Jack Binion -- Father of the World Series of Poker

“This kind of illustrates it all — the casino industry, poker industry, just about everything,” Jack Binion, father of the World Series of Poker and uber-successful casino executive, says. Jack’s heading back into his conference room, and the weight of a tall book stack has the 72-year-old Binion leaning sideways.

Jack’s the man who presided over the creation of poker’s most important event. Impressively, the WSOP is now the world’s richest sporting event, paying out more than $180 million last year alone.

He chucks down a thick book pile. “These here are all the present Las Vegas phone books.” They amount to about 3,000 pages. “And this here is the phone book from the entire Clark County in 1953.”

The small brown book, 160 pages total, advertises $5 rooms and luxurious floor shows. It’s a flashback to when the Binion clan set out to make its mark in the Nevada casino business, and in the process wound up establishing itself as ground zero for poker’s historical roots.

Binion is not just waxing nostalgic about the past. Rather, he’s proving a point: His first rodeo was a long time ago, and as Las Vegas has boomed from just 45,000 residents in 1950 to a metropolis of nearly 2 million people today, the Binion hand has remained busy in stirring up Las Vegas history.

Cowboy Up
A statue of Benny Binion, Jack’s father, stands at the intersection of Second Street and Ogden in Downtown Las Vegas. Equal parts cowboy gunslinger and casino marketing genius, Benny helped create the Las Vegas reputation for action, luxury, and mystique well before the saying “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” was used to market the city.

Benny headed to Vegas in the late 1940s with a small fortune pocketed from running underground games in Texas. He opened the Horseshoe Casino in 1951, and by offering customers a fair gamble, good whiskey, and cheap food, and taking the biggest bets in town, he soon became the Las Vegas patron saint of value whose house booked the biggest action in town.

The Horseshoe grew more and more successful, but with success came trouble with the law. A murder by one of Benny’s bodyguards brought increased scrutiny from local authorities. He wound up losing his gaming license after being sent to Leavenworth Penitentiary on a tax-evasion charge, and served a 42-month sentence between 1953 and 1957.

During this time, Jack, as a teenager, started informally running the Horseshoe with his brother, Ted.

“The boys grew up around the best gamblers in the world,” Benny said. “I guess they have absorbed about as much firsthand knowledge as anyone could, and that is why they are so good at what they do.”

Jack officially became president of the Horseshoe at age 26, while Ted acted as casino manager.

“In those days, I did everything,” Jack recalls. “Back then, casino owners were totally involved in every phase of the business. Remember Robert De Niro’s character in the movie Casino, when he was in the casino kitchen yelling about the cupcakes not having enough blueberries in them? It was like that; everyone was very hands-on.”

One of the many things that Jack did was solidify Binion’s as the birthplace of poker greatness. In 1970, Jack, who describes himself as a “second-tier poker player … wasn’t bad, wasn’t good,” began hosting the World Series of Poker. The hands-on, personable, and generous executive host shepherded the best, biggest, and baddest poker players, bookies, and men of action to Glitter Gulch each and every year.

“I cannot put into words how instrumental Jack was,” says Doyle Brunson. “There would be no World Series if it wasn’t for him, and very likely there would not be any tournament poker. If it involved the World Series back then, the final word was Jack.”

WSOP Roots
The idea for the World Series stemmed from a Reno gamblers reunion. Jack says that Slim Lambert, Red Berry, who later became a Texas state senator, and Tom Moore had a high-stakes poker game that ran for years in San Antonio. Moore eventually bought a place in Reno called the Holiday Hotel. “He started a gamblers convention, but it was really just a poker game,” Jack recalls. “That is where I met Doyle, Sailor [Roberts], and other players. My father, Ted, and I went up there and decided it was a real good idea to get everyone gathered up, to create a launching pad for action.”

Together with Jay Max Smith, a poker player who worked under Jack’s direction, they, he recalls, “decided to put together a poker tournament in February after the Super Bowl, so that all the bookmakers could show up.” It started as cash games, and, Jack says, as an afterthought “we decided we’d informally vote on who the best poker player was. We gave him a little cup and a bunch of stuff, but it really didn’t mean too much.”

The group of 50 or so gamblers who descended on the Holiday Hotel in 1969 constituted a large percentage of all of the attendees of the first and second World Series. “There were no squares there. Everyone was a rounder or bookmaker,” Jack laughs.

