Gambling Memoir

This is the inside story of the infamous Clermont Set: five friends who became the most stylish and exclusive gamblers in 1960s London. They included the Clermont Club's eccentric founder John Aspinall; Dominic Elwes, who was to betray the set's code of silence; the socialite owner of Annabel's, Mark Birley; flamboyant playboy James Goldsmith; and the infamous Lord "Lucky" Lucan.

Stuart Wheeler went to Eton and Oxford. He was an officer in the Welsh Guards, a barrister, an investment banker, and a major donor to the Conservative Party. You might think that he has led a life of impeccably conformist upper-class respectability. You’d be wrong. For Wheeler is also an illegitimate child adopted at the age of two and a devoted gambler who has been thrown out of more than one Las Vegas casino. He gave William Hague’s Conservatives £5 million (still the biggest political donation in British history) before being expelled from the Tories and joining UKIP.

Prohibition. Mobsters, murder, and mayhem. FBI agents. Cops, robbers, and worse. Sound like the background for a Hollywood epic? It's Ernest Marquez's latest very true story of the renowned gambling ships that anchored in Santa Monica Bay in the 1920s and 1930s. It's the story of Tony Cornero, the cockiest gangster who ever bootlegged a bottle of scotch, the man who helped found Las Vegas, and the smooth operator of the most glamorous gambling ship in the Pacific, the Rex.

Most of us think of bowling as a "sport" in quotation marks, and bowling alleys are places with disco balls, matching shirts, and funny shoes. But in the 1960s, New York City was the center of "action bowling", a form of high-stakes gambling in which bowlers - often teenagers - faced off for thousands of dollars every night. When money like that is changing hands, you can bet the pressure is on (and the balls are rigged), and losses come with dire consequences.

Do you have to be lucky to win a lottery jackpot prize? My biggest win was just under thirty thousand dollars! My following two jackpots hit for a combined total of over twenty-four thousand dollars! I hit the 8 Spot with the bulls-eye on California’s Hot Spot Lottery game. It’s the Golden State's version of Keno! Now that I’ve found my rhythm, I’m staying on beat. Let’s take a trip down memory lane as I share my tips and tricks on this complex, exciting, eclectic game of numbers, odds, and strategic moves where timing is everything!