Definition of "numbers game" []

• A lottery in which bets are made on an unpredictable number, such as a daily stock quotation. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Oddly, one of Stuey’s biggest wins as a teenager came not from gin or poker but from the neighborhood numbers racket—a mob-run lottery very much like the daily numbers game that the state runs today, the difference being that the numbers are generated not from a drawing but from the last three or four numbers of the handle the total sum of that day’s wagers at one of the local racetracks."