Benny Binion

Benny Binion could almost be described as the Godfather of Texas Hold'em Poker not because of his definitely shady past but because he was largely responsible for putting this much loved and now highly popular game in the world map, after dragging it by force from the saloons and poker rooms of dusty Dallas of the fifties. Binion's early history shows him being involved in bootlegging and numbers running as well as somehow managing two walk away from two murder charges.

In 1946, Binion decided to make a new life for himself in the gambling scene of Las Vegas which was still very much in his early days. As early as 1947, Binion was reputed to have shares in one of Vegas's early casinos, known as
the Las Vegas Club. In 1951 Binion succeeded in raising enough capital to open his own casino which he called the Horseshoe. Binion's casino rapidly gained tremendous popularity as they gladly handle any kind of action and their house limits were way above their competitors. .

Binion's casino became the principal hang out for the Dallas crew, who were all experts at Texas Hold'em and the game began to attract a steady following. No other Vegas casino offered poker e because of the difficulty of keeping out cheats, However Binion ran his casino with a heavy hand and any cheats found on the premises were sent packing, sometimes, rumour has it, to undisclosed destinations.

After years of arranging heads-uppoker games between high stakes players, Binion began to investigate the idea of running a knock out poker tournament. Players shied clear of the idea because head to head poker tournaments took a notoriously long time. Binion overcame this problem by augmenting a system of antes, and blinds that meant that the games couldn't last too long. The first tournament, in 1970, was a relative success, and the following year, had gained enough of a positive reputation that a knock out format with a $10,000 buy-in was introduced, From then on, the World Series of Poker was on its way

Benion's baby, the World Series of Poker event has grown from the eight people who took part in 1972, to over 5000 entrants today. Sadly his early notoriety stayed with him all his life, eventually preventing Binion from holding a casino operator's licence. However his place in the Texas Hold'em hall of fame is guaranteed.