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Not to be confused with many namesakes, Ronald Dale ‘Ron’ Harris is former Nevada Gaming Control Board (GCB) technician who was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, of which he served two, after pleading guilty to four counts of rigging slot machine in Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe in 1996. Harris modified slot machines to pay out when a certain combination of coins was inserted, allowing him and three associates to illegally win jackpots of, at least, $42,000, although the exact amount scammed from the casinos is unknown. Unsurprisingly, Harris was placed on the Excluded Person List, making him the first former Nevada GCB employee to be so listed.

In January, 1995, one of Harris’ associates, Reid McNeal, won a $100,000 jackpot playing keno at Bally’s Park Place Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. However, his apparent lack of emotion, and identification, aroused suspicion and a search of his room, which he shared with Harris, revealed a glut of incriminating evidence, including notes handwritten by Harris. Both men were subsequently arrested, McNeal in Atlantic City for criminal attempt, conspiracy and computer theft and Harris in Las Vegas for larceny and being a fugitive from justice.

Nicholas ‘Nick’ Dandolos, affectionately known as ‘Nick The Greek’, was a Greek professional gambler who once said, ‘The next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing’. That philosophy was reflected by his gambling career, in which, by his own estimation, he won and lost around $500 million and went from rags to riches, and back again, on dozens of occasions.

Born in Rethymnon, on the Greek island of Crete, in 1883, Dandolos travelled to the United States alone, as an 18-year-old, and after a spell in Chicago settled in Montreal, Canada. He was introduced to Canadian jockey Phil Musgrave – who was later killed in an accident at Havre De Grace – and formed a partnership in which he won, and lost, $500,000 in six months. Thereafter, Dandolos travelled throughout the United States, gambling in cities in Illinois, New Orleans, New York and Nevada, garnering a reputation as the ‘Gentleman of Gambling’.

Later in his career, in early 1949, Dandolos played the ‘Grandfather of Poker’, Johnny Moss in an exhausting, five-month, heads-up poker match, arranged by Benny Binion to promote his casino Binion’s Horseshoe, now Binion’s Gambling Hall & Hotel, in Downtown Las Vegas. Finally, having lost $4 million, Dandolos conceded defeat, famously telling his opponent, ‘Mr. Moss, I must let you go.’ Thirteen years after his death, on Christmas Day, 1966, Dandolos was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.