Casino Queen

Denise Coates once described herself as the ‘ultimate gambler’ but, while her story involves stick-or-twist decisions, she was not talking about gambling in the traditional sense. Coates is, of course, the founder and joint chief executive – alongside brother John – of Bet365 which, since its foundation in 2000, has grown to become one of the largest online bookmakers in the world, with a turnover of £2.86 billion in the year to March, 2018.

Unsurprisingly, Coates is a billionaire – in fact, she has a net worth of $4.6 billion, or $3.7 billion, according to ‘Forbes’ magazine – and, in the year to March, 2018, broke her own record for the compensation paid to the chief executive of a British company by paying herself a basic salary of $220 million, plus $45 million in dividend payments.

An econometrics graduate, Coates became managing director of Provincial Racing – a small chain of bricks-and-mortar betting shops owned by her father, Peter – in 1995. However, having bought the Bet365.com domain name in 2000, the transition to online sports betting required as massive cash injection, in the form of an £18 million loan from Royal Bank of Scotland, which required the whole of the existing family business as collateral. Nevertheless, Bet365.com launched the following year and the rest, as they say, is history.

Alice Ivers, also known as Alice Duffield, Alice Tubbs or Alice Huckert – she was widowed three times – or by her nickname ‘Poker Alice’, was arguably the most successful female professional gambler in the American Old West. Reputedly born in Sudbury, England in 1851, Ivers moved with her family to the United States in 1865, finally settling in Deadwood, South Dakota.

A gifted mathematician and accomplished card player – she had been taught to play poker by her father as a child – Ivers earned a decent living from playing poker, particularly so after the death of her first husband, Frank Duffield, whom she had married in 1875. She frequently toured the West where, as a beautiful, fashionable woman, with a penchant for black stogie cigars, she stood out from the hoi polloi of the gambling fraternity. Ivers continued to support herself with her poker skills until, in 1910, she opened ‘Poker’s Palace’, a saloon in Fort Meade, South Dakota. Indeed, three years later Ivers was charged with murder after she shot a man dead during a fight on the premises, but was subsequently acquitted on the grounds of self-defence. During her lifetime, Ivers claimed to have won over $250,000, or over $3 million in modern terms.