Nicholas Andrea Dandolos bet the author 6 to 5 that they would finish his life story before he died. He won. Barely. He was in his mid-eighties at the end of a sad losing streak after a lifetime in which he had passed some $500,000,000 over the line. It was also a life that reads like a gambler's version of The Arabian Nights starting out in a Cyprus that he had to flee after an affair with a Turkish harem girl. Then on to the states and an abortive fig business, his first gambling attempts (a loser) until mathematical genius was to put him odds ahead. Still poor, he fell in love with a rich man's daughter and was given one year to come up with the $1,000,000 needed to marry her. At the end of months he was close...she was dead. Later there was the $797,000 stud poker game with Arnold Rothstein; the night he punished a cheat by reciting poetry to him for three hours; the suitcase Dutch Schultz left him that contained $5,000,000; and always the highest stakes in town. Philosopher, gourmet; philanthropist, Nick was an Original. Inside action especially for those in on The Gambling Secrets of Nick the Greek.