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Jack Benny Binion

Jack Benny Binion

There are two sides to the casino industry. While much of the public attention is focused on the gamblers who play the games, those players need people on the industry side of the fence to put on fair games of chance for them to gamble on.

Jack Benny Binion is one of those on the industry side of the fence but, especially in the world of poker, Binion stands above the rest as one of the icons of the game. Among the accolades that Binion is responsible for is just the biggest poker series in the world, the World Series of Poker (WSOP).

Binion took over the famed Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas in 1963 from his father after the elder Benny ran afoul of Nevada officials and lost his gambling license. Binion’s Horseshoe had already gained a reputation as a place that welcomed high-stakes gamblers.

When Jack took over, he continued his father’s policy that “The size of your limit is the size of your first bet”, cementing the Horseshoe as Las Vegas’s premier “pure gambling joint”. The younger Binion made his first big mark in the industry less than a decade later when he brought in friend and fabled gambler Johnny Moss, along with other poker greats like Doyle Brunson, for a poker event that would eventually become known as the first edition of the fabled WSOP.

While it took a few years to turn into the poker extravaganza it is today, it was Jack Binion at Horseshoe who built the series. He took it from a single tournament whose winner was decided by secret ballot among the seven participants in the inaugural running in 1970 to a multi-game series widely recognized as the elite poker series in the world.

Following the death of the elder Binion in 1989, the casino empire became the subject of a family battle between Jack and his siblings. Jack eventually lost control of the Horseshoe in Vegas, but kept the name and founded Horseshoe Gaming Holding Corporation which moved the fabled casino name onto riverboats.

While the WSOP moved on to other venues in the early 2000s, Jack Binion is widely recognized as the father of the event. In 2004 he was inducted into the American Gaming Association's Gaming Hall of Fame and the following year, the WSOP itself honored Binion by elevating him to the official Poker Hall of Fame.

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Binion

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