Policy banks

The numbers game, also known as the numbers racket, the policy racket, the Italian lottery, the policy game, or the daily number is a form of illegal gambling or illegal lottery played mostly in poor and working class neighborhoods in the United States, wherein a bettor attempts to pick three digits to match those that will be randomly drawn the following day. In recent years, the "number" would be the last three digits of "the handle", the amount race track bettors placed on race day at a major racetrack, published in racing journals and major newspapers in New York. A gambler places a bet with a bookie at a tavern, bar, barber shop, social club, or any other semi-private place that acts as an illegal betting parlor.

A runner carries the money and betting slips between the betting parlors and the headquarters, called a numbers bank or policy bank. The name "policy" is from a similarity to cheap insurance, both seen as a gamble on the future.

"Policy shops," where bettors choose numbers, were in the United States prior to 1860. In 1875, a report of a select committee of the New York State Assembly stated that "the lowest, meanest, worst form ... [that] gambling takes in the city of New York, is what is known as policy playing." It flourished in African American and Italian American communities across the country. It was also played in working class Irish-American and Jewish-American communities. It was known in Cuban-American communities as bolita ("little ball").

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