Benny binion golf bet

Additionally, the Horseshoe would honor a bet of any size as long as it was the first one made. Link to: Benny Binion Documentary Link to: Benny Binion. 2 Lester Ben “Benny” Binion What are some of your other childhood memories? bets so they wouldn't flinch when he bet 'em. And golf course back there. I. While his soon-to-publish memoir has already made waves thanks to an allegation that golfer Phil Mickelson asked him to bet on the Ryder Cup. The story is told by old gamblers that Moss was summoned to Las Vegas in by Benny Binion to play in a spectacular poker game benny binion golf bet Nick.

10 Intriguing Facts About Gambling Kingpin “Benny” Binion

His office was a booth in the downstairs restaurant, and he knew many of his customers by name. Binion didn't consider himself to be very good at poker , nor did he participate much in competition or private cash games, preferring to organize them. However, in he was inducted posthumously into the Poker Hall of Fame for his contributions to the game.

Jack and Ted took over as president and casino manager, respectively, in Benny's wife, Teddy Jane, managed the casino cage until her death in In , Binion's daughter, Becky, took over the presidency after a legal battle, and Jack moved on to other gambling interests. Becky's presidency saw the casino sink into debt. Ted was under nearly constant scrutiny from the Nevada Gaming Commission from onwards for his involvement in drugs and associating with known organized crime figures.

His gaming license was revoked in , and he died in mysterious circumstances about a decade later. Ted's live-in girlfriend, Sandra Murphy, and her lover, Rick Tabish, were charged and convicted of his murder, but the verdict was later overturned. They were retried and acquitted. In January , Binion arranged for Johnny Moss and Nick "The Greek" Dandolos to play a head-to-head poker tournament which ended up lasting five months, with Dandolos ultimately losing a reported two million dollars.

The year-old Moss had to take breaks to sleep occasionally, during which Dandalos, then aged 57, went over to the craps table and played. After the final hand, and losing millions of dollars, Dandolos uttered one of the most famous poker quotes of all time: "Mr. Moss, I have to let you go. Binion didn't operate a casino until in Las Vegas. In , after years of arranging heads-up matches between high-stakes players, Binion invited six players to compete in a tournament.

Moss, then aged 63, was voted champion by his younger competition and received a small trophy. Binion's creation of the World Series helped popularize the game of poker, though he greatly underestimated how popular the World Series would become. In , he speculated that eventually the tournament might have fifty or so entrants.

He never forgot the cowboys after they arrived; he always paid the entry fees for all of the cowboys for their championship event. When the casino closed, Boyd Gaming took up the tradition that Binion started by continuing to pay all the entry fees. Benny binion golf bet Binion died of heart failure at the age of 85 on December 25, , in Las Vegas. Contents move to sidebar hide.

Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons. American gambling icon and criminal — Benny Binion at the World Series of Poker. Pilot Grove, Texas , U. Las Vegas , Nevada, U. 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.

Bergstrom came back over the next few years. Then, in November , he brought in a whole million. He deposited it in the casino cage, and Ted told him he could bet it on any game. It was all over in one roll. And Bergstrom pulled his finger off that table like it was on fire!

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. He had to sell majority interest in the casino to finance his legal fights.

The family regained control in , with Jack becoming president, Ted casino manager, and their mother Teddy Jane, managing the casino cage almost until her death in Three Binion daughters, Barbara, Brenda and Becky owned percentages but were not active in operations until , 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 was on the payroll as a "consultant. 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 , when it was still in its infancy.

At that time, the Binions 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 Binions 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 Binions, by contrast, promoted poker. 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 Binions 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. While the second generation of Binions 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 s, 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.

It wasn't the classiest joint in town, but it was an authentic and unique experience. He's got heart and he knows psychology. He can move his checks in such a fashion that he gets his opponents in so deep that it becomes just as dangerous for them to stop as to go ahead. 3 man golf bets He makes them call him, and he busts 'em. I was playing stud one night with a fellow named Slim.

He had eightjack-queen-up. I had a pair of sixes. I just called it, put it right in, made him a miser. My sixes took it. If he'd tried to sell me a little cheaper, he'd of got it. You must know your man. When a good player gets lucky he wins the whole table.

And when a poor Player gets lucky he wins just a small corner of the table. I sum it up for you just like that. Ranking in the hierarchy of gamblers are Jews, Greeks Chinese and Texans, in no certain order. There is an adage that a casino is assured of success if it attracts a flourishing Jewish trade. Greeks are said to be cunning, Chinese clever and persistent.

The mystique about poker players from Texas is that the best ones are very high rollers and nerveless. I came into a pretty good stake. So one night I sat in a game with these big players from Texas, and before I'd seen the last card of my first hand I had already risked a significant portion of my stake. They'd put me into a position where I had to win a hand right away or my stake would be gone.

