Author of the classic baccarat text, Baccarat Made Simple, David Vernon talks with Howard about the game and his book.

 Tony Salinas, a native of Texas, moved to Las Vegas to enjoy his work--handicapping sports and picking winners. He won the $85,000 Castaways Challenge, the original football handicapping contest, and followed that with numerous other wins, including the $135,000 Hilton Superbook Handicapping Championship

"KING CON The Story Of Soapy Smith" is the first full biography in more than forty years, in it Haigh chronicles the rise to power of a man without a conscience. Starting as a street corner shell game artist, Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith rose to power as a gang leader in Denver, then chose raw, lawless Skagway as his headquarters to fleece the thousands heading for the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897. Less than a year later he was dead, killed in a vigilante shootout on the Skagway wharf.  I am busy working on my Dissertation, based on the material I stumbled into while researching Soapy Smith:  "Political Power, Patronage, and Protection Rackets: Municipal Politics and Corruption in Denver 1889-1904". www.janehaigh.com

During the 1997 and 1998 season, Grossman hosted a nationally televised show that featured many of the nations' top handicappers.

Larry Grossman is the author of two books, "You Can Bet On it" Volume 1 - Casino Games and Volume 2 - Sports Betting. He is a regular columnist for many gaming publications. Larry has hosted and produced handicapping seminars in Las Vegas.

As the year comes to a close, Howard talks about a half dozen of the most popular gaming books at Gamblerâs Book Shop, including one title Mafia that reads like a thick rap sheet on top mobsters of the past. Also, he interviews a long-time Gamblerâs Book Shop customer from Chicago, Big Sid, a horseplayer, who talks about what the tracks are doing right and wrong, the demographics of the wagering public, and about the writer who influenced him the most.

The gamblerâs high is like a rush; he feels invulnerable.  That high lasts, though, only until the next big loss. Such is the story of Steve Budin, who created the first online sports betting company. Under the tutelage of his father, a legendary, old-school Miami bookmaker, and with the help of a cocaine-addicted polygamist, Budin revolutionized the shadowy business of spreads by taking them global. But he also stuck to some tried and true methods, like plying clients with trips to Vegas, hookers, and hardcore drugs. In the end, Budin raked in hundreds of millions of dollars and stood on the verge of a deal worth billions more. He took bookmaking into an automated, virtual worldwide casino that anyone could access, anywhere and at any time.  For anyone fascinated by the "wild West" that is internet gambling, here is a rare peek into that exciting, dangerous world.

DAVID G. SCHWARTZ, (no relation to your host, Howard Schwartz) is the head of the Gaming Studies Department at UNLV. He is the author of
"Suburban Xanadu: The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip", a book-length, essay on the history and evolution of the Las Vegas experience from its earliest days to the the advent of the mega resort. His second book, "Cutting the Wire", examines the political, social, and cultural ideas that moved Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to suggest the Wire Act (a law banning interstate transmission of gambling information), Congress to approve it, and President Kennedy to sign it into law, as well as the consequences of the law. He covers it all -- how this law first developed, how it helped fight a war against organized crime, and how it is being used today to restrict Americans from internet gambling. His latest work is titled "Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling ", which explains how the need to gamble shaped human history from the Ice Age to the Information Age when people spend nearly one trillion dollars worldwide on gambling a year.

BRAD LEWIS is the author of the Hollywood Celebrity Gangster: Mickey Cohen. All the whispered anecdotes, the news items and the underside of the crime rackets where Mickey operated are in his book, open to scrutiny. From Bugsy Siegel to Lucky Luciano and Albert Anastasia to Meyer Lansky and Carlos Marcello, Mickey knew them well and worked closely with them for many years.