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Ethan Miller / Getty Images file
A view of a gambling sign outside Binion's Gambling Hall & Hotel on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 19, 2011.
The name Benny Binion may not be as familiar as the inventor of the light bulb, but what the roguish Binion helped invent outshines even Thomas Edison. Binion invented Las Vegas.
His namesake casino on Fremont Street is celebrating its 60th year as the city’s longest continually operated gambling hall.
"What Benny Binion once said is the essence of what Las Vegas is today," said Dr. Michael Green, professor of history at the College of Southern Nevada, and a researcher at the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, set to open in February. "He’s the one who said treat the big people like big people and the little people like big people," Green said. "His name will always resonate because he was a larger than life Las Vegas character from the generation of very tough men who 60 years ago began building Las Vegas into what it is today.”
He turned Vegas from a place to go gamble into a place where today 36.7 million go to splurge each year.
Over the years, Binion's Horseshoe compiled an impressive list of firsts:
- It was the first to have carpeting and air conditioning;
- the first to comp drinks;
- the first to offer a premium steak house;
- the first to deploy airport limousines for high rollers;
- and the first to set limits at heights enough to make competitors dizzy.
At a time when crap table limits were typically set at $50, freewheeling Binion’s was set at $500. When that proved a hit, he raised the limit to $10,000 and eventually made Binion’s a sensation by doing away with limits altogether.
Today, Binion’s is to gamblers what St. Andrews is to golfers: hallowed ground.
Lonely Planet takes you around Las Vegas — the hedonistic paradise where anything goes.
"Binion’s is where the World Series of Poker all started in 1970," said Tim Lager, the casino's general manager. "Sixty years after he founded Binion’s Horseshoe, that name still carries a lot of weight."
While iconic, the casino has recently seen its share of hard times.
In 2009, Binion's shut down its hotel rooms, coffee shop and keno operations. "We had to make some difficult decisions in order to keep the rest of the property operational," said Lisa Robinson, spokesperson for TLC Casino Enterprises Inc, the property's owner.
The aging hotel-casino ran into financial trouble after Benny Binion's daughter, Becky Behnen, acquired it in 1998. It closed in January 2004 after U.S. marshals seized cash from the casino to pay outstanding employee benefits.
Harrah's Entertainment Inc. bought the property, kept the Horseshoe and World Series of Poker brands, and sold the casino-hotel to MTR Gaming Group Inc. of Chester, W.Va. MTR reopened it in April 2004 as Binion's Gambling Hall and Hotel.
Ethan Miller / Getty Images
Australian Joseph Hachem kisses some of his $7.5 million prize after winning the World Series of Poker no-limit Texas Hold 'em main event at Binion's Horseshoe Gambling Hall and Hotel on July 16, 2005.
The World Series of Poker moved in 2005 to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino near the Las Vegas Strip.
MTR Gaming sold the property to Las Vegas-based TLC in March 2008.
Green contends Binion is synonymous with Vegas today, and his warts-and-all story (he was in federal prison from 1954-57 for tax evasion) mirrors that of his adopted home.
He died Christmas Day 1989 and was eulogized as an 84-year-old philosopher king who never learned to read.
Modern-day Vegas impresario Steve Wynn said of Binion: "He was either the toughest gentleman I ever knew or the gentlest tough man I ever knew."
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.
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Chris Rodell is a Latrobe, Pa., contributor who blogs at www.EightDaysToAmish.com.
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My husband and I lived in Vegas in 1972 when he was stationed at Nellis AFB. We had a standard route for a night out. First stop, the 4 Queens. We'd play the slots long enough to get a free drink. Then we'd take that, go up to the mezzanine and for 50 cents each, get a shrimp cocktail in a parfait glass. When we were done there, we'd go to Binion's Horseshoe, gaze and the million dollars on display, then go downstairs to the steak house. For $4.99 (I think, maybe it was $3.99) my husband would get a steak dinner where the steak would be overlapping the edge of the platter, with a baked potato and a salad. For $1.99 I'd get a platter full of mexican food. Then we'd go back out, play the slots long enough to win what we'd spent, stop at an ice cream stand by our apartment on the way home. Or else we'd go to Circus Circus and walk around the amusements and watch the flying trapeze act every hour, maybe play some skeeball, then go home. You can't do anything even REMOTELY like that in Vegas anymore. We go back occaisionally, and we always go to Fremont St, because to us, THAT'S the Vegas we remember!
My aunt lived in Vegas for many years and worked at the Desert Inn, where she regularly screened Howard Hughes' phone calls. She once met Benny Binion, and I'll never forget her rather humerous observation: "He had the cutest little cherub face, but he was mean as hell!"
I guess it would have been about 1960 when I met Mr. Binion at the Horseshoe club. I was 11 years old and he showed me his million dollars and he explained to me that he didnt need insurance as he had good guards.
I was also told by my parents that at this time Mr. Binion was not allowed to be in Los Vegas as he had been determined to have mob ties or something like that. I don't recall the term but he was banned from Las Vegas, yet here he was greeting people. I met him because my father did some work for him. I also met Major Riddle of the Dunes, Doc Bailey Hacienda (I even worked at the fresno Hacienda)
No Craig, your dad was wrong. Benny was never banned from Las Vegas. In 1960 the mob was deeply entrenched in Las Vegas; in everything from hotel laundry service to "Entertainment Directors", another name for the mob's man in the casino who supervised the "skim". Nevada Gaming officials, who had famously "winked" at the mob in those days, quickly did an about face when the Federal Government began aggressiving pursuing and prosecuting the Las Vegas mob. I sat with Benny on many occasions when I would have my late dinner at the Horseshoe, on graveyard shift. He was a charming rogue who once said, when asked if he'd ever killed anyone, said, "Nobody that didn't deserve it". Benny was not a man to cross, and when a lawyer who was representing the owner of the land the Horseshoe sits on in negotiations for an increase of the rent, was blown up in his car, the whispers all over town were, "Benny took care of that problem. Benny once fired a chauffer on the spot who was driving him from the hotel when the driver took a left turn. Benny believed left turns were bad luck. But back to the beginning of this; Benny was never believed to be part of the mob......He was his own mob.............
Retired Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Lieutenant