Читать книгу Great Gambling Scams - Howard Monte/Nigel Montgomery - Страница 5

Gambling has been around for centuries and has encompassed all walks of life. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the aristocracy famously enjoyed their flutters and some went spectacularly broke trying to beat the odds. More recently, a couple of financial advisors have been jailed after losing millions of pounds of clients’ money backing outcomes unsuccessfully on the internet. And, while all this is going on, gambling cheats in all walks of life continue to conjure up new formulas to deprive their victims of their hard-earned cash.

The thing that strikes me about gambling is that it is all self-taught. If you want to learn languages, acting, singing, cooking or flower arranging, you’ll find a plethora of choices of ways to go about it in your local paper, from private tuition to night classes. But gambling? No. You pick it up as you go along. Learn by your mistakes. Which makes cheating at it even more spectacular, because first you have to learn the rules, and then you have to learn how to break them.

In this book there are 13 true stories about some of the more spectacular gambling scams that have occurred all over the world over the past century or so. There is also a comprehensive glossary of gambling terminology at the end.

Enjoy. If you gamble already, it may well change the way you play. And, if you don’t, it will put you on your guard before you do.

Bonne chance!

Nigel Goldman

Spain, 2007