Study of the psychological motivation of gamblers, portraying the personalities and legends of the gambling world. Spanier ranges widely over his subject but concentrates primarily on the human side of gambling rather than the mathematical or theoretical. While he is comfortable discussing Freudian analysis of the compulsive gambler, his real emphasis is on individuals: the mathematician who devised a way to beat the house advantage at blackjack; and the cleric who founded Gambler's Anonymous; the physician who started a gambler's hospital.