In the inaugural year, “Amarillo Slim” Preston, Brian “Sailor” Roberts, Doyle Brunson, Walter “Puggy” Pearson, Crandall Addington, Carl Cannon, and eventual voice-vote champion Moss all participated in an invitational tournament to determine who was the best player.

The tournament became an annual event. In 1971, they came up with the idea of having a freezout. Moss beat out five other players who all put up $5,000 per man. “There was no publicity on this. In fact, nobody wanted any publicity,” Binion recalls. “These guys were all bookmakers back home. They didn’t want their picture in the paper.” Four preliminary events also played out in 1971 — limit seven-card stud, limit razz, limit five-card stud, and limit ace-to-five lowball.

In 1972, the buy-in was bumped up to $10,000. Amarillo Slim won the main event and the $60,000 purse. While the event eventually attracted a lot of publicity for Binion’s, no winner drew more attention to the tournament than Slim. “It’s like we made him up,” Jack laughs. “We couldn’t have created a better character to promote the World Series. He had a perfect personality, was full of these corny sayings, and had a memorable name. Even today, nobody has as good a public persona as Slim. Looking back, we’re pretty lucky he won the tournament.”

The next year, 1973, saw the addition of the first no-limit hold’em preliminary event, a $1,000 affair that was won by poker legend Puggy Pearson. From 1977 onward, the tournament ran at least 10 preliminary events per year. Before that, a rather erratic schedule saw as few as one (1972) and as many as seven (1973, 1976). In 1978, Bobby Baldwin pocketed $210,000 by besting 41 other entrants in the main event. This was the first year that the winner-take-all payout was done away with.

In 2009, the WSOP will host 57 events, its largest and most ambitious schedule ever. The tournament is planned and structured down to a science. Jack says that this was not the case in the early years.

“It was informal enough that I remember Eric Drache came in for the seven-card stud event. We were going to start at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, or something. But we decided to hold it over because a few players played late into the night, so we were going to wait until they woke up,” he laughs. “Eric thought that was the dumbest goddamn thing he ever heard, but it goes to show you that we were pretty informal, to say the least.”

Informal and generous, Binion’s developed a reputation for taking care of the poker players who attended as if they were family.

“The World Series began by catering to the players,” Brunson recalls. “Binion’s spent a ton of money giving the players free food, free rooms, and much more. Now, the players have to cater to the people holding the tournaments, and, unfortunately, it is all about making money.”

The one thing that was not informal was the huge sums of money up for grabs.

“When we started, $10,000 was a ton of money,” Jack says. “It was like playing for almost $100,000, a very high game, and that was the point. We didn’t want any lightweights in it.”

When asked if the buy-in should be raised, Jack says that, yes, he does not think $10,000 is enough 40 years after the tournament’s inception. He says that a $10,000 buy-in today would be comparable to a $500 game in 1970. “But,” he adds, “$10,000 is what the customer has come to expect. It is more democratic and gives more people a shot at buying in.”

Family Business
Growing up around the birth of the modern casino business, Jack says that many have influenced his approach to business, gambling, and life. But he’s quick to point out that his father was the most important mentor.

“He was very unique, looking back,” Jack says. “He had a great personality, really liked people, and had just enough showmanship, but more important than that, he understood what the customers wanted and he catered to it. All of my success really has come from his format.”

Benny Binion believed that you could get rich by making little people feel like big people. This, along with taking bets that other casinos wouldn’t (Benny was fond of saying, “At the Horseshoe, we let a man set his own limit”), created a buzz within both the value and high-roller spectrums.

“He was the wisest man I ever knew, and he knew people better than anyone I ever met,” says Brunson. “If he was your friend, he would do anything for you, but if he was your enemy, you better watch out.”

The first year of the World Series, Doyle recalls a situation where Benny’s toughness toward the enemy showed. “It was well known that we all carried lots of money, and there was a constant fear of being robbed,” Doyle says. “Well, undesirable elements indeed came by, and a man known as a hijacker started hanging around. Benny came up to the guy and said, ‘You’re making my customers nervous, so get out of here.’ The guy responded, ‘Hey, it’s a free country, so I can do whatever I want.’ Benny’s response was great. He said, ‘You’re a young man and you think you’re tough. I’m an old man and I know I’m tough. If you don’t get out of here, we’re going to have to go out to the garage and find out whether you’re tough or not.’ We didn’t see that guy again,” Doyle laughs.

Jack says his brother, Ted, “also, surprisingly, had a big influence on me … he was quicker than me, really.”

