the tarnished rep old Benedict Arnold came away with. The following are some of history"s lesser-known traitors, but ones who were pleased with the results.
_01:: Flavius Josephus (ca. 37100) Revolutionary governments, caught up in the heat of the moment, often make poor decisions. For example, the Jewish rebels fighting against Rome appointed Joseph ben Matthias to be military governor of Galilee. An inveterate coward, however, Joseph surrendered at the first opportunity and became the Roman general Flavius Vespasia.n.u.s"s adviser on Jewish affairs. A nice gig, for sure. And when Flavius became emperor in the year 69, Joseph (or Josephus, as his new pals called him) found himself vaulted to the top of Roman high society. After trying to encourage the surrender of Jerusalem by shouting propaganda at the walls, he retired to Rome and became a famous author. The guilt of his treason may have caught up with old Josephus in his old age; he penned numerous writings lauding Jewish civilization, possibly to try to clear his conscience.
_02:: Alaric (ca. 370410) A n.o.bleman of the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe living in central Europe, Alaric fought for the Roman emperor Theodosius I against the rebel Eugenius. The brilliant decision to hire Alaric, though, gave the cunning n.o.bleman an insider"s view of the empire"s weaknesses, and he took careful note. When Theodosius died in 395, the empire was divided into eastern and western halves ruled by his quarreling sonsand Alaric decided opportunity wasn"t just knocking, it was practically kicking down his door. Alaric marched on Constantinople and ravaged the Thracian countryside, capturing most of Greece before the Roman general Stilicho forced him to withdraw. Soon after, the eastern emperor Arcadius gave Alaric control of most of Illyria, all of which paved the way for his first invasion of Italy in 401. Alaric invaded the nation of his former employment several more times, and in 410 he became the first "barbarian" king to sack Rome in over 500 years. Though Alaric died in a plague in his 40s, his descendents carved out an empire of their own in what is now southern France, Spain, and Portugal.
_03:: Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar (El Cid, Campeador) (10431099) His very t.i.tle speaks of a checkered past: El Cid comes from the Arabic al-Sayyid, or "the lord," while Campeador is Spanish for "champion." Back when it all started, El Cid was a commander in the army of Castile. Of course, the c.o.c.ky commander wasn"t all roses to work with, and the Cid was forced to flee in 1080 after angering King Alfonso. What"s an out-of-work commander to do, though? El Cid quickly decided to shack up with the enemy, joining forces with the Muslim emir (king) of Zaragosa. Despite the emir"s cantankerous relationship with Castile, El Cid fought valiantly with his former foes for several years. That is, until Spain was invaded by Berber fanatics from North Africa. Bathing in schadenfreude, El Cid was summoned back by Alfonso, profusely apologized to, and begged to defeat the seemingly invincible invaders. El Cid accepted, and in the course of the fighting, "the Champion" maneuvered himself into the top spot in Valencia, the gem of Spain"s Mediterranean coast. He died in 1099 fighting off a new wave of North African attackers, but even after his death proved useful. The city"s defenders strapped the Cid"s rapidly-a.s.suming-room-temperature form to the back of his horse and managed to trick the enemies into thinking El Cid, Campeador, was still in charge.
_04:: Francesco Sforza (14011466) Warfare in 15th-century Italy was dominated by the condottieri, mercenary generals who commanded motley crews of hungry soldiers. Of course, the soldiers for hire weren"t exactly loved by everyone, and were seen as particularly uncouth by those gallant few who fought for land instead of money. The son of one of the most successful of the condottieri, Francesco Sforza was known for his great strength: reportedly, he could bend iron bars with his bare hands. Of course, as a mercenary, his loyalties were just as easily bent. After signing on with various feudal lords in their endless wars, he settled down in Milan and joined forces with Filippo Visconti, the local duke. On Visconti"s death in 1447, however, Francesco turned on the duke"s family and exiled or killed many of them. He also broke up an attempt to establish a Milanese republic, and then made himself duke. It"s not nearly as bad as it sounds, though. Francesco went on to usher in nearly two decades of the best rule Milan had ever seen.
Touch of Evil The three Generals who have the most impact on the Department of Defense? General Dynamics, General Electric, and General Motors, all of which are among the companies with the most money tied up in military contracts.
_05:: Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein (15831634) A minor, though well-educated, Czech n.o.bleman, Wallenstein became an officer in the armies of the Holy Roman Empire. He fought numerous battles against Venice and other powers and gained a reputation for military genius. But when his fellow Protestants rebelled against the empire in 1618, ushering in the Thirty Years" War, imperial generals worked themselves into a tizzy fearing that they would face Wallenstein on the field. They needn"t have worried, though. A man whose eye was always on the bottom line, Wallenstein calculated that the rewards of serving the Catholic side of the war were greater. He helped crush Protestant armies in his native Bohemia as well as in western and northern Germany. Removed from command in 1630 on suspicion of preparing to switch sides, he was reinstated shortly thereafter on the rationale that a general thought to be disloyal was probably better than generals known to be incompetent. In retrospect, however, the reasoning was questionable, as Wallenstein was killed in 1634 while attempting to defect to the Swedes.
