Casino black book: Nevada's List of Excluded Persons, from 1960

The casino black book is a list of people the State of Nevada has ordered kept out of its licensed gaming rooms. The official name is the List of Excluded Persons. "Black book" stuck because the first edition was an actual booklet in a black report cover, with a photograph and a description on each page, sent to casinos so door staff and pit staff could recognise the faces. It is not a rumour, and it is not a binder a single hotel keeps in the office for its own grudges.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board maintains it. The Nevada Gaming Commission places someone on the list under state law. Licensees receive the list and must exclude the people on it. The list is public on the Board's website, which is a better source than a reprinted roster, because names are added and sometimes removed.

Why a state has such a list

Nevada's bet, from the moment it legalised wide-open casinos, was that a scandalous industry could be made acceptable by regulation. In the 1950s that meant prying the industry away from people whose reputation would wreck the new system. The Kefauver Committee's hearings at the start of that decade had put organised crime and gambling in the same national headline. Nevada created the Gaming Control Board in 1955 and the Gaming Commission in 1959. The Black Book, in 1960, was the tool that followed: named individuals, photographs, and a threat to the licence of any house that let them stay.

The Las Vegas history guide tells that regulatory turn as part of the city's story. This page stays with the list itself: who it was for, how a name gets on it, and which other "blacklists" people confuse with it. The longer sweep of betting, far past Nevada, is the history of gambling.

The Nevada State Library's archive of the Gaming Control Board describes the first book clearly. It was issued on 29 March 1960. Inside were a letter to owners and operators, a copy of the regulation the Board was relying on, and pages for eleven people, more or less in alphabetical order. The text was mimeographed. Photographs were taped on. The covers were black. Casinos were told to keep those people out, and told that failing to do so could be treated as an unsuitable way to run a gaming house.

The eleven were men with organised-crime reputations in cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Kansas City. Histories of the list consistently include Sam Giancana and Marshall Caifano among that first group. This guide will not freeze all eleven names here. Spellings drift, and the Board's record is the document. The first edition was nationally known mob figures, not a tourist who had argued about a bet.

A list that outlived the booklet

The cover did not stay the product. Regulation and statute replaced the mimeograph. Nevada Regulation 28 is now the Gaming Commission's rule on the list. It says the Commission provides for a list of persons to be excluded or ejected from licensed gaming establishments that conduct pari-mutuel wagering or operate a race book, a sports pool, or games, other than a place that offers slot machines only. One criterion in the statute is enough. The criteria sit in NRS 463.151 and point at criminal convictions, reputation, and associations that would threaten public confidence in gaming.

An early person on the list challenged the practice in federal court at the start of the 1960s. The list continued. Later editions dropped the taped photographs for a formal process, and the Board now publishes the living list rather than a single bound booklet. People still say "Black Book" because the 1960 object gave the list its nickname.

Adding a name is an administrative process with a hearing, not a pit boss's bad day. Under Regulation 28, the Board looks at whether any statutory criterion applies and whether exclusion is in the interest of the state or of licensed gaming. Before a name goes on, Board members review the file. The candidate is notified and can contest the nomination at a hearing. The listing takes operational effect when the Commission acts, after that chance to be heard. The 1960 names were carried forward under the regulation without a new hearing for each of them, which is why the archive and the rule both still mention that first list.

The file is about conduct and associations: convictions, documented criminal reputation, and the kind of presence the statute calls inimical to the industry. It is a high bar relative to ordinary casino misbehaviour. Most people who are thrown out of a Nevada casino for a fight, a drunk shift, or a fraud at one table never appear on this list. They are trespassed from that building, or arrested, under ordinary law. The Black Book is the short statewide roll.

Getting off the list

For years the practical way off the early list was death. The modern rule includes a petition for removal, and the Board posts the forms. Removal is not automatic. A name comes off when the Commission says it does. Until then, the duty on the casinos stands.

Because the list is public, identity is part of the order. Entries include the name, aliases, a physical description, a date of birth, the date the name was placed, and a photograph. That is how a door supervisor is supposed to match a face to a page. It is also why amateur lists circulating on forums go stale. Use the Board's copy if you need the current one.