Ted struggled with drug problems later in life. He eventually had his gaming license revoked, and in 1998, he died in what was initially ruled a suicide by drug overdose. His death was, however, soon reclassified a homicide, and Ted’s girlfriend and her lover were arrested for murder. The subsequent trial, which involved strippers and buried treasure, was pure drama for the first family of poker, and was detailed in Jim McManus’ best-selling book, Positively Fifth Street.

Jack also points out that he has learned a lot from Doyle Brunson, and states that all gamblers should tear a page out of Doyle’s book. “The thing I like the most about Doyle is that he creates a frenzy of action. Traditionally, everyone is looking for the nuts. Even if people get a good deal, they often try to stretch that to an even better deal. Once Doyle sees that he has a good deal, he says, ‘Let’s go tee it up.’ He’s always been willing to take a chance.”

Secrets to Success
Jack Binion has always been known as a behind-the-scenes guy who makes things happen, and the savvy entrepreneur has a laundry list of accomplishments that are unmatched in the poker industry. A messy legal fight for control over the Horseshoe Casino ensued after Benny’s death in 1998. Jack dumped his share — all except 1 percent, so that he could keep his gaming license — to his sister, Becky, and picked up the rights to operate the Horseshoe brand outside of Nevada. The new company that he formed, Horseshoe Gaming, opened highly successful riverboat casinos in Illinois, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He sold the company to Harrah’s in 2004 for $1.45 billion. While running Horseshoe Gaming, he stayed true to his poker roots, operating one of the most successful regional poker tournaments in the nation, the World Poker Open in Mississippi.

In 2006, Steve Wynn tapped Jack’s casino management expertise, hiring him as chairman of Wynn International. Jack was given the task of opening Wynn Macau, a location that he thinks could become the largest poker market in the world if the region ever starts broadcasting the game on television.

So, what is the key to the Binion success? “Look, here is what it is,” Jack shoots out. “All these places run the same. You have dealers, you have this, you have that. The difference is what you emphasize, your attention to detail and attention to effort put out. It’s just like a football team. All football is played the same way. It’s the ones that put out the extra effort and are better organized that are the winners.”

While effort and organization are surely important, Jack’s best friend says that poise is also one of his most impressive characteristics. “Jack has an amazing ability to perform under pressure,” Brunson says. “He never gets flustered and always reacts in a positive way to everything.”

Jack says that poker prowess also translates well into professional success. Complex problem solving, he says, “is a microcosm of life. You are making decisions, putting yourself at risk, and, every two minutes, having a life crisis,” he laughs. “In poker, all the strategies are almost like a life condensed into a couple hours to me.”

Next Chapter
Today, millions of people around the world play poker each day. Some pull up a virtual table at one of the 200-plus online poker rooms. Others buy a rack of chips in one of the thousands of brick-and-mortar poker rooms that now dot the planet. All use the same deck, all abide by nearly the same standard of rules, and all, in some capacity, can trace their lineage back to the commitment that Jack Binion made to poker and the World Series from the get-go.

The humble Binion plays down his role. “They say I’m the father of the WSOP, but really, the WSOP back then wasn’t that big a deal in a way,” he chuckles. “Maybe if we didn’t do it, nobody would have started a poker tournament, but it’s kind of like Columbus; if it hadn’t been Columbus, somebody would have come along and discovered America.

“When you get there first, you get to be the guy who puts your flag in the ground. It’s not like you did anything spectacular, you were just the guy to come along and do it.”

Jack says he loved the camaraderie that came with hosting and running the event. He thinks Harrah’s has done a great job, and he credits the company with being smart enough to see that poker was growing, and jumping on and expanding poker’s strongest brand.

He says that we’ll look back at this decade as the time that poker players became known personalities. “I’m excited about the history this era of poker will create,” he gushes.

No matter what that history is, one thing is certain: After decades of growth, expansion, and excitement, poker’s next chapters will be written by using the foundation that Jack has supplied.

Poker Through a Binion Lens
Jack Binion has seen lots of poker players come and go in his life. He knows the old-time greats intimately. He’s seen successful waves of young players (yes, Bobby Baldwin was once considered a cutting-edge youngster) revolutionize the game. He’s seen who has the wherewithal and skill set to survive the grind over generations.

Jack sees poker as being analogous to “mental athletics.” He says that it’s impossible to compare one era to another, but “while in sports, people have become physically bigger and stronger, poker players have not jumped forward mentally.”

