Word: binion
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...beautiful thing about the World Series of Poker on ESPN is absolutely nothing. The event originates from Binion's Horseshoe Casino, a low-ceilinged dump in the vagrant's paradise that is downtown Las Vegas. The featured players have the unkempt eyebrows, gothic stares and cadaverous skin tones of Scooby-Doo villains. They are the least attractive people on TV not named Larry King...
...thrilling to see a guy with zip bluff $300,000 out of someone with a pair of kings. The difference between the shows is that ESPN has the superior event. World Poker Tour is made-for-TV entertainment, whereas the World Series has been an annual event at Binion's since 1970. Anyone who posts the $10,000 entry fee can play, and this year's winner's take was $2.5 million. That kind of money brings out all the poker wolves, from leather-faced former champs like Amarillo Slim to rank amateurs like Nashville accountant Chris Moneymaker. (Even better...
ESPN taped the one-month event at Binion's last May, piping the view of the hole cards into tape machines secured by armed guards to prevent cheating. Then they added play-by-play in postproduction. "You don't see everything they play," says McEachern. "You see a representative number of hands, exciting hands, to be TV friendly." In between the action, there are refreshingly cheese-free player profiles introducing the likes of Annie Duke, the top poker-playing woman, who came in 10th in 2000 while eight months' pregnant; Dutch Boyd, a math genius who went to college...
...turned the family wholesale-leather business into the nation's largest retailer of leather apparel, now known as Wilsons the Leather Experts Inc. But Berman's true passion is gambling: he has won three national poker titles, and is a member of the Poker Hall of Fame at Binion's Horseshoe in Las Vegas. At a poker table, Gaming magazine once wrote, Berman plays "with the insight of a psychiatrist and the determination of a club fighter...
These days Las Vegas has become so sanitized that some casino operators are complaining. The city's largest hotel, the Excalibur, is a medieval castle that looks like Cinderella's at Disney World. The hotel that Bugsy Siegel built, the Flamingo, is now owned by Hilton. Characters like Benny Binion, who bragged of killing those who crossed him, and Bill Harrah, who in his 60s drag-raced with teenagers on Reno streets, have been displaced by quiet, invisible graduates of business schools. The last convicted felon to be spotted by a local columnist on the Strip was Michael Milken...