In 1973, sports handicapper and Mafia associate Sam "Ace" Rothstein is sent by the Chicago Outfit to Las Vegas, Nevada to run the Teamsters-funded Tangiers Casino, while Philip Green serves as the mob's hotel CEO front man. Sam doubles the casino's profits, which are skimmed by the mafia before taxes are paid. Mafia boss Remo Gaggi sends Sam's childhood friend and mob enforcer Nicky Santoro, Nicky's younger brother Dominick, and Frankie Marino to protect Sam and the skimming operation. Nicky's volatile temper and Chicago criminal background eventually gets him placed into the Nevada Black Book, banning Nicky from every casino in Nevada. Dominick and Frankie gather their own experienced mob crew, and often engage in non-sanctioned shakedowns and elaborate burglaries instead.
Sam meets and falls in love with beautiful hustler, dancer, and former prostitute Ginger McKenna. They have a daughter and marry, but their marriage is quickly thrown into turmoil due to Ginger's relationship with her former boyfriend, con artist-turned-pimp Lester Diamond. Sam has Nicky and his crew beat Lester when they catch him conning Ginger out of $25,000. Ginger turns to alcohol and develops an increasingly problematic drug addiction.
In 1976, Sam fires slot manager Don Ward for incompetence. When Ward's brother-in-law, Clark County Commission chairman Pat Webb, fails to convince Sam to rehire Don, Webb arranges for Sam's gaming license to be denied, jeopardizing his position. Sam blames Nicky's recklessness for ongoing police and Nevada Gaming Board pressure, and the two argue furiously in the Mojave desert. Sam starts hosting a local television talk show, upsetting both Nicky and the Chicago bosses for making himself such a public figure and bringing unwanted attention to their operations.
The Midwest Mafia bosses install incompetent Kansas City underboss Artie Piscano to oversee all cash transactions. Piscano writes everything he knows about the operations in a notebook. The FBI, having wired Piscano's store, are spurred into investigating Sam's casino.
Sam seeks to divorce Ginger, who kidnaps their daughter, planning to flee to Europe with her and Lester. Sam convinces Ginger to return with Amy, then overhears her planning on the phone to kill him. Sam kicks her out of their home but later relents. Ginger approaches Nicky to get her valuables from Sam's safe deposit box, and the two start an affair. Sam confronts and disowns Ginger, and ends his friendship with Nicky. Nicky throws Ginger out when she demands he kill Sam. Drunk and furious, Ginger crashes her car into Sam's on the driveway and retrieves the key to their deposit box. She takes the contents of the box but is arrested by the FBI as a witness.
In 1979, the FBI closes the casino and Green eventually cooperates with them. Piscano dies of a heart attack when federal agents discover his notebook. The FBI approaches Sam for help by showing him photos of Nicky and Ginger together, but he turns them down. The bosses are arrested and put on trial, and start to arrange the murders of anyone who might testify against them and prolong their subsequent sentences. Ginger dies of a drug overdose, and Sam barely escapes death by a car bomb, suspecting Nicky to be the culprit. Before Sam can take revenge, the bosses, angered by Nicky's legal issues and apparent unauthorized attempt on Sam's life, order Frankie and his crew to ambush Nicky and Dominick. Under the impression that they are attending a meetup in an Indiana cornfield, they are beaten with baseball bats, covered in quicklime, and buried alive in a shallow grave.
With the mob now out of licensing fronts, big corporations buy and demolish the casinos to make way for new, larger hotel casinos, which Sam laments. He retires to San Diego and lives as a sports handicapper, ending up in his own words, "right back where I started".
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