User:Kotika98/Manny Kimmel

Born Emanuel Kimmel. Was a notable underworld figure between 1930's and 1960's. Founder of the Kinney Parking Company, a chain of parking lots and garages. According to Connie Bruck, 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. 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. Also known for his early forays into card counting in blackjack in the early fifties; he is the Mr. X in the famous book Beat The Dealer by Edward Thorp.

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. 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 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 the two people whose achievements Kimmel attempted to exploit for profit, Edward Thorp and Jess Marcum.