James McManus
Literary Fiction
Pages 70-103
Ted Binion didn't start his gambling enterprise in las Vegas, but instead he got his start in Texas. He held small poker competitions at a court house late into the night. He didn't make a lot of money to start off with,but he soon become a major gambling boss. In world war 2 his business began to rapidly expand and he was soon targeted regularly by the government for illegal gambling. In 1946 his sheriff got beat and he decided to take off for Las Vegas with his family and $2 million in cash. Meyer Lansky trained Benion in the art of criminal and legitimate business practices. Lansky was a gangster like Al Capone, who made alot of money during prohibition by selling illegal liquor and prostitution. Binion took over the El dorado casino on Fremont and renamed it the Horseshoe, the same hotel that Jim will be playing the world series of poker tournament. Binion ran his casino just like in the old school gangster movies. he didn't call the cops when someone was cheating, he got his bodyguards to beath him with bat. he believed the past way to keep people from cheating was intimidation and it worked.
So far i really enjoy the book. I really like the idea of how Binion ran the Casino. However, the scary part is that the managers would truly do these things. For example, cheaters would get beat by bats and have their bones broken. Binion order hits on people that didn't pay their debt and I'm sure old gang managers did the same in the 50s. This book relates a lot to one of my favorite movies Casino in the aspect of managing a casino in the old days.
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