Benny Binion: In His Own Words
Monday, 23 December 2013
Benny Binion, father of the WSOP, was a man of many contradictions: wise but illiterate, a marketing genius who always told the truth. Generous to his friends, hospitable to his customers and dangerous to his enemies, Johnny Hughes remembers Binion through his own words.
ON PLAYER SERVICE:
“People want good whiskey, cheap, good food, cheap, and a square gamble... Make the little man feel like a big man.”
Benny was the first in Las Vegas to offer food and drink comps to all the players, not just the high rollers. He was known for his great food. A steak from the beef raised on his Montana ranch was $2 after midnight. The poker-player-only buffet at the World Series of Poker featured every form of seafood, including soft-shell crab and lobster. There were also elk, bear and deer. Benny would feed the poker players at the Series three times a day, starting with inch-thick ham steaks for breakfast.
ON KEEPING HIS WORD:
“I'll tell you the truth, but I won’t tell you everything.”
He was known as being totally truthful and none of his stories, including the one about the big poker match between Johnny Moss and Nick the Greek in 1949, have been disproven. He would not talk much about his time as a bootlegger in El Paso, on Mexico’s border, in his late teens. He’d only talk a bit about the two men he killed in Dallas. Of one he said, “We had a gunfight and I won.”
ON POKER CHEATING:
“Everybody had his little ways of doing somethin’ to the cards – marking ’em, crimpin’ ’em. I got in with more of a gamblin’ type – you might say road gamblers – most everybody cheated, and today people are smarter. Well, you just gotta judge honesty. I don’t know how I do it but there’s just kind of a tell on people.”
The introduction of plastic cards eliminated most of the ways to gaff the deck of cards.
ON BOOTLEGGING:
“I never did make no money bootlegging... just kept me poor as a church mouse all the time.”
Benny started out bootlegging on the streets of Dallas and later from El Paso, Texas, sometimes by aeroplane.
ON A GOOD POKER PLAYER:
“I think a player is somebody with a lot of energy... kind of a nervous type, and he has to have some outlet. Couldn’t just go to bed like an ordinary person.”
Benny said he was not a good poker player. He lost $600,000 playing in the late 1940s. He said he was not good enough to play with the guys around his own gambling joint.
ON GAMBLING RAIDS IN DALLAS:
“Now, they’d just come in and raid us and not tear up nothin’. We paid $600,000 a year in fines a few years there. There wasn’t no graft, or nothin’ to it.”
The fines, political donations and outright bribes kept gambling houses open in Dallas, and Benny was the key person between the gamblers and the police and politicians, charging all other gamblers a street tax to operate.
ON EARLY LAS VEGAS:
“We came out here and we was very successful. I kept thinking I’d leave. I didn't think this town was ever going to be anything like it is. Everybody was friendly and there was none of this hijacking. You couldn't get robbed if you hollered ‘Somebody rob me!’”
Benny had to leave Dallas in 1946 when various law enforcement agencies turned the heat up. Las Vegas only had 18,000 people and one newspaper, which listed Benny as the restaurant manager when he faced gambling license troubles.
ON TRUST:
“My motto is I don't trust nobody till they can afford it.”
ON HIS ENEMIES AND BAD KARMA:
“They was wantin’ to get rid of me. I was a little too strong. A lot of them died, some of them have destroyed theirselves in the meantime. They’ll know who I’m talking about. Everyone of ’em’s had bad luck. I believe the law of averages, or the Lord or somebody, operates that.”
In the late 1940s, Benny had disagreements with the Mafia over his high limits and the publicity he gained in his war with Herbert “Cat” Noble of Dallas who was finally killed by a bomb.
ON SETBACKS:
“I never did recognise damagin’. I just kept on rollin'. I don't look back. Old guy told me, ‘Don't never look back or holler ‘whoa, in a bad place’. Tough times make tough people.”
Benny overcame prison, the Mafia, the Great Depression, and investigations by local, state and federal agencies, including the FBI and the IRS.
ON HIS ENEMIES, INCLUDING “CAT” NOBLE:
“I've done nothin’ to nobody [who] I didn’t think was going to do me bodily harm. If anybody goes to talking about doing me bodily harm or doing my family bodily harm, I’m very capable of taking care of them in a most artistic way.”
Cat Noble was caught with an aeroplane rigged with bombs and a map of Benny’s Las Vegas home. There were 13 attempts on Cat’s life, hence the nickname. Finally, he was blown up with a bomb at his mailbox.
ON JIMMY “THE WEASEL” FRATIANNO’S CLAIM THAT BENNY OFFERED THE MAFIA ONE HALF OF A DOWNTOWN CASINO FOR THE KILLING OF RUSSIAN LOUIE, BENNY'S OLD BODYGUARD:
“Tell them FBIs that I am still capable of doing my own damn killing.”
Benny said this to a reporter when told of Fratianno’s almost certainly false claim. Fratianno was then in the witness protection programme and making the statement at the behest of the FBI. Benny had sought pardons for all his old crimes from several presidents and President Jimmy Carter was on the verge of a pardon, but this story and Benny’s quote ended his chances.
ON GAMBLING DEBTS:
“I never got mad at a man for owing me. It was my fault if he owed me. You can’t find a human being that ever owed me a gambling debt that I said a cross word to.”
ON THE DICE:
“I depend on the dice to make my livin’. All you got to have is some square dice and a big bankroll.”
ON BACKROOMING CHEATS AND THIEVES:
“If a man don’t have no respect of himself, he’ll steal. Fear will not keep ’em from stealin’. Damn near killed some of ’em. Just kick the hell out of ’em.”
When they caught cheats or thieves, other Las Vegas casinos would call the law. At Binion’s they would be “back-roomed” – ie, they were lead to a back room to have the living hell beat out of them.
ON NICK THE GREEK:
“He was the strangest character I ever seen. Nobody never knew where he got that money. He ran out of money. One day a guy beat him out of five-hundred and somethin’ thousand playin’ poker. He had that money in a chest in his room and it wasn’t even locked.”
In early 1949, Nick the Greek lost around $2,000,000 to Johnny Moss with Benny Binion staking him. It was not just a heads up or a continuous game. In late 1949, the Greek lost $550,000 to Ray Ryan, mentioned above. That broke him and he stayed broke the rest of his life.
ON LEARNING:
“You learn a little somethin’ every day. When you quit learning, I think your damn lights went out.”
Benny could barely read, if at all, but he was known for his wisdom.
Many quotes come from the University of Nevada’s Oral History Collection. Johnny Hughes is the author of Famous Gamblers, Poker History, and Texas Stories which is available from Amazon.