_06:: Shi Lang (16211696) An admiral in the navy of China"s Ming dynasty, Shi Lang came into conflict with Zheng Chenggong, a rival general. Deciding that the gra.s.s looked greener up north, he defected in 1646 to the Manchus, and left his family behind to be slaughtered as traitors. Was it worth the (very literal) sacrifice? Apparently so. Lacking experienced naval officers, the Manchu ruler Shunzhi welcomed Shi Lang with open arms, and the officer happily partic.i.p.ated in the Manchu conquest of China. In fact, he became an official of the new Qing dynasty, made up of Shunzhi"s descendents. Then, in 1681, he even got to lead the conquest of Taiwan, which culminated in the surrender of his old enemies, the Zheng family. In the end, Shi Lang made out pretty well, and was given the t.i.tle "General Who Maintains Peace on the Seas" by a very grateful imperial government.
3 Double-crossing Agents
(and the Countries That Paid Them)
In the trust-no-one world of espionage, an operative for one government may in fact be working for that government"s enemy, and vice versa. Of course, the most successful double agents are the ones no one ever heard of. A few of the rest are listed below.
_01:: Numero Trece An officer in the American Revolution, James Wilkinson moved after the war to Kentucky, where in 1787 he pledged loyalty to Spain. In return for a Spanish pension, Wilkinson (or "Numero 13" to his Spanish handlers) worked to make Kentucky part of Spanish Louisiana. Of course, Wilkinson had his fingers in a few pies at the time, and was simultaneously being promoted to lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1800, Wilkinson became a U.S. territorial governor, and began conspiring with U.S. vice president Aaron Burr to found an independent nation in Mexico. But like a good double-crosser, he"s the one credited with exposing Burr"s plot to President Thomas Jefferson, leading to Burr"s trial for treason. Wilkinson emerged from the scandal with honor intact and commanded U.S. troops in the War of 1812. His incompetence, however, ended his U.S. service and he moved to Mexico, where he pet.i.tioned for and won a Texas land grant.
_02:: The Family That Spies Together...
In 1967, John Walker Jr., a petty burglar and U.S. Navy radioman, walked into the Soviet emba.s.sy in Washington, D.C., and offered to supply encryption keystools for decoding cla.s.sified military messagesin exchange for a regular salary from the KGB. For the next 18 years, during and after his Navy career, Walker continued to work for the Soviets. When a transfer removed his access to cla.s.sified codes and doc.u.ments, he enlisted help from others, including his brother and his son. In fact, Walker talked his kid, Michael, into enlisting in the Navy just to pilfer shipboard doc.u.ments. KGB officers later said that Walker had given them access to the most vital U.S. secrets. When the FBI finally caught up with him in 1984, Walker thought he could avoid prosecution by offering to turn the table on the Soviets. Under interrogation, however, he confessed, and is serving a life term in federal prison.
_03:: For a Fistful of Millions Before his arrest in 1994, career CIA agent Aldrich "Rick" Ames exposed the ident.i.ty of every U.S. agent working in the Soviet Union and its successor states. And the leak was used to full effect. Between 1985 and 1994, the Soviets executed at least 10 CIA operatives based solely on the info Aldrich and his Colombian-born wife were feeding them. A 31-year employee of the U.S. intelligence agency, Ames"s job had been to discover Soviet spies within the agency. But like a fox guarding the henhouse, Aldrich betrayed his country and traded the lives of his comrades for a mere $2.5 million. Top government officials said the damage to U.S. security was potentially catastrophic. After pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit espionage and tax fraud, Ames was sentenced to life imprisonment without chance of parole.
Touch of Evil Benedict Arnold probably wished he could"ve had a do-over. He never got even half the money the British promised him for switching sides.
ALAN FREED"S HORRIBLE-TERRIBLE,
NO-GOOD, VERY BAD DAY.
On March 21, 1952, the Moondog Coronation Ball took place at the Cleveland Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, becoming the first rock-and-roll concert in history. The concert, which was promoted by Alan Freed (known for giving rock and roll its name), was also the event where the first rock-and-roll riot occurred. Why, exactly? Well, the concert hall only held around 10,000 people while over 20,000 tickets were sold. Also, even though most of the artists performing were African American, the fans able to get inside were white while those left outside were black. There was gate crashing and fights broke out between groups of fans and then quickly with the police. When the police finally closed down the concert, fans spilled out onto the streets of Cleveland, causing chaos and damage. As for Alan Freed, he was summarily arrested for inciting the riot. It seems that from day one, rock and roll and rioting were destined to happen together.