“Some people say, ‘Well, the game is now more sophisticated, there is more information,’ but I don’t believe that to be true,” he states. “The top poker players of that (1970s) era would be able to compete with the top poker players of today.”

Binion points to Doyle Brunson, his best friend, as an example. “He is a phenomenon. Most people lose their edge when they hit their early 60s. Doyle is now 75, and is playing at the highest level. He is the equivalent of a guy 50 years old who would still be an all-star quarterback.”

He says that Johnny Moss also was great, but “by the time Moss was 63 or 64 years old, he started to slip.” Moss played until he died, at the age of 89, but, Binion says, “he had seen his best days by the time he was in his early 60s. He lived to play, and still played good, but would give out physically.”

While Binion thinks the world of Doyle’s game, he gives his “best all-around poker player ever” nod to the late Chip Reese.

He still remembers when Chip came to Vegas for the first time and how he cleaned up in a seven-card stud game that was played 24 hours a day at the Sahara. “Chip and Danny Robison, who was a sideshow by himself, got in, and they never gave up their seat, playing in 16- to 20-hour shifts.” The $30-$60 stakes kept getting kicked up, and soon the Reese/Robison bankroll was up to around $30,000. Jack says that Chip’s killer instinct kicked in one night, and that helped start the booming bankroll of one of poker’s legends.

“One night they were playing high-low split, a game that Chip played a lot in college. He was watching Doyle, Moss, and the other high-stakes poker players at the time, and realized that they all could not play high-low split a lick. He said, ‘Oh, my God, these guys cannot play as good as the people I beat in college.’ He called Danny and said, ‘I’m going to take the entire bankroll and get in the game.’ So, he threw off $20,000 of the $30,000 just anteing and taking a few turns. With that last $10,000, he ran it up to $150,000, and the rest is history.”

Binion does concur that today, there are “so many more quality second-tier players, and many more good heads-up and shorthanded players.” In the early days, he says, with fewer games and fewer opponents, it would take significant time to acquire shorthanded skills, and only a few top players like Doyle and Jack Straus were able to dominate these games.

“If you put people in shorthanded cash games, some people really won’t be as good as they think they are,” he laughs. “That is when you can really tell who can play.”

From a Family-Run Tournament to a Global Sports Brand
World Series of Poker Transforms Under Harrah’s Oversight
By Stephen A. Murphy

“None of us would be here were it not for the Binions,” said Jeffrey Pollack, World Series of Poker commissioner. “We consider Jack (Binion) to be the patriarch of poker.”

This year, Jack Binion returned to the World Series to present the Binion Cup, a trophy that was awarded to the winner of the newest WSOP event — the Champions Invitational, an invitation-only tournament of past main-event champions.

The Binion family was always the face of the WSOP, but that waned after Harrah’s bought the Horseshoe and the rights to the WSOP in 2004. After its acquisition, Harrah’s hired Pollack — who was the head of marketing for the NBA and the managing director of broadcasting and new media for NASCAR — to help transform poker into a global sports brand.

“We sort of took the playbooks from NASCAR and the NBA and the NFL, and we’ve applied them to what we do with the World Series of Poker,” said Pollack. “Sports marketing is fundamentally about the selling of hope. … But as a fan of other sports, you don’t have the hope of also being a participant, for the most part. The World Series of Poker offers a brand of hope that is infinitely more accessible.”

Under Harrah’s oversight, the WSOP has experienced tremendous growth. In 2003, the final year under Binion’s ownership, the main event welcomed 839 players. Since then, the game has exploded — thanks in large part to Chris Moneymaker’s Cinderella-like win in 2003, online poker, and poker on TV.

In each of the last four years, the main event has boasted fields of more than 6,000 players, including 8,773 in 2006 — more than a tenfold increase over 2003.
Harrah’s has made a number of changes to the Series, including the addition of more bracelet events, the launch of World Series of Poker Europe, a delayed final table for the main event, and new tournaments, such as the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. and this year’s $40,000 no-limit hold’em events. And they’re not done yet.

“I think that every year, we put it on ourselves to examine the schedule with a very critical eye,” said Pollack. “We’re always going to be looking for new ways to grow interest in the game.”

The World Series has grown tremendously since Harrah’s took over its reins. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t miss the old days.

“I think Harrah’s does a great job,” said 10-time bracelet winner Doyle Brunson, “but I wish Jack was still running it.”

Although he isn’t, it will be difficult to think about the World Series without thinking about the Binions. Perhaps Pollack said it best: “The WSOP will always be the Binion legacy.”