Men and cities can be judged by their heroes, and it tells you something
of Las Vegas that there are only two historic equestrian statues in the
city. There's Rafael Rivera, said to be the first white man to find the
Las Vegas Valley, and there's Benny Binion, said to be the first to give
gamblers a fair shot at winning big.
The Binion statue suggests Las Vegans value the Western traditions of
individuality, fairness and a good gamble.
In some 40 years operating Las Vegas casinos, Binion injected courage
into an industry too timid to take a high bet. He forced gambling houses
to change from sawdust joints to classy, carpeted casinos. He and his
sons changed poker from a kitchen-table pastime into an important casino
game. He was one of the boosters who made Las Vegas the home of the
National Finals Rodeo.
Binion did not merely create tourist attractions, but was so famously
colorful that he personally became one.
One of Binion's gimmicks was giving visitors a chance to see $1 million
in one place and time, and have their photos taken in front of it. Risk
of theft was low, not only because money was guarded but because $10,000
bills are no longer circulated and would be impossible to spend.
First the boy ran errands for gamblers. Then the young man steered
customers to clandestine gambling joints. Meanwhile, he made money in
the bootlegging business. About 1928 he opened an illegal "policy" game,
or lottery.
In 1936 Dallas unofficially adopted a policy of tolerance toward minor
vices, the better to host the Texas Centennial celebration. Police
wouldn't put gamblers out of business, but would raid and fine them from
time to time. Binion had crap tables built specially in crates labeled
as containing hotel beds. "If we had half an hour's notice we were going
to be raided, we could clear it out," Binion told a reporter in the
'70s.
Even in the Depression, Dallas was flush with oil money. During World
War II, entire divisions of GI's learned to shoot craps in barracks and
motor pools, and many headed for Dallas to buck the bigger banks and
honest dice Binion was known to provide.
This river of money also attracted pirates. In those days Binion carried
three pistols -- two .45 automatics and a small .38 revolver. In 1931,
Binion suspected fellow bootlegger Frank Bolding had stolen some liquor
and argued with him in a back yard. "This guy was a real bad man, had a
reputation for killing people by stabbing them," related Binion's son,
the late Lonnie "Ted" Binion, after Benny's death. "He stood up real
quick and Dad felt like he was going to stab him, and rolled back off
the log, pulled his gun, and shot upward from the ground. Hit him
through the neck and killed him."
This athletic marksmanship was the genesis of Binion's nickname "The
Cowboy," but also earned him a murder conviction. Bolding did have a
knife on him, but hadn't pulled it. Yet Binion only got a two-year
suspended sentence, said Ted, because the deceased's reputation was so
bad.
Five years later, Binion shot and killed a rival numbers operator, Ben
Frieden. Wounded, Binion was cleared on grounds of self-defense.
No other killings were ever officially attributed to Binion, though a
number of his rivals -- and a number of his allies -- died in a gang war
that broke out in 1938.
Herbert Noble was called "The Cat," for he was thought to have nine
lives. In 1946 he was shot in the back; in 1948 his car was riddled with
bullets; in 1949 he found dynamite wired to the starter of his car and
later got shot in another high-speed chase. But when somebody blew up
his car, killing his wife instead of him, he blamed Binion and spent the
rest of his life trying to even the score.
Noble was a pilot, and in 1951 a police officer caught Noble rigging an
airplane with two large bombs, one high explosive and one incendiary. He
had a map with Benny Binion's Las Vegas home -- the structure that still
stands on Bonanza Road -- clearly marked.
Noble escaped or survived 11 known attempts to kill him -- involving
bombs, automatic rifle and machine-gun fire -- before a bomb planted in
front of his mailbox got him in 1951.
Binion denied responsibility for the eventfulness of Noble's final
years, and particularly for the death of Noble's wife. By then a reform
administration had encouraged Binion to leave Dallas, and he settled in
Las Vegas. "When I realized how good it could be up here, I said, 'Let
'em have Texas.' "
Binion opened a club on Fremont Street in partnership with J.K.
Houssels, but soon split with him, though they remained lifelong
friends. The split was over Binion's desire to increase the limit on the
size of bets the house would accept. When he opened his own place in
1951, naming it Binion's Horseshoe, he set the craps limit at $500, 10
times the maximum at other casinos.
Most gamblers use some sort of system. Commonly, if a gambler wins a $10
bet, he will then bet the original $10, plus the $10 won. All gamblers
dream of riding a streak of luck and a system into real money, but
casino owners have nightmares about the same event.
The house limit made it harder to do. A person betting $10 and doubling
it each time he won would be blocked on the fourth bet by the $50 limit.
Under Binion's $500 limit, he could keep doubling until the seventh bet.
If the doubler won all seven bets he could win $1,130 at Binion's
compared to $270 anywhere else.
The new limits made Binion's famous immediately, and other casinos were
forced to raise their own limits accordingly.
The statue of Benny Binion at corner of Second Street and Ogden Avenue
was donated by his family. Review-Journal files)
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 Binion 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 Binion's 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 a $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 invitationals 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 businesswomen, 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
