num_pages: 294
description: One reviewer "Gatewood has written a fascinating, in-depth biography of Benny Binion. Fascinated with the many stories, legends of Binion, Gatewood, a native Texan was a man on a mission‹to write the definitive work on Binion, who died in 1989. This is both a story about Ben Lester Binion, who came up the hard way but learned from some of the toughest individuals about the business of gambling, and of his impact on Las Vegas. The book covers a span of about 60 years, beginning in the 1920s, when Binion moved to Dallas from his native Pilot Grove, Texas and met men like Warren Diamond the "Czar" of the big city's gambling operations. Diamond described Binion at age 19 as "street-wise, polite and full of dry wit." Few know how Binion learned about the games in which he would later reap millions in profits as a casino owner. In Dallas he began his education at a craps table at the St. George Hotel. One incident when a high roller lost $40,000 on a single roll of the dice stayed in his memory forever. As Gatewood describes the event, Binion "...knew from that day forward that the no limit crap game contained all the excitement of being alive. It was an exhilarating experience, known only to a chosen few." Sixty years later, Binion accepted a single craps wager of more than $700,000 and lost, but later won much of it back from the same man. Big, no-limit, high-stakes gambling was a theme on which Binion established his Las Vegas reputation. Gatewood quotes Meyer Lansky as describing Binion as "a cross between John Wayne and Jesse James," after meeting him in Texas.
language: English
title: Benny Binion: The Legend of Benny Binion, Dallas Gambler and Mob Boss
titlecomplete: Benny Binion: The Legend of Benny Binion, Dallas Gambler and Mob Boss
ratings_count: 6
publisher: Mullaney Corporation