EPISODE · Sep 7, 2026 · 7 MIN
Mafia Poker: How Underground Bluffs Became the High‑Stakes Celebrity Game
from A History of the American Mafia Podcast: Organized Crime, Mob Families, Bosses, Gangsters, Prohibition, Criminal Trials, and the Rise of La Cosa Nostra · host Podily & Josh Linsk
Explore how Mafia members used basement poker tables in New York as covert negotiation venues, and see how that culture of bluffing evolved into today’s celebrity high‑stakes poker shows. We dig into documented hands, FBI wiretaps, and court records—from Costello’s 1935 hand linking him with Lansky to a 2003 Las Vegas poker night tied to labor skims—to uncover what really happened behind the tables. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Mafia Poker: How Underground Bluffs Became the High‑Stakes Celebrity Game
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