George E. Smith (gambler)

George E. Smith
Pittsburgh Phil in 1890.
Born	(1862-07-13)July 13, 1862 Sewickley, Pennsylvania
Died	February 1, 1905(1905-02-01) (aged 42) Asheville, North Carolina
Other names	Pittsburgh Phil
Occupation	Cork cutter, professional gambler
Known for	Handicapping, Thoroughbred racehorse owner
Signature

George Elsworth Smith (1862–1905) was an American gambler and Thoroughbred horse racing enthusiast who became a multi-millionaire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Smith was given the nickname "Pittsburgh Phil" in 1885 by Chicago gambler William "Silver Bill" Riley to differentiate him from the other Smiths that also frequented Riley's pool halls. Pittsburgh Phil is considered by many handicappers to have been an expert strategist, winning large sums of money at a time when racing statistic publications, such as The Daily Racing Form, were not widely available. At the time of his death from tuberculosis in 1905, he had amassed a fortune worth $3,250,000, which is comparable to $US 86,630,556 today. His racing Maxims, published posthumously in 1908, are considered to be the foundations of many modern handicapping strategies and formulas.

George Elsworth Smith was born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania in 1862 to Elizabeth ("Eliza") and Christian Smith. The Smith family also included two sisters, Annie and Elizabeth, and another son, William C. Smith, that was a few years younger than George Smith. His mother was originally from Ireland and emigrated to the United States in 1857, and his father was a carpenter from Baden, Germany. Eliza remarried after Christian Smith's death in the early 1870s to retail grocer Edward Downing, who died in the 1880s. She remarried a second time on November 20, 1906 to real estate and coal developer Thomas S. Wood after George Smith's death.

George Smith's sister Anne married and had a son named James Christian McGill (1880–1972). McGill was orphaned at a young age when his parents died in the mid-1880s during an unspecified epidemic and was subsequently raised, along with his infant sister Eleanor, by Mrs. Smith and George Smith. Smith was a notoriously reticent and shy individual that only granted one interview during his lifetime, in which he relayed only information pertaining to racing matters. Consequently, much of the published biographical information on Pittsburgh Phil's early life, his rise to fame and the reasoning behind his methods on the track comes from interviews with his nephew, James McGill, who was a close confidant in the ten years preceding George Smith's death.