Bennie Binion knew one thing about rodeo cowboys. They were risk takers who loved to gamble, whether the game was life, dice, a roulette wheel, or a deck of cards.
While there was an occasional bronco or Brahma Bull rider who would abstain from the poker and dice games that went on behind the chutes, most of the rodeo contestants chose to gamble. During his lifetime, Binion served as a generous godfather to the rodeo crowd. He was an active participant and financial supporter of the rodeos that entertained Las Vegas fans, and when a cowboy down on his luck approached him, Bennie was always generous.
Binion grew up in the prairie country of the Lone Star State. He often slept in the bed of a pickup truck or the back of a chuck wagon on the trail. His father and grandfather were roustabouts who brought him up as a renegade. They taught him how to play poker and shoot dice and they always looked out for his best interests.
Bennie made friends with a lot of trail riders. Whether he was in Texas, New Mexico or Nevada, he always knew where the action was and would steer them to it.
During his Texas years, Binion ran illegal dice games, bribed cops and politicians, and stayed on the other side of the law. He even became a moonshiner until he was caught with the goods. As a judge pondered his fate in a courtroom, Bennie pleaded for mercy. He promised the judge he would never moonshine again if the judge spared him from a prison term. The judge believed him and granted him probation. Binion kept his word and moved on to other and bigger gambling enterprises, including creating the World Series of Poker.
After opening the Horseshoe on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, Bennie went out of his way to promote rodeos in the city. He spent a lot of his time with cowboys and their families. He had an open book policy toward them and would give them discount rates or free rooms when they were in town for a rodeo.
When a cowboy failed to place in the money, Bennie would open his wallet, pull out a few bills and send the grateful cowpoke on his way to the next rodeo town. While some of the cowboys paid him back, to most of them, it was a gift.
I remember some of those rodeo crowds that frequented the Horseshoe during the 1970s and 1980s. The casino would be filled with young cowboys in big Stetsons, colorful shirts and jeans, with leather boots and jangling spurs. They would gather around the dice and blackjack tables, place money on the roulette wheels, play poker and pull the handles of the one-armed bandits, a drink in one hand and cash in the other.
Bennie, often wearing his famous sheepskin coat, would mingle with them, cheering them on when they hit a jackpot, buying rounds of drinks, and just being one of the boys.
I once posed a tongue-in-cheek question to Binion: Do rodeo cowboys ever grow up?
His response: 'Not in my joint. Here they're eternally young and always in the money. I give them the good booze, the food and the gambling, and they give me the action. That's what it's all about.'
I liked Bennie's answer. I'll drink to that. Let the games begin.
