Some in the industry didn't go along willingly. "He was going to raise the keno limit to $500. Dave Berman said if he raised it, he'd kill him," related Ted Binion, a few years before the younger Binion's death in 1998. It was one of the few times on record that Benny backed down. He had no doubt Berman would try to make good his threat, and Binion did not want another gang war. The difference was worked out in some fashion unknown to him, said Ted, and the limit was raised a few months later without incident.
Over 40 years the Binions pushed the limits ever upward to $10,000. Gamblers who felt like going higher could do so, as long as they did it on the first bet. Back in 1980, a player named William Lee Bergstrom asked if he could really bet $1 million. He didn't have the money at the time, but the Binions told him he could.
A few months later he showed up with $777,000, apologizing that he couldn't raise a whole million. They never bothered to convert the money to chips, but laid the whole suitcase of cash on the "don't pass" line, and the woman holding the dice sevened out in three rolls. Binion's' counted out another $770,000 to Bergstrom, and Ted Binion escorted him to his car.
Bergstrom came back over the next few years. He bet $590,000 and won. Bet $190,000 and won. Bet $90,000 and won.
Then, in November 1984, he brought in a whole million. He deposited it in the casino cage, and Ted told him he could bet it on any game. Ted recalled, "He run a few feet ahead, up to a crap table, put his finger on the table and said '$1 million on the don't pass.'
"It was the comeout roll so the shooter wanted a seven, and they come ace-six. It was all over in one roll.
"I felt like electricity run through me. And Bergstrom pulled his finger off that table like it was on fire!"
Three months later Bergstrom committed suicide. "But you know, he was still $400,000 winner," pointed out Ted. He knew Bergstrom by then, and believed he died not for money, but for love.
Jack Binion, who became president of the casino, remembered that his father was first to put a carpet in a downtown casino, first to have limousines to pick up customers at the airport and first to offer free drinks to slot machine players.
"Everybody was comping big players, but Benny comped little players," noted Leo Lewis, who was comptroller at Binion's and later ran Strip resorts. "He said, 'If you wanta get rich, make little people feel like big people.' "
In the 1950s Benny served a hitch in prison for tax evasion, stemming not from the casino profits but from his Texas operations. He had to sell majority interest in the casino to finance his legal fights. The family regained control in 1964, with Jack becoming president, Ted casino manager, and their mother Teddy Jane, managing the casino cage almost until her death in 1994. Three Binion daughters, Barbara, Brenda and Becky owned percentages but were not active in operations until 1998, when Jack, after a bitter legal fight among the siblings, surrendered the presidency to Becky and sold her his interest. Jack Binion became active in gambling in other states.
Benny himself never held a gambling license after going to prison, but until his death in 1989 was on the payroll as a "consultant." In the 1970s he bragged that the Binion brothers, then in their 30s and veteran casino executives, "mind me like a couple of 6-year-olds."
Insiders, however, understood that the boys had good ideas of their own, which Benny was smart enough to rubberstamp. The most famous was the World Series of Poker. Tom Morehead of the Riverside Casino in Reno actually started it, but got out of the gambling business and allowed Jack and Ted to take over the tournament in 1970, when it was still in its infancy.
At that time, the binion's didn't even offer poker in their famous but small casino; floor space was too precious to waste on a game in which players vied for each others money, and the casino could collect fees for keeping the game but had no chance to win big. (Much later, when they acquired an adjacent high-rise hotel, the Binion's added a poker room.)
Many other casinos also did not offer it because the game was not entirely respectable. The game is hard to police, and was associated with cheating long after other Nevada casino games were universally honest. A few casinos offered it as a customer service, but intentionally kept it inconspicuous.
The Binion's, by contrast, promoted poker. Their original world series games were winner-take-all challenges (today the prize money is split among several finalists) and were not invitational's but open to anybody with $10,000 to buy-in. The open aspect was the secret of success; it lured rich suckers and unknown poker prodigies, but it also lured legendary pros such as Amarillo Slim Preston and Johnny Moss, who hoped to pluck the newcomers. They usually did, but sometimes the new guys won and themselves became legends, and that hope kept them coming back year after year.
The Binion's devised special rules to force the game to a resolution before everyone got bored with it, making it an event which could be, and was, nationally televised. Within a few years tournament poker was played everywhere poker was legal. And the positive national attention brushed off the lingering grains of disrepute, so that nearly every casino added the game to the attractions.
One of Binion's final gifts to Las Vegas was the hand he played in attracting the National Finals Rodeo to Las Vegas every December.
While the second generation of Binion's evolved into modern businessmen and business- women, Benny remained a Texas tough guy with eclectic tastes. Benny wore gold coins for buttons on his cowboy shirts, but was never seen in neckties. He didn't shave every day. Despite felony convictions which normally prohibit ownership of firearms, he carried at least one pistol all his life and kept a sawed-off shotgun handy.
In the 1970s, if the police needed lots of money on short notice to execute a drug sting operation, they could get it from Binion's casino cage. Yet he didn't ask the police for such ordinary services as arresting a slot cheater or pickpocket caught on the premises. Those were handled by burly, surly security guards, and the perpetrators rarely sinned again until their casts were removed.
Binion ran what was thought to be the most profitable casino in Las Vegas (privately held, it never had to report earnings publicly) but he didn't keep an office; he did business from a booth in the downstairs restaurant. Nobody needed an appointment to talk to him; they asked him personally for his ear, and usually got it. When he invited one to sit down and have a bowl of the Horseshoe's famous chili, the guest was often a senator or federal judge. And just as often, it was some old Texan from a one-windmill spread, trading stories of rodeos and crap games.
"He was a guy you could shake hands with, and feel you had met a real American character," said Howard Schwartz, who has documented the development of Las Vegas as an editor at Gambler's Book Club. "That was what made the place. It wasn't the classiest joint in town, but it was an authentic and unique experience. When you met Benny Binion, you felt you'd been part of history."
by Ad Hopkins (Las Vegas Review-Journal) |
