Licensed respectability

Cardrooms, private invitation games, bookmakers and mainland casino excursions become overlapping businesses.

Many old saloon rooms are gone, but their accounts and property histories remain in successor companies’ files.

The 1961 Founders’ Table is privately advertised as a civic charity game.

A donor attempts to count money owed to a workers’ benefit fund as part of his own stake. The host refuses the wager.

The eventual settlement preserves the fund and damages the donor’s reputation.

Different supernatural circles tell the story as an example of honor, foolish sentiment or the danger of letting a personal vice become a public weakness.