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The "Numbers Game" is a lottery game where the bettor attempts to pick three or four numbers from zero to nine that are randomly drawn. Before the advent of state operated lottries the bettor would place his or her bet with a bookie. Today state lotteries offer this game as the Daily Numbers Game.
The payoff for a one dollar bet was six hundred dollars. One of the games attraction to low income and working class bettors was the ability of bettors to bet small amounts of money. Usually you could bet as little as ten cents with the possibility of winning sixty dollars. Also the bookies, unlike state lotteries, would extend credit to the bettor.
In the northeastern United States this game was known as the "Nigger Pool". This reflected the belief that the game originated in black neighborhoods.
One of the problems the early game had was trying to find a way to draw a random number that the bookie could not be accused of choosing unfairly. One method used was to take the last three numbers in the daily balance of the United States Treasury. When the Treasury began rounding off the balance many bookies started to use the "mutuel" number. This number was the last dollar digit for the daily total handle of the Win, Place and Show bets at a local race track and read from top to bottom.
For example, if the daily handle was: Win $1001.23 Place $582.56 Show $27.61 then the daily number was 127. Today, state lotteries use mechanical devices to draw the number. They also pay under a parimutuel betting system.
Since most bookies in the United States operate outside of the law, there is no way to gauge what effect the legalization and operation of state run gambling had on the Numbers Game.
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