Full Biography of Nick Dandalos

His full name was Nicholas Andrea Dandolos, but he was known throughout the
gambling world as “Nick the Greek”.

Nick Dandalos was born in Crete in 1883. During his life, he won and lost an
estimated $500 million.

But that’s not an accurate statement-since he died over 50 years ago, it’s
only fair to account for inflation and translate that into today’s dollars:

He won and lost $15 billion of today’s money during his life.

He went from rags to riches and back to rags again dozens of times.

He did all this as an independent gambler, too. He never had anyone staking
him. If he had a marker, he paid it, and he was always on time, too.

This is Nick Dandalos’s story.

A Portrait of a Gambler as a Young Man

Nick Dandalos was raised rich. His father sold rugs. His godfather built
ships. His childhood was a life of privilege, and he earned a degree in
philosophy from the Greek Evangelical College. He moved to the United States
when he was only 18, but unlike many immigrants, he came here with more than the
clothes on his back.

His grandfather gave him a $150 weekly allowance. That doesn’t sound like
much now, but this would have been in 1901. Accounting for inflation, that would
be $4000 a week in today’s money.

We don’t care where you live. $4000 a week is enough to live on, especially
for an 18-year-old.

It was fashionable at the turn of the century for well-to-do families to send
their young men to the United States with an allowance. The goal was to provide
him with an education.

Nick the Greek sure got one, but it wasn’t quite what his family had in
mind.

Dandolos started his life in the United States in Chicago, but it didn’t take
him long to move to Montreal.

What did he do there?

He gambled on horses after befriending a jockey named Phil Musgrave. It
didn’t take him long to use his keen mind and education to get a good grasp of
probabilities and how to use them to his advantage.

He won over $500,000 on horse racing in a single season. That was a fortune
then. He could have done anything he wanted to.

What did Nick the Greek want to do?

He apparently wanted to move back to Chicago and lose his fortune playing
dice and cards.

He got good at those games, though. When he played cards or dice in a casino,
he was an attraction. His personality surely helped. And he often won or lost
$100,000 during a session.

In fact, he once lost $1.6 million playing craps in New York. That craps
session had gone on for 12 days straight. It’s probably the biggest loss in the
history of the game.

The Poker Career of Nick the Greek

Below we share some of the anecdotes we’ve heard about Nick the Greek’s
career as a poker player.

Nick the Greek Makes a Poker Player Cry

Nick Dandalos once bought into a stud poker game for $20,000. After 7 hours
of hard play, he’d won over $500,000. The biggest post during that session was
$150,000, which he won when he had four of a kind (10s), and his opponent had a
full house with aces and jacks.

But that’s not the most interesting part of the story. Those are just numbers
and hands.

The other player had been rude and insulting to Dandalos throughout the
session.

At the end of the session, Dandalos challenged him to cut the cards once for
$200,000.

The other player lost. He slumped in his seat and started crying.

Apparently it doesn’t pay to be rude to one of the greatest gamblers in the
world.

Little Al from Wherever: Nick the Greek and Albert Einstein Gamble Together

One of the more entertaining anecdotes about Nick the Greek’s exploits
involves his escorting of Albert Einstein to various poker games-either in Las
Vegas or in Manhattan-the details aren’t entirely clear. Depending on which
version of the story you hear, Nick introduced Albert Einstein to the other
poker players as “Little Al from Princeton” or as “Little Al from Jersey”.

In some versions of the story, this took place in Vegas, but according to
Dandalos’s memoir, it was actually set up by the State Department and happened
in Manhattan. Since poker for money was illegal in Manhattan, Dandalos insisted
upon assurances from his friend in the State Department that they would make
sure that the law didn’t get involved.

Another Double or Nothing Story

Another anecdote we often see related is about Dandalos gambling with a high
roller from Texas. Dandalos was up a million dollars, but he got tired and
wanted to call it a night.

The Texan accused him of being a chicken.

Dandalos asked for a new deck of cards. He shuffled them, asked the Texas to
cut the cards, and offered to bet the entire million on which of them got the
higher card.

The Texan lost this game of chicken, and Nick Dandalos got to go home and get
some much-needed rest.

Johnny Moss, Benny Binion, and the Inspiration for the World Series of Poker

You’ve heard of the World Series of Poker, right?

What if we told you that Nick the Greek started the World Series of Poker?

It’s true. In January of 1949, Nick Dandalos sat down to play heads-up poker
with Johnny Moss. They played every game imaginable, too:

• 5 Card Draw
• 5 Card Stud
• 7 Card Stud
• 7 Card Stud High-Low
• Ace-5 Lowball
• 2-7 Lowbal

And the game lasted almost 5 months. The two players only stopped to eat and
sleep.

It was actually the brain child of Benny Binion, a master promoter. It was
meant to be a tourist attraction, and boy did it work. They played every day in
the foyer of the Horseshoe Casino.

It later became the inspiration for the World Series of Poker.

It’s hard to imagine two more distinct styles of play, either. Nick Dandalos
was well-educated, well-spoken, and talkative. He’d beat practically every poker
game on the East Coast at this point. By contrast, Johnny Moss wasn’t
well-educated, and he’d spent most of his career playing poker in Texas in
private games. He was quiet and introspective.

Moss turned out to be the better poker player. Dandalos lost between $2 and
$4 million to him.

He ended this first WSOP by telling Moss: “Mr. Moss, I have to let you go.”

The Low Rolling Years and Death of Nick Dandalos

When you gamble for large sums of money long enough, you inevitably face
periods where you’re up a lot of money and other periods when you’re down a lot
of money.

Dandalos himself estimated that he had won and lost a fortune at least 73
times in his life.

But in his later years, he was almost broke. He played poker for $5 a hand in
his twilight years.

Someone asked him how he could be interested in gambling for such low stakes
when he used to bet millions at a time.

Nick Dandalos replied, “Hey, it’s action, isn’t it?”

He stayed in action even when he was tired and sick. He even had physicians
treating him while he was at the poker table.

He died on December 25, 1966. He was broke.

It’s estimated that over the course of his life he had donated over $20
million to charity.

Hank Greenspun, found of the Las Vegas Sun, famously called him the “King of
the Gamblers”. Here’s what he wrote about his friend:

“Luck was a lady and she has been the love of his life.”

He was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame 13 years later-at the same time
as his once-rival, Johnny Moss. They were the first two players to be so
honored.

Nick the Greek is the subject of two books:

1. Ted Thackrey’s 1968 volume, Gambling Secrets of Nick the Greek, is mostly nonfiction about how to gamble like Nick Dandalos.
2. Harry Mark Petrakis’s 1978 novel, Nick the Greek, is a fictionalized account of Nick the Greek’s life.

Conclusion

You won’t find many more interesting characters in the annals of gambler
history than Nick the Greek. From his origins as an actual Greek from a wealthy
family, Nick Dandalos distinguished himself in multiple ways.

But as a gambler, his biggest claim to fame is the fortune he won and then
lost again repeatedly throughout his life.