A person on the list is not supposed to enter the gaming establishments the regulation covers. Being there is a criminal offence under Nevada law, separate from whatever crime put them on the list in the first place. Casinos must exclude them and must not do business with them as patrons of those games. A licensee that knowingly lets a listed person gamble is exposed to disciplinary action against the licence. That exposure is the point of the 1960 letter, and it is still the point: the state forces the houses to choose the licence over the guest.

The coverage line is worth reading twice. Regulation 28 is aimed at establishments with table games, a race book, a sports pool, or pari-mutuel wagering. A room that offers only slot machines is outside that sentence. In practice the famous Nevada casinos are covered, because they have games. A slots-only parlour is a different regulatory object. People sometimes talk as if the Black Book were a force field around every machine in the state. The rule is narrower, and the text is public.

Recognition, not a scavenger hunt

Casinos are expected to know the list and to act when they recognise someone on it. The casino surveillance page describes how a room watches a floor. It is not a set of instructions for avoiding a camera, and neither is this one. If you are not on the list, the Black Book does not change your evening. If you were on it, the lawful move is to stay out.

Police and gaming agents can be called when a listed person is found inside. The casino does not need a new reason, such as a fresh cheat, to eject someone whose name is already on the order. The order is the reason.

Most "blacklists" in gambling are not this book. A single casino can refuse to serve you. It can trespass you for a fight, for past posting, for a debt, or because it does not want your business. That decision binds that company's doors. It does not, by itself, bind every licensee in Nevada. Staff may call it an 86 list, a barring list, or their own black book. The nickname is the confusion. The state's List of Excluded Persons is a different document, with a hearing and a statute behind it.

Card counting is the other confusion. A counter uses the cards that have been seen and bets before the next hand. Nevada does not put people on the Black Book for counting. A casino may still back a counter off and tell them the blackjack game is closed to them. That is a private refusal. Is card counting illegal separates the crime of cheating from the skill of counting. Past posting, pinching a bet, or using a device are cheating. They can lead to arrest at that casino. They are not the historical purpose of the 1960 list, which was organised crime, and they do not automatically write your name into Regulation 28.

Famous players are a third category

A person can be famous for a run of bets and never come near the list. Archie Karas is that kind of Las Vegas story, not an entry in the Black Book. The book is short. It has always been short. A host cutting off your credit does not make you a listee.

Self-exclusion is a fourth category, and it runs in the opposite direction. That is a limit a patron asks for, so the casino will refuse their play. The Black Book is a limit the state imposes on people it considers a threat to the industry. Wanting one does not put you near the other.

The Black Book is a 1960 answer to a 1950s problem: hidden owners, skim, and nationally known mob figures on the same floors as tourists. It did not, by itself, end mob influence. Skimming cases ran into the 1980s, and corporate ownership and federal prosecutions did as much as any booklet. The list still mattered as a public statement that Nevada would name people and threaten licences.

Later names have included cheats and career criminals as well as the mid-century mob generation. The criteria in the statute allow that breadth. The early identity of the list, the one the nickname comes from, remains the organised-crime roll of 1960. When you read a true-crime paragraph that says someone was "in the Black Book," check the year and check the Board's standard, not a film credit.

A list is not a strategy

Nothing about the list helps a player find an edge. It does not reveal which tables are soft, and it does not describe how surveillance is wired. It tells you the state keeps a public exclusion roll, and that licensed casinos have to honour it. If you play, you are in a regulated room, under cameras, under a house edge the rules already state.

If you want a game where the exclusion that matters is your own limit, set the limit first. PVPspinArena is 18+ only. Its coinflip game is a straight contest between two players, and the result is committed in seeds you can check after the round. That is a different institution from a 1960 Nevada booklet, and it is still gambling. Read the rules, stake what you can lose, and use the Casino knowledge topic for the history around the list rather than for a way through it.

The durable fact is simple. The casino black book is Nevada's List of Excluded Persons. Eleven men were in the first edition, on 29 March 1960. The people on it may not enter the casinos the regulation covers. Counting cards is not how you get there.

See also the Riviera.