You often see it in the movies: Desperate man drives to Las Vegas, hoping for lady luck to reverse the direction of his miserable existence. Playing cards, he quickly loses all his remaining cash, then he gambles away his money clip, his wedding ring etc. Then – in a final fit of desperation – he pulls out the deed to his house (which he brought with him, natch) and uses that to “all in” to the poker game he’s playing.
Question: Has this ever happened in real life? Do the dealers in Vegas allow property deeds in lieu of chips or cash at the poker table? Or is this just another plot device seen only sometimes on the silver screen?
Where I grew up, there were stories of Native Americans who were tricked (usually while drunk) into giving up their land during the Gold Rush era. Gambling it away would certainly be one way for this to happen.
Presuming these stories to be true, maybe they are the origin of the OPs story.
I’ve never seen such a thing in the movies (deed to the house handed over in Las Vegas). I can’t see this happening in the good old USA. I did read a historical novel set in England in the early 1800’s where the owner of a big country estate gambled with his neighbor, lost, and casually went home and told the family they had to move out as the neighbor would be the new owner of their house. So they moved to a far smaller house and still the former owner would go over to his ex-house and visit (and probably still gamble). His wife, as you may surmise, was NOT happy, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
I’ve only gambled for small stakes in Vegas myself (over the last few years).
However there are signs in every Casino I’ve been in offering help for addicted gamblers.
Given that the Casinos consistently make millions out of small stake slot players, they really don’t need to pick up a house deed (and would probably find the publicity repugnant).
The Vegas idea is that you pay a fair price for room, meal and show; then go on to gamble what you can afford to lose.
Oh, and throwing extra cash (or valuables) onto a poker table is a film myth. Poker is played for table stakes. if you can’t match the other guy’s bet, he simply keeps the surplus money.
Even if it were not a bad PR move, it is also impractical. Your House? You say it’s worth 4.7 mil? Great! BTW, where IS Bedford-Stuyvesant? Oh, never mind, here’s your money!
On top of that, a deed isn’t really an instrument of transfer, per se. If you sign over your deed to me, IIRC, it doesn’t mean that I own the home. You’d have to also get some other releases, title, something like that, and then, I would be subject to any liens, mortgages, etc…that you have on them. No dealer will get involved in that mid-game!
yes it is. a deed is exactly an instrument of transfer. it’s a per se instrument of transfer, in fact.
there’s nothing to “sign over” in the sense of a car title - but if you (properly) execute a deed in favor of someone then you just sold off your home. there isn’t much more to it.
I don’t think that any reputable casino would allow a deed as a bet. If you want to gamble, you swap your cold hard cash (or your warm fuzzy debit/credit card) for chips, and you gamble with the chips. The dealer isn’t going to let you plop your watch down on the table for a game of poker, he’s not a pawn shop dealer. However, if you want to go pawn your watch, and use the proceeds to gamble, he might know of a place where you can get some money for your watch. And he might not.
Maybe a private game might allow someone to use a deed as a stake, if the other players knew the gambler and knew that he owned the house, or at least had some equity in it. Today, well, maybe the house owner is actually upside down on that mortgage.
This did happen in New Jersey – people would acquire land by buying it from members of the tribe who weren’t really in a position to sell it, or would get the Indians drunk. Both stories were told in the case of the sachem Weequehela, and it’s not clear which, if either, is true. In the case of another Lenape sachem he camped outside the Governor’s office and refused to leave until he saw the coerced deed torn up in front of him.
I don’t know of any cases related to gambling, though.
If you happened to take your title with you to a gambling city like Vegas in the 70’s/early 80’s, it was possible to find a pawnshop along the seedier streets that would give fast loans or outright buy your house.
These are the horror stories they tell of people gambling away their homes. You could pawn your house - usually for nowhere near it’s actual value because the pawnbroker would only give what they could be relatively sure the house would be worth. But a true addict wouldn’t worry too much about the disparity of the loan to the value of the house…they’d win it back, right?
But as to the OP, no, casinos do not take anything but chips and occasionaly cash.
Private games, as mentioned, do not have such restrictions.
I’m curious - what “title” are you talking about? At least in modern day real estate transactions I’ve ever seen, there isn’t a fancy document that says “DEED” on it that is the physical manifestation of your property interest.
An Englishman in the mode of Kipling, then, who famously wrote:
*If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
…
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son! *
Kipling never said what to do if you WON that turn of pitch-and-toss though. What did Revell do? (The link is blocked for me at work)
Here’s the BBC story concerning Revell. It contains a bit more detail than the other link. There’s a YouTube video (3:12) recording his adventure at the table. I like the music, both before and after the spin of the wheel.
Of course there are! Just because you haven’t seen a deed doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The mortgage lender generally hangs onto it until the mortgage is paid. But if you own land outright, you really should know where the deed is and that it is properly registered. You can even draft your own (say if you want to give the north forty to your grandson), but it’s not a good idea. Deeds are great for lawyers! Tons of litigation is generated based on the words and descriptions contained in deeds!
Of course there are! Just because you haven’t seen a deed doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The mortgage lender generally hangs onto it until the mortgage is paid. But if you own land outright, you really should know where the deed is and that it is properly registered. You can even draft your own (say if you want to give the north forty to your grandson), but it’s not a good idea. Deeds are great for lawyers! Tons of litigation is generated based on the words and descriptions contained in deeds!