Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 122, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1913 — OLD GAMBLER QUITS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

OLD GAMBLER QUITS

“Jim” O’Leary’s Resort in Chicago Is Closed. Well-Known Character, Who Conducted Establishment on Halsted Street, Known as the Man Who Would Bet on Anything. Chicago.—James O’Leary, known for twenty-five years the “King of Gamblers,” famed as the man who would “bet on anything,” stood recently at the end of his bar on Halsted street, watching a litlejarmy of carpenters transfqrmlng t/e building. An old friend of a cattle dealer from Walden, Colo.’, came boisterously in, announcing: “Jim, I’ll bet you five hundred it snows tomorrow,” “You’re on,” said O’Leary automatically—then started suddenly, remembering. “I mean I won’t cover you,” he corrected. • “Why—what’s the matter with you?” demanded the amazed visitor. And O’Leary spoke gravely, with a little catch in his voice: “I ain’t a betting man,” he Mid. “Look at these carpenters.” ThbTruge fake chinindy at the rear ot O’Leary’s place, the chimney from

which smoke never was seen to issue, the' which contained a ladder leading from the steel-doored clearing room of the old gambling house to the basement —that chimney is to be a dumb waiter to connect the kitchen with the dining room of a chop suey establishment King Joy* Lo has taken a flfteenyear lease from the old gambler and is preparing a chop suey place. “It’s all off,” explained O’Leary later. “I’ve met my last bet—unless I drop in at Monte Carlo or somewhere and buck another man's game for the fun of it” O’Leary .has been raided hundreds of times. He has been tried and convicted and ( tried and acquitted, alternately. He has played faro and roulette with multimillionaires, who lost their monpy—or some of it —and declared that the game was “square.” In the old days, when faro and roulette were "wide open” in Chicago. O’Leary’s was the place sought by the “real sports.” There was a limit on the play ordinarily, but O’Leary was always ready to remove it on request

Once he bet a friend that the latter could not go from Halsted street to Dublin, Ireland, in a week. The bet was SI,OOO. The man made the time and sent O’Leary a two-word cablegram—“ You lose.” O’Leary cabled the money. There have’ been* rare occasions when O’Leary was accused of tricky gambling- He disproved jthe charges. Most of the big gamblers knew O’Leary’s reputation for squareness. And the result was that when they wanted to make unusually big wagers they came to Chicago from all parts of the country to do it

“Jim” O’Leary.