Little Big Man

When Benny Binion arrived in Las Vegas and opened up the Horseshoe on Fremont Street in the downtown area, he changed the rules.

He raised his limits. He added carpeting. And he created a policy to make all his players feel like kings.

'Almost overnight, he turned the little guy into a big man,' said a poker player who has lived in Las Vegas since the 1950s.

Benny began giving comps to all the players, not just the big rollers and his competition didn't like it one bit. It forced them to follow his policy and that cost them some money.

The Mafia tried to pressure him into lowering his limits. Benny laughed at them and made his limits even higher. He didn't care about the color of your skin, your ethnic background, your religious preference or lack of it. If you wanted to gamble, you were his guest.

As Binion's fortune grew, he bought a cattle ranch in Montana and raised prime beef. He would offer his customers $2 steak dinners after midnight, with the beef being shipped in from his ranch.

During the World Series of Poker, which came later, Benny offered an incredible buffet that featured many forms of seafood including soft shell crab and lobster, elk, bear and deer. He fed the poker players three times a day. With this kind of treatment, Binion's reputation as a casino host grew and grew.

Binion made sure his slot machines paid off better than the other casinos. Jackpots were commonplace, and when one was hit, Benny would walk up and personally congratulate the winner. Nothing was too good for his guests.

He was a colorful personality who would talk to his customers. Benny had a reputation for being truthful and would say, 'I'll tell you the truth -- but I won't tell you everything.' He'd add a wink and the person understood.

Many of his guests knew about the trouble he had gone through in Dallas where his gambling career began. They knew he had been involved in two gunfights that left men dead. Benny would only talk about one of the incidents. 'We had a gunfight and I won,' he would say, leaving the rest to the other person's imagination.

He judged honesty and would hire people based on a tell he discovered in individuals. His judgment rarely failed him.

Benny thought a good poker player was someone with a lot of nervous energy. He himself was not a good poker player and he admitted it. In the 1940s, he lost over $600,000 playing poker. His game was dice. He would tell people, 'I depend on the dice to make my living. All you need is some square dice and a big bankroll.'

When he came to Las Vegas after Dallas, he said, it was like being in Heaven.

'I kept thinking I would leave, that nothing this good could last,' he said, 'but I stayed and it kept getting better and better. Everybody was friendly and there were no hijackings. You couldn't get robbed if you shouted, 'Somebody rob me!'

As for trust, he just smiled and said, 'I don't trust anybody until they can afford it.'

He also had a quaint saying for anybody who threatened him. If anybody posed a threat to Binion or his family, he said, 'I'm very capable of taking care of them in a most artistic way.'

If he caught an employee or a customer cheating him, Benny never called the police. He just had the person 'back-roomed' -- taken into a back room and having the living hell beaten out of them. Because of that policy, the Horseshoe suffered very few losses from cheats over the years.

R.I.P. Benny. You were the best.