George Jansco's Land of Opportunity

Jansco's Johnston City tournaments made legends of men like Luther Lassiter (middle). Brother Paulie, right, joined up in 1962.

The promise of quick money attracts gamblers, and to Evansville they came in great numbers - sinking wells, buying cheap land, striking Good God Almighty gushers. And they came to crap out; to leave their bad-luck lives right in the lobby of the venerable Vendome Hotel, with its all-night gin, its rolling snake-eyed dice. One-pocket and 9-ball rolled non-stop at Adolf's Bowling Alley and Pool Hall. Bad men played poker day and night at the McCurdy Hotel, the social center of Evansville. There were bars, restaurants, upstairs whorehouses. Here was the relentless life that gambling men crave. Among the most prominent was Ray Ryan, a vaguely shadowy figure said to have paid off cheap gambling debts with two oil leases - only to watch in horror as they struck million-dollar gushers for their new owners. Ryan made a fortune in Evansville - many men did in those days - and invested his money in local businesses like the Relax Bar, which Ryan owned with fellow money-man Whit Epstein. Outwardly and inwardly, the Relax Bar had all the accoutrements of the typical dive: cheap beer, pool tables, a dirty floor strewn with peanut shells. But upstairs, behind the beer cartons and through the cigarette smoke, the Relax Bar was not even a real bar. It was a bookmaking joint, a place where men like Ryan and Epstein could make real money.

And this is where George Jansco came to work during the early 1940s. His friend Ryan (the two had met years earlier playing golf) offered him an opportunity: come to Evansville, operate the bookmaking operation, make real money, get a start. Ryan put Georgie Jansco, a minor league ballplayer and the son of a bootlegger, on a course from which he would never really turn.

"It was there that he started playing cards and shooting pool and all that stuff that guys do," said George's daughter, JoAnn. "He found that it was a little more interesting than playing baseball. I think he played gin rummy - most of them played gin rummy back then - and he started playing cards, and playing pool."

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