To the Victors Go the Soils: History"s
5 Most Blatant Land Grabs
G.o.d supposedly issued a commandment against it, and yet people have been stealing from each other since the world began. And sometimes on a ridiculously large scale. Here are just a few of the more outrageous instances.
_01:: Prussia, Austria, and Russia Part.i.tion Poland Internal divisions accelerated by a ridiculous parliamentary system led to Poland"s decline in the 18th century, and its neighborsPrussia to the west, Austria to the south, and Russia to the eastwere more than happy to bite off a large part of the struggling nation in the "First Part.i.tion" of 1772. All told, the nations usurped about half of its territory and a third of its population. In an attempt to save itself, the Polish government tried to inst.i.tute internal reforms, but it was too little too late. In the "Second Part.i.tion," in 1793, Prussia and Russia took even more land, causing Polish rebellions that they quickly crushed. As if that weren"t enough, the "Third Part.i.tion," in 1797, had Austria partic.i.p.ating again, and it finished off Poland as a separate state. The nation wouldn"t be independent again until 1918. And shortly thereafter, to add insult to injury, the n.a.z.is and Soviets part.i.tioned the country one last time, in 1939.
_02:: America Takes Most of the West from Mexico In 1776, the 13 colonies covered about 900,000 square miles along the east coast of North America. Over the course of the next 75 years, the country would expand 300%, to about 2.9 million square miles, through five international treaties, two wars, and the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Though the Purchase was a legitimate exchange of propertyexcept for the claims of Native American inhabitants, of course, who were never really consultedmuch of the later expansion was a blatant illegitimate land grab. The Mexican-American War of 1846, for example, began in part because slave owners in the American South wanted to add Texas as a new slave-owning territory. The war resulted in the transfer of all of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and large parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming to the U.S., all for a rather paltry payment of $15 million.
_03:: j.a.pan Invades Manchuria and Then the Rest of Asia In the decades before 1931, j.a.pan needed iron ore and coal to outfit its rapidly expanding military and industrial base. On September 18, 1931, j.a.pan invaded Manchuria, a large mineral-rich province in northern China. Of course, the invasion was justified. Sort of. j.a.panese officers fabricated an excuse for the war by blowing up a section of the j.a.panese-owned South Manchurian Railway and blaming Chinese saboteurs. The move was just the first in a long series of aggressive actions that would bring much of Asia under j.a.panese control, including unprovoked attacks on Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Nanking in south China, the occupation of many of China"s coastal provinces, the sneak attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor, and shortly thereafter the invasion and occupation of the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and New Guinea! Though estimates vary, it"s certain that tens of millions of people died as a result of the j.a.panese aggression, which ended only with the country"s defeat in the Second World War.
Touch of Evil Colombia rejected a $10 million offer by the U.S. for the rights to build a ca.n.a.l across its land, so a "rebel force" was quickly organized, which broke free and became the country of Panama (with U.S. military support). The rebels got the bucks, and Teddy Roosevelt got his ca.n.a.l.
_04:: Cecil Rhodes, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Zambia Cecil Rhodes single-handedly added the modern countries of Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Zambia to British South Africa. Hardly content to stop there, Rhodes once famously declared, "I would annex the planets if I could." Rhodes moved to the British Cape Colony in South Africa in 1870 at the age of 17 and founded the British South Africa Company, which began at South Africa"s diamond-rich Kimberly mine and is now known as DeBeers. The company began expanding north into the tribal lands of present-day Zimbabwe in 1889, and subdued recalcitrant tribes there by force in 1893. The new territory was called Rhodesia in Rhodes"s honor. Meanwhile, in 1890, company agents made treaties with local tribal leaders in present-day Zambia. Botswana was brought under British control after the controversial Boer War from 1899 to 1902. In the end, Cecil Rhodes had single-handedly taken control of an area more than three times the size of France.
_05:: Germany Invades Belgium in World War I At the London Conference of 18381839, all the major European powers agreed to protect the neutrality of the small, newly created country of Belgium. However, as time went on Germany claimed that Belgium was not behaving as a neutral country because it had fortified its border with Germany but not with France. Although Belgium had a sovereign right to do this, a contingency plan for war with France was devised by General von Schlieffen in the 19th century, calling for a pincer offensive closing in on Paris, with one arm coming south across the Rhineintended as a feintand another arm launching a surprise attack from the north through Belgium. This plan was finally set in motion during the First World War, meeting with almost universal condemnation because it so blatantly disregarded treaty obligations and the rules of warfare, marking a new low in international relations and heralding the brutality to come.