Good Riddance, 2008

Every year on New Year's Eve, I go out and celebrate like most everyone else does. For me, it's just a good party. I mean, I've never really been happy to see a year end - that is, until 2008. (If you read my column a few issues ago, in which I rhetorically asked if my life could get any better, this column will make you laugh.)

There continues to be no ongoing big-game poker in Las Vegas. The "big game" springs up a few times a month, if that, or when Bellagio is hosting a tournament. When that's the case, I'm usually in a tournament and can't play anyway.

After close to three years of this, it can really start to put a strain on the old bankroll. A nice tournament win would have been nice, but 2008 wasn't my year for that, either. I didn't play a ton of tournaments, but my buy-ins must have been close to $200,000. My cashes? Less than $100,000.

My investments still would have paid all of my bills nicely, but then the freakin' economy had to turn to garbage. I have faced margin calls many times in the past, during the market crashes of '92 and '97, 9/11, as well as when sectors I was heavy in tanked. However, none of them held a candle to the recent dive brought on by a failing economy and the banking crisis.
My margin calls added up to the seven-figure range. The only thing that really saved me was that I cashed out of several of my largest positions to buy a piece of property right before things really got bad. And speaking of land …

Real estate is where I keep the bulk of my money. I love to buy all kinds of property: houses, high-rise condos, shopping centers, warehouses, offices, lakefront lots, and vacant land. I guess I either learned or inherited this from my mother, who owns close to 50 rental homes herself.

This has always worked out well for me, until now. Real-estate prices have fallen drastically, as I'm sure you're aware. This doesn't bother me too much, as I know things will recover, but in the meantime, I can't liquidate anything.

Property taxes and association fees also must be paid; I actually have one association fee that's $1,500 a month! But the real killer for me came in the form of a capital call on a 12.5-acre shopping center I'm developing (actually, a partnership of which I own 51 percent is developing it).

I asked my developer at the outset three years ago, when I put several million dollars into the project, if there was any chance that I'd have to put any more money in; that is, a capital call. He told me that there was always a slight chance, but that in the 25 years he's been doing these projects, developing land, he's never had to ask for a second capital call. I'd done several smaller deals with him with no problems, but I should have guessed what the economy would do as soon as I took the plunge.

In the middle of the shopping center sits two acres for another of my projects. This one is my baby, and I've been working very hard on it during the last three years (as well as sinking many millions of dollars into it). It's Brunson's Event Center, and it will be home to two wedding/banquet halls, a fine-dining restaurant, a poker store, and Todd's Tavern.

I've been meeting with developers, builders, architects, lawyers, CPAs, engineers, suppliers, subcontractors, and gaming attorneys for three years now. This has eaten up not only a lot of my money, but a heck of a lot of my time. When we got ready to break ground, my bank suddenly denied my loan, on which they had won the bid.

I went to the bank that came in second, and the banker literally laughed and said, "I can't believe what wussies those guys are. Don't even bother shopping it out any further. We'll take it." After two-and-a-half weeks went by and I hadn't heard from the loan officer, I called him and asked what the heck was going on. He said that it had to go before their loan committee.

I told him I knew how banks worked, and that loan committees meet at least once a week, so they had to have at least seen my proposal and business plan. He agreed, and said he'd get back to me. He did, and sheepishly told me that they were going to have to pass, too. "I don't know what to tell ya, Todd. I'd love to have your project, but the committee passed." Hmm.

Eight more banks in the next six weeks did the exact same thing. They jumped on it at first, then their loan committees passed. Ten banks had fought over this loan 10 months earlier. What was going on now?

I called my godfather, Jack Binion, for some advice. "Todd, Bank of America has been after me for years to do business with them. They'll jump at the chance to do me a favor." He called me back a few days later and told me that they would give the construction loan only if he personally guaranteed it, and that it had to be repaid in full in three years!

Now I knew there was something terribly wrong. Why wouldn't a bank want to give a $7 million loan to a guy with more than $30 million in real estate to back it up as collateral, with a billionaire willing to guarantee the loan, to boot? The answer? The banks knew that the s--- was about to hit the fan, and they were "pulling in their horns," to quote Mr. Binion. The biggest banking scandal in U.S. history broke a few months later.

Can I time things, or what? It seems that I've inherited the Brunson business curse from my father. If there's a business that's made a profit for 300 years in a row and he gets into it … it will fold within a few months!

Well, I still had my show on the Strip, The Real Deal! My salary there would pay all of my monthly bills, at least. After everything else that had happened, I should have guessed that something bad would happen there, too.

The show was doing great, selling close to triple the projected number of tickets per night. Then, The Venetian's stock value plummeted. While still a billion-dollar company, The Venetian balked at paying the show a measly million dollars that it was due on Jan. 1, and closed the show's doors on a technicality.

As if all of this wasn't enough, a producer who I thought was my friend of 20 years lied to me, telling me I'd be on the year-end filming of both Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker. I wound up on neither; nice friend.

I have only one thing to say to the year 2008: Don't let the door hit ya in the a-- on the way out!