BENNY BINION
(1904-1989)

A Texan who knew a thing or two about horse trading and gambling laid his claim on Fremont Street and changed the face of Western hospitality.

The Binion statue suggests Las Vegans value the Western traditions of individuality, fairness and a good gamble.

In some 40 years operating Las Vegas casinos, Binion injected courage into an industry too timid to take a high bet. He forced gambling houses to change from sawdust joints to classy, carpeted casinos. He and his sons changed poker from a kitchen-table pastime into an important casino game. He was one of the boosters who made Las Vegas the home of the National Finals Rodeo.

He became skilled at horse trading and skilled at gambling in the campgrounds where traders gathered awaiting market days. "Everybody had his little way of doing something to the cards," he told an oral historian from the University of Nevada in the 1970s. "I wasn't too long on wisin' up to that. Some of 'em had different ways of markin' 'em, crimpin' 'em ... There was fellows ... that had what they call 'daub' they put on dice. And you could roll the dice on a layout, and this daub caused the dice to hesitate, slow down, and turn up on their number. ... I never did learn how to do any of these tricks like cheat people, which I'm kind of proud of now. But I was always pretty capable about keeping from gettin' cheated."

In 1936 Dallas unofficially adopted a policy of tolerance toward minor vices, the better to host the Texas Centennial celebration. Police wouldn't put gamblers out of business, but would raid and fine them from time to time. Binion had crap tables built specially in crates labeled as containing hotel beds. "If we had half an hour's notice we were going to be raided, we could clear it out," Binion told a reporter in the '70s.

Even in the Depression, Dallas was flush with oil money. During World War II, entire divisions of GIs learned to shoot craps in barracks and motor pools, and many headed for Dallas to buck the bigger banks and honest dice Binion was known to provide.

This river of money also attracted pirates. In those days Binion carried three pistols -- two .45 automatics and a small .38 revolver. In 1931, Binion suspected fellow bootlegger Frank Bolding had stolen some liquor and argued with him in a back yard. "This guy was a real bad man, had a reputation for killing people by stabbing them," related Binion's son, the late Lonnie "Ted" Binion, after Benny's death. "He stood up real quick and Dad felt like he was going to stab him, and rolled back off the log, pulled his gun, and shot upward from the ground. Hit him through the neck and killed him."

This athletic marksmanship was the genesis of Binion's nickname "The Cowboy," but also earned him a murder conviction. Bolding did have a knife on him, but hadn't pulled it. Yet Binion only got a two-year suspended sentence, said Ted, because the deceased's reputation was so bad.

Five years later, Binion shot and killed a rival numbers operator, Ben Frieden. Wounded, Binion was cleared on grounds of self-defense.

No other killings were ever officially attributed to Binion, though a number of his rivals -- and a number of his allies -- died in a gang war that broke out in 1938.

Herbert Noble was called "The Cat," for he was thought to have nine lives. In 1946 he was shot in the back; in 1948 his car was riddled with bullets; in 1949 he found dynamite wired to the starter of his car and later got shot in another high-speed chase. But when somebody blew up his car, killing his wife instead of him, he blamed Binion and spent the rest of his life trying to even the score.

Noble was a pilot, and in 1951 a police officer caught Noble rigging an airplane with two large bombs, one high explosive and one incendiary. He had a map with Benny Binion's Las Vegas home -- the structure that still stands on Bonanza Road -- clearly marked.

Noble escaped or survived 11 known attempts to kill him -- involving bombs, automatic rifle and machine-gun fire -- before a bomb planted in front of his mailbox got him in 1951.