Nobody has ever mentioned Lyle Stuart here before but he was an interesting fella in more ways than one. He was a former part-owner of the original Aladdin Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Stuart was also a noted gambling authority, who advised casinos on how to protect themselves from cheats and cons. He wrote and published some good gambling books, including Gag's Counting book. In the 1980s I acquired a large collection of books published by him, which were not books on gambling but interesting, underground manuals, you might say: he was a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, among other things and perhaps he was in Cuba when they had casinos there.

Https://www.gamblersgeneralstore.com/gam......security

https://www.gamblersgeneralstore.com/gam......otection


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barricade_Books

https://www.gamblersgeneralstore.com/vendor/BARRICADE-BOOKS

We are not sure if this was his place.

I also own a lot of Lyle Stuart books. I've always been curious about him because he tended to publish such interesting non-mainstream books, but I know nothing at all about him. Curious to know more though.

Here's his Obit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/26/arts/26stuart.html

Casinos are illegal in Cuba.... Unless he was around before 1959...

Correct! Beginners luck?

Https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu......3590/dsc

Http://ccgtcc-ccn.com/Cuba.pdf

Gaming in Cuba by Steve Piccolo, CASINO CHIP AND TOKEN NEWS|April · May · June 2004

Interesting little article

“Chemin de Fer became the first version of Baccarat to be played in Nevada casinos when the Sands opened a table in 1958, but “Chimney” (as it was often referred to) was never a major game. Chemin de Fer is a non-banking game where the house collects a rake on the winning bets; like modern poker. The modern form of Baccarat seen in today’s Las Vegas casinos started out as Punto y Banco and was first developed in Argentina at the Mar del Plata casino sometime prior to 1955. Cuban casinos picked up the game in the 1950s and that is where an American Gambler/Casino boss discovered it. His name was Tommy Renzoni. In 1959 the Baccarat world changed forever when Tommy Renzoni brought this new version of Baccarat, Punto Banco to Las Vegas from post-Castro Cuba via Argentina. Punto Banco is essentially the modern game of Baccarat we know today.”
The History of Baccarat - Theodore Whiting

https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/......c_papers

Tommy Renzoni wrote a book on Baccarat which was published by Lyle Stuart who wrote a book on Baccarat himself.

Odd spelling in that blurb, in that I've seen it described by the nickname "Shimmy" many times across many different sources, but never seen the nick "Chimney", which traditionally references a stack of bricks above a fireplace?

The game was very big among the aristocratic and wealthy gamblers who played in the Clermont Club, where they used to call it 'Chemmy" (if the books I've read on the subject are to believed.) Lord "Lucky" Lucan, notorious for murdering his nanny and disappearing off the face of the earth, never to be seen again, got the nickname "Lucky" after winning £26,000 at a French casino in 1960.

That was equivalent to ten times his salary as a merchant banker. He immediately gave up his job and became a professional gambler -- and of course, his lucky streak dried up and he never won again. John Aspinall, the guy who owned the Clermont Club, effectively rinsed Lucan out of his whole fortune at the Chemmy tables.

Well, the London police have been known to shimmy up a drainpipe to observe through a chink in a curtain a private Chemin de Fer game taking place.

Yes!

On the 10th January 1958 an event occurred which was considered unremarkable at the time, but which would change the face of gambling in Britain and rapidly turn London into the Havana of continental Europe.



The game that started the ball rolling in London in 1958 was Chemin de Fer, a non-banking game that is thus easier to pass off as a legal private game than a banking game is.

Aspers win in Court was debated in parliament in May 1958.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1958......Gambling

It was what they said in that place which really caused the London boys to start opening public gaming houses that Christmas, willy-nilly, without a licence and the police to turn a blind eye to them. It took the powers that be a few years to bring in the new gambling laws. In the meantime, it was a free for all. Aspers was the first to open a legally licenced gaming house in London in 1962 called the Clermont Club.

It is all about the circumstances as Steve Forte says. The circumstances here were, the British were skint after World War II and were in desperate need of attracting foreign currency to buy oil after the Suez Crisis in 1956 and so they came up with the idea that gaming houses would fit the bill.

It's the hand of Our Man in Havana, there is no doubt about it.

Forgive my ignorance,
What is a banking game?

Just googled it, is it like what we would think of as a table game, where you play cards against the house instead of other players, like blackjack?

I'm pretty sure that a banker game in this context it refers to the way games like Baccarat and Chemin de Fer are played -- and Pontoon or 21, the UK equivalents of Blackjack -- were played outside of the casino.

These are comparison game in which one player takes the role of the banker, and one or more players take the role of the player. The banker and player then take cards according to certain set rules (that cover whether you raise, stick or bust) and after the cards are dealt, the player's hand is compared with that of the banker -- and the outcome is that the player can win, lose or tie.

They weren't regarded as 'table games' because the role of the banker would be taken by a player. It might rotate, or players might draw for the position. I think Chemin de fer was popular in the UK because it was a zero sum game. In Baccarat, the banker has a small edge (I think around 1%) but in Chemin de Fer, there is no edge so they were able to sell it as a game that the people who were running the gaming house wasn't profiting from. (I assume they operated like modern poker clubs where the club takes an hourly rake for the use of the table?)

Mind you, it can be rather confusing:

https://www.softgamings.com/casino-glossary/banker/