No-Limit Texas Hoodlum Alson, Peter
The Wall Street journal Asia,
08/2014
Newspaper Article
Taking what he'd learned in El Paso, he next moved to the deeper waters of Dallas. Although many of the stories that Mr. Doug J. Swanson collects from Benny Binion's family and friends depict him as ..."an enterprising scamp with a heart of gold," the truth, Mr. Swanson writes, was closer to Binion's own assessment of himself: "I wasn't to be f -- ed with." If "Blood Aces" rarely explores the deep inner workings of Binion's psyche, this is undoubtedly owing to the fact that he was not a self-reflective man. Still, I wish I'd been let inside just a wee bit more, that Mr. Swanson had let himself contemplate what made Binion tick. His daughter Barbara was a drug addict with a hobby of armed robbery, who shot off half her face with a shotgun in a failed suicide attempt (she later succeeded in killing herself via drug overdose -- an act the family responded to by saying it was "an accident"). His son Ted, another drug addict, was murdered by his fiancee and her male "friend." His wife, Teddy Jane, smoked four packs of cigarettes a day and by the end was living in a different part of the hotel than her husband, having become a hoarder, filling nine of the Horseshoe's rooms with her various possessions. Was this just the inevitable shape that a gangster's family takes? Was it the Tony Soprano syndrome? The furthest Mr. Swanson goes in speculating about Binion and his wife is to say that perhaps their "living arrangements had something to do with the weariness of a long marriage between strong characters." The World Series of Poker now takes place not at the Horseshoe but in the impersonal and cavernous convention halls of the Rio Hotel. In 2004, Binion's daughter Becky was forced to sell license and title of both the casino and the tournament to the Harrah's corporation, after running the Horseshoe into the ground. Were Benny Binion still alive today, it seems impossible to believe that this "strong character" wouldn't have figured out a way to keep the Horseshoe casino in the family's hands or maintain control of the World Series of Poker. It is somehow reassuring to know "Blood Aces" will keep alive the story of how the great spectacle came to be, and of the violent man who dreamed it up.
Binion's reputation undeniably added to the mystique of the tournament he had invented in 1970, when he invited a bunch of his rounder buddies to come play a little poker game in his Horseshoe casino ...and dubbed the event the World Series of Poker.
