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 and pimp Lester Diamond. Sam has Nicky and his crew beat Lester when they catch him accepting $25,000 from her. 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 starts hosting a local television talk show from inside the casino, upsetting both Nicky and the bosses back home for making himself such a public figure and bringing unneeded attention. Sam blames Nicky's recklessness for ongoing police and Nevada Gaming Board pressure, and the two argue furiously in the Mojave Desert.

When the Midwest bosses discover that people on the inside are stealing from their skim, they install incompetent Kansas City underboss Artie Piscano to oversee the operation. Piscano ends up keeping written records of the operation's financials. Additionally, an FBI bug placed in Piscano's store for a separate crime catches him talking in detail about the casino skim, prompting a full investigation into the Tangiers 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 agrees to cooperate. 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 get ready for trial, and start arranging 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. The bosses, finally fed up with Nicky's recklessness, order Frankie and his crew to kill Nicky and his brother 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 mafia now out of the casino industry, Sam laments the new impersonal, corporate-run resorts of Las Vegas. He is last seen working as a sports handicapper in San Diego, ending up in his own words, "right back where I started".

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