£7,000,000 LOST IN GAME

Evening Star, Issue 20256, 17 August 1929, Page 19

£7,000,000 LOST IN GAME

RECKLESS iILLIOHAiRES FACE RUIN A GREAT PLUNGER’S MEMORIES ' Mr Alec Hassell, well-known sportsman and renowned plunger, describes in the ‘ Sunday Chronicle 1 an amazing episode in the career of one of the greatest gamblers the world has ever known. Four men sat down to play a game of bridge. When the scores came to 'l)6 totalled up for a single hand it was discovered ♦ hat two had lost £‘7,000,000 between them. Seven million pounds lost on a single hand of cards! Two white-faced millionaires, confessing that they could not pay, and that they did not possess that amount of .money in the world. _ A crowd of excited onlookers stunned into silence by the swift drama of the events they had just witnessed. . . This was the amazing scene of which I was a witness on board the ill-fated Cnnard liner Lusitania on one of her voyages from New York to England. The four men who stared dazedly across at each other over the piled-up tricks on the card table were all friends of mine. One was a Mr Cameron, a celebrated sugar planter from the Mauritius; another was Charles C. MacLeod, a sheep king from Australia; the third was-a Californian oil magnate, Mr G. M'Ginnly: and the fourth was Riley Grannon, the greatest gambler I have ever met in rny life. They had participated’ in the most gigantic game of cards in the annals of history. Nobody had intended to play for such stupendous stakes. But once the game started the millionaires threw discretion to the winds, and lost all count of the amount of money involved. This amazing game came about as the result of a friendly invitation to play a few hands of old-fashioned bridge" whist, in which the nominations rest entirely with the dealer and the dealer’s partner, and unlimited doubling is permitted The stakes were a, shilling a point, or £5 a hundred, which is not particularly high play where millionaires are concerned, though you can lose quite a substantial sum of money at a sitting if the cards are against you. After the game had been running fairly evenly for an hour or so two most wonderful hands developed.

DOUBLED TWENTY-SIX TIMES. Immediately tho players began to double each other, and in a few minutes tho opponents had doubled thirteen times each—twenty-six doubles in all. Neither was that the finish. The players had grown so excited that they were determined to back their hands at all costs. “Go slow, for heaven’s sake!” I said, as I realised the tremendous stakes that were piling up. But they would not listen. They had lost all sense of proportion, ail. idea of the enormous .amount of money involved. By this time excited spectators, attracted by the rumour that a big gamble was in progress, had begun to gather .from all parts of tho liner : in a few minutes the players were ringed by a big crowd. LAST CARD DECIDES. Fascinated; they watched the playing of the hands. Tricks fell pretty evenly, and uot till the very last card was played was tho game decided. This took the winning trick lor Riley Grannon and his partner. ' The big shock came when the score was added up. With a pencil and a piece of paper one of the players worked out the result of the doubling. Then his face went pale. “Do you realise how much money is involved in this?” he said quietly. ■“ It runs into millions of pounds.” Amid great excitement it was mathematically proved that the losers, Mr Cameron and Mr MacLeod, had lost over 3$ "million pounds each. “But I can’t pay: I haven’t got as much money as that in the world,’ said Mr Cameron, frankly. It was obvious that such a tremendous debt could not be paid in full, but some sort of settlement bad to be arranged, and a heated controversy ensued. The liabilities were debts of honour, but the colossal nature of _tbc amounts involved were a very serious matter. Arbitrations of one kind and another were proposed, and finally it was agreed that the losers should pav the winners £20,000 each. Thus ended this amazing hand of bridge. ATTACK ON THE BANK. Riley Grannon. who started life as a bell-boy in a Now York hotel, loved nothing so dearly as a gamble. And tho bigger the stakes the better Riley liked it. I Khali never forget the historic occasion when he made a determined assault on the bank at Monte Carlo. Having suddenly decided that he had discovered a roulette system, ho started off for Monte Carlo with a bank roll of portentous proportions, and a letter of credit for another colossal sum. The first day he took £6.000 into the Casino to give his system-a chance, ft didn’t work. Two or three _ days later he opened a now attack with £/ ,000. Again lie had no luck. “Better give it up before you lose all you’ve got,” I advised. But he wouldn’t. “ I’ll win it back yet,” he said. Grannon tried hard, and played with great pluck and resource, but he had to surrender to M. Blanc’s raachines. He was lucky to got out with a loss of £50,000. His was only another of the many ‘‘systems’* I have seen go under. After this experience we went to Cairo, where Grannon met some pokerplaying American millionaires. A game of ‘table stake draw poker was proposed. It was the beginning of a series of games which proved the most exciting I have ever witnessed. THE POKER FACE. Grannon laid down two golden rules for table stake poker. Make your heaviest bet on big cards or big bluffs. A perfect poker player will sit very quietly and raise you the extreme limit on a no-pair hand or an ace-full. If you tried to read his face you would be quite as well off trying to decipher the hieroglyphics oh some Egyptian mummy’s coffin. It was so with Grannon. A little calm smile, cold as the Polar Sea; indifferent to all surroundings; his hank roll pushed up in front of you, challenging your table stake, leaving you wondering'” Has he, or has he not?” Thus he would remain until you threw in or called. Table stakes suit a man of Grannon’s calibre. It offers a wide margin for a bluff or a high raise, and table stake gambling at poker is the finest system for a game player. We had a week of tho wildest poker playing I ever saw. Riley one night was over £50,000 behind, and his millionaire countrymen had been showing some pace. They* had each declared a 50,000d0l table stake* I JKM PP»p%ratjyjply jfiry feuhf.

ble, but 1 had a few thousand airs-ay* in front of me. My friend kept going as undaunted as ever, and before G a.in. he had ail his back, and had his opponents in the soup for £30,000. After several days the famous party began to dissolve, and the highest and most reckless game of poker I ever sawbroke up. Riley Grannon won back his M#nta Carlo losses, and left Cairo over £6O,OO'J to the good!