Manny Kimmel

Manny Kimmel, born Emmanuel Kimmel, was a notable underworld figure between the 1930s and 1960s. Founder of the Kinney Parking Company, a chain of parking lots and garages. According to Connie Bruck,^[1] he cooperated with the major racketeer and bootlegger in Newark, Abner Zwillman, leasing his garages for storage of liquor during the Prohibition Era. FBI kept tabs on him for his business dealings with known mafia figures, and compelled to testify in the trials of two of them, Abner Zwillman and Joe Adonis.^[1] An illegal bookie in his early years, running the numbers game and other illicit gambling bookmaking activities in New Jersey. Perhaps the biggest horseracing bookmaker in New York at one time, and owner of several racing horses himself. He is also known for his early forays into card counting in blackjack in the early fifties as the Mr. X in the classic book on card counting, Beat the Dealer by Edward O. Thorp.^[2]

He is mentioned in at least two other historical books (according to Amazon), including the Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner by Connie Bruck.^[1] In this well-known book, the multi-year evolution of the company Kimmel founded, Kinney Parking Company, into Time Warner of today is described. The second book in which Kimmel prominently figures, Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street by William Poundstone^[3] has a less scholarly quality, and in any case Kimmel should not be credited with any inventions in the field of mathematical gambling, that honor goes to Manny's nephew Seymour Lubetkin, a brilliant mathematician in his own right and a graduate of the Newark College of Engineering (today the New Jersey Institute of Technology where there is a Lubetkin Field donated by he and his brothers), who determined the secret to be in 10's which contradicted the work of Edward O. Thorp and Jess Marcum.

Manny took the information from Seymour and traveled to MIT to meet with Thorp whom had theorized the secret to be with 5's. Manny used Seymour's math to take all of the matchsticks Thorp had in a simulated game prior to the two men agreeing to head to Reno to try out the more successful of the two theories (Seymour's 10's theory).

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} [1]Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner by Connie Bruck, pp.29-30
2. ^ Pogue, David. "Wanna Bet?", The New York Times, September 25, 2005. Accessed September 28, 2008.
3. ^ Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street by William Poundstone