I was in the wrong league. Later I asked one of these fellows to teach me about poker. He was the perfect guy, was called Doc, had a curly cowlick, the whole thing. He sat me down in his kitchen at the table. Doc left the room. An hour went by. Benny binion golf bet I was thinking, what the hell, getting very restless. Then he came back and said, 'You just had your first lesson. Some of the biggest poker games ever held were in small hotels in Texas during the Depression.

Gamblers and street hustlers were going into the oil business, and they were betting leases and rigs as well as cash. You got to be a good gambler, anyhow, to get rich in the oil business. Some of them players came out worth S40 million, what with poker and dice and oil leases and whatnot.

Money didn't mean nothing to them, but gambling did. Some of them big oldtime oilmen still play in big poker games, but only for the pleasure of stepping on a professional gambler if they can. I like to see them come around. High rollers are thrilled by numbers. Johnny Moss had been playing in high games for years when Benny Binion called him and said, "They got a fellow out here that thinks he can play stud poker.

Early in the game Moss had two nines up. The biggest card Nick the Greek had showing was an eight. On the fifth card the Greek caught a jack. Two-three-four-five-seven is the best hand in that game, and you play it like draw poker. He drawed one card. I stayed pat with an eight-six. He turned over an eight-five.

But we kept on playing for days, and finally the Greek said, I got to let you go. It is a peculiar thing about high-rolling gamblers that they can lose their entire roll—sums that are literally fortunes—and pop up a few days later with another basket of money. Joe Bernstein, who used to gamble with the murdered Arnold Rothstein, has won astronomically at craps and baccarat and promptly lost it all back at the same tables.

Now in his 70s, Bernstein is tanned, with slick white hair and dresses like a Palm Beach dandy. Not long ago he hit himself a lick at the Horseshoe crap table, and gamblers flew in from all over the country to try to hustle Bernstein out of his money. The question that naturally occurs is why doesn't Bernstein, at his age, put something aside?

High rollers don't always recover by luck or skill at the tables. Some have "stake horses," rich men who bankroll them for a percentage of their winnings. Some sell pieces of their play to other gamblers. A few lend money to each other in times of varying fortune. The usual terms are that the money is to be paid back when the borrower is winning again, often with a percentage of the winnings as a bonus.

Occasionally money is loaned "on principle," which means payable on demand, with no excuses. There is quite a bit of pride associated with this. Well, I knew where to get that. Traveling in a covered wagon, the family proceeded to Dallas and sold their horses to the fire department. When Johnny was 5 a telephone pole fell on his father's leg and crushed it.

I got hold of a bicycle and delivered for the Mackey Telegraph Company and finally got me a motorcycle and went to work for a drugstore. I learned how to gamble when I was about 9 years old, shooting craps and playing dominoes. I hung around the domino parlors and was one of the best even when I was a kid. I made a living at dominoes by the time I was I was learning all the games and learning about crooked dice, marked cards, how to protect myself.

Well, I'd known Blackie since he showed me how to make dice when I was I don't need the smartest man in the world. Moss went to work in a Dallas gambling house as a lookout man, watching for cheaters. He worked the East Texas oilfields during the boom.

He carried a pistol in his pocket and traveled wherever there was a big game. By then he had married a girl named Virgie Ann. Although she is a Baptist and disapproves of gambling, they remain married after 44 years. This is an astonishing record for a gambler, or anybody else, and has been achieved partly because Moss keeps his gambling life and his home life separate. An anecdote was told about another Fort Worth gambler named Jawbreaker, who was reading a newspaper in a bar one afternoon and saw that Montgomery Ward was having a sale on screen doors.

I'd rather borrow from a bellhop than ask Virgie for a penny. I don't have no comment to her about gambling, win or lose. Virgie manages one, and their daughter Eleoweese runs the other. Moss goes home now and then from Las Vegas and lies beside the pool. I might end up with nothing if it wasn't for her.

Virgie's loyalty withstood severe testing early in their marriage. Before she could pick one out he was broke again. He was up every morning at dawn practicing. I'd never shot better than 46 in practice, but I knew when that money was on the line I could beat it. On the first hole Moss' foot putt for a birdie rolled straight at the hole and curved off.

As he walked to the second tee, Moss was pondering. Couldn't be but one thing. Ti had got out there early and raised the cups. Moss' caddie and Thompson raced to the third green. The game proceeded that way, and at the end Moss had shot 41 and won all bets.

Gamblers tell of another match Moss played in Roswell, N. Ploys used on golf courses by gamblers are innumerable and sometimes fantastic. They range from outright cheating to gamesmanship to simple practical tricks, such as an old one that is currently popular again in Las Vegas—smearing the club face with Vaseline to prevent the ball from spinning into a hook or slice.

On a tight hole at the Dunes golf course you see the jars of Vaseline emerge from each bag, and when the club is swung you hear slurk. Moss remembers a big-money match years ago when his caddie found an opponent's lost ball in the rough and hid it in Moss' bag. Moments later the opponent joyfully cried out that he had located his ball resting on a mound of grass with a clear shot to the green.

The opponent looked at him for a long time and then said, "Johnny, if that ain't my ball, where is my ball?