Discussions in this book include taking gambling losses and expenses off your taxes, how to avoid paying gambling debts, what to do if you feel you are cheated, whether a home poker game is legal, what to do if you are arrested, your rights in a casino,can counting cards be legal, how to keep from being blacklisted by casinos, getting a gambling license, reducing taxes if you win big in the lottery and more.

The saga goes on as casinos, together with the government, continue to browbeat and persecute skilled gamblers. Gambling law is a complicated subject, but one that in some way affects thousands of players daily, if only in terms of what's allowed and what isn't during a casino visit. Of course, it gets taken to highest terms when you consider the cat-and-mouse game being played between the billion-dollar temples of chance and the world's most skilled gamblers who are looking to beat the casinos at their own game. The Law for Gamblers brings together decades of experience from the world's pre-eminent gambler's advocate, providing perspective gleaned from defending hundreds of casino-related criminal cases. With detailed discussions of subjects that include gambler taxation, the use of aliases, Indian gaming rules, and casino credit, and even hiring an attorney when necessary, The Law for Gamblers provides anyone who sets foot in a casino easy access to understanding their rights. Additionally, the collection of case law and statutory points of view within is unparalleled in the rapidly expanding area of gaming law. For students in gaming law courses, no more up-to-date analysis on the subject exists.

Every day in the United States, people test their luck in numerous lotteries, from state-run games to massive programs like Powerball and Mega Millions. Yet few are aware that the origins of today’s lotteries can be found in an African American gambling economy that flourished in urban communities in the mid-twentieth century. In Running the Numbers, Matthew Vaz reveals how the politics of gambling became enmeshed in disputes over racial justice and police legitimacy. As Vaz highlights, early urban gamblers favored low-stakes games built around combinations of winning numbers. When these games became one of the largest economic engines in nonwhite areas like Harlem and Chicago’s south side, police took notice of the illegal business—and took advantage of new opportunities to benefit from graft and other corrupt practices. Eventually, governments found an unusual solution to the problems of illicit gambling and abusive police tactics: coopting the market through legal state-run lotteries, which could offer larger jackpots than any underground game. By tracing this process and the tensions and conflicts that propelled it, Vaz brilliantly calls attention to the fact that, much like education and housing in twentieth-century America, the gambling economy has also been a form of disputed terrain upon which racial power has been expressed, resisted, and reworked.

In 1961, M.I.T. mathematician E. O. Thorp figured out that the game of casino blackjack could be beaten. He then went out and proved the effectiveness of the strategy he devised in a number of Nevada casinos. In the more than three decades since card counting has become a relentless cat-and-mouse game. Casinos now use computers to analyze the strategies of the players at their tables in order to identify the skillful players. They do everything they can to thwart skilled players, and it often seems like the law is on the casinos' side.All casino games, except blackjack, have a built-in house edge, a mathematically calculable advantage to the gaming establishment. The CEO's hate that blackjack can be legally beaten by a small percentage of skillful players who have studied and practiced card counting, but are the casinos going too far in their attempts to stop it? In order to protect their civil rights, casino players today must have a legal arsenal at their disposal. Blackjack and the Law is the foundation of that arsenal, bringing together 14 years of the syndicated columns of Attorney I. Nelson Rose with the commentary of Attorney Robert A. Loeb.

As states have moved from merely tolerating gambling to running their own games, as communities have increasingly turned to gambling for an economic boost, important questions arise. Has the new age of gambling increased the proportion of pathological or problem gamblers in the U.S. population? Where is the threshold between "social betting" and pathology? Is there a real threat to our families, communities, and the larger society? Pathological Gambling explores America's experience of gambling, examining: The diverse and frequently controversial issues surrounding the definition of pathological gambling. Its co-occurrence with disorders such as alcoholism, drug abuse, and depression. Its social characteristics and economic consequences, both good and bad, for communities. The role of video gaming, Internet gambling, and other technologies in the development of gambling problems. Treatment approaches and their effectiveness, from Gambler's Anonymous to cognitive therapy to pharmacology. This book provides the most up-to-date information available on the prevalence of pathological and problem gambling in the United States, including a look at populations that may have a particular vulnerability to gambling: women, adolescents, and minority populations. Its describes the effects of problem gambling on families, friendships, employment, finances, and propensity to crime. How do pathological gamblers perceive and misperceive randomness and chance? What are the causal pathways to pathological gambling? What do genetics, brain imaging, and other studies tell us about the biology of gambling? Is there a bit of sensation-seeking in all of us? Who needs treatment? What do we know about the effectiveness of different policies for dealing with pathological gambling? The book reviews the available facts and frames the intriguing questions yet to be answered. Pathological Gambling will be the odds-on favorite for anyone interested in gambling in America: policymakers, public officials, economics and social researchers, treatment professionals, and concerned gamblers and their families.

Gambling and Speculation takes the long, historic perspective of its controversial subject. The book offers not only a better understanding of the recent "gambling craze," but also a fundamental inquiry into human nature and the structure of societies. The Brenners argue that the negative image of gamblers and of speculators stems from prejudice, whose roots are in the distant, forgotten past. Legal scholars have frequently confused gambling with speculation and the anti-gambling laws were, at times, erroneously interpreted as implying the prohibitions of contracts in futures and insurance markets. One consequence of all this confusion was that during this century both in the United States and England, the legislation and law on betting and gambling became ambiguous. The authors touch on this issue and make policy recommendations: to abolish restrictions on the industry, diminish the states' role in selling lotteries, and, at the same time, make legal distinctions capable of helping the tiny percentage of players who might be "addicted." The Brenners' recommendations on gambling are based on their conclusion that gamblers are neither "mentally ill" nor "criminals" and that gambling does not lead its practitioners to poverty. Rather, it is the other way around: some of the poor and the frustrated gamble. Looking at gambling in this way leads to questions about the nature of society: What do the fortunate do for those who are not? What is society's obligation to people who fall behind in the game of life? Answers to these questions require a discussion on the principles of equality, capitalism, the role of religious influence on society, topics that the Brenners have discussed in their previous studies, and they do so here too, putting gambling within its proper, historical context.