Top 5 Greatest Gamblers and Gambles – Poker

• French gambler Adrian Marque, from Nice, became jealous when his fellow poker player Louis Guilhot scooped a hand with three kings. Marque murdered Guilhot by stuffing poker chips down his throat, reported the media in June 1998.

Austrian gambler Josef Reiner was too scared to tell his wife that he had lost thousands of pounds in a casino – so the 26 year old broke his own nose, jaw and arm with an iron bar and told her that he had been attacked and robbed. However, suspicious doctors at the hospital to which he was admitted in August 2008, called the police, to whom he confessed. A police spokesman commented: ‘He must have been very afraid to inflict so much pain on himself’.

• Poker player Howard Lederer, a confirmed vegetation, discovered that a bet could overshadow his principles when he accepted, and won, a $10,000 wager from fellow player David Grey - by eating a cheeseburger.

• It was reported in 1988 that when 17 year-old David White decided to stop playing once he had won $100 from his mother, Lemira, during a poker game in Chicago, she became so angry that she pulled out a gun and shot her son dead. Lemira later told police – ‘he was cheating anyway.’

• It must have been the greatest bluff in the history of poker – winning a hand despite having no cards to play. Irish player Nicky Power was taking part in an event, when reported Poker Europa magazine in May 2007, ‘Roland de Wolfe raised from the small blind after everyone had passed. Nicky on the big blind raised all in – and then to his horror noticed that his cards had been swept into the muck by the dealer. ‘The quick thinking Nicky cupped his hands in front of him to hide the fact that he had no hand to play – and Roland passed, allowed the Irishman to take the pot’.

All stories taken from the 500 Greatest Gambles & Gamblers by Graham Sharpe