Hi Johnny.....your old buddy Vegasskip here. I thought we all cleared the air on this issue and came to an agreement in the previous thread. Over the years I have learned alot from your posts and I hope you have learned alot from my responses to them. And along the way I hope that our debates are sparked an interest in poker history among other readers.But please let's change the subject and attacks and go on to something else. How about some stories on Paul Harvey and his casino in Midland/Odessa. I'm sure we could come up with a great debate on that and keep it educational. No more Moss/Greek fights!

I knew Paul Harvey, and played in the poker game with he, Doc Ramsey, and Johnny Moss at Pinkie Roden's Inn of the West in Odessa. I was in Harvey's house but not when it was a casino. He was a huge gambler, book maker. He and Moss once played heads up five days. McManus says wrongly that Pinkie was from my home town of Lubbock when he was from Odessa. Pinkie had been a bootlegger and owned a chain of liquor stores. When I was there, Pinkie didn't play in the poker game, but he came. We played Hold 'em, Seven-Five low ball, gin rummy. I got broke. I traveled down there with Bill Smith, main event champ of 1985 and James "Tennesee Longgoodie" Roy and my partner. They all lost. I guess Pinkie and Harvey were the big suckers. Harvey took advantage of a Texas law that allowed gambling in your home. It had double entry doors, men's and women's rest rooms. Benny Binion loaned Harvey money and had a piece of the joint. Benny also owned parts of two fabulous casinos, Top of the Hill in Arlington and the Four Deuces in Ft. Worth. I think and am not sure that Harvey testified before some Texas gambling commission and Benny was mad at him. At Top of the Hill, customers included some of the world's richest men: Howard Hughes, H.L Hunt, and Sid Riohardson. Benny said Howard Hughes didn't lose much. This place was on several acres and had an armed guard on horseback with a rifle. It was a real carpet joint, fancy, dinner on fancy dishes, crystal. Much fancier than what Benny found in Las Vegas. The owner invested hugely in horses, and horse racing. I DO NOT KNOW if Benny got a piece of these joints because of muscle, but I guess so.

Jim McManus and countless others say Benny put $2 million in the trunk and fled to Las Vegas with all his legal troubles. Benny had tens of millions, five policy wheels, the numbers racket, and controlled all the dice games in downtown Dallas, because he paid off the laws and the joints gave him 25 per cent of the profits, approximately. He upped the take on Cat Noble and started their blood feud. My mentor, Curly Cavitt, was good, close friends of them both. He was fading with the Cat, and they'd cut up the bankroll every night because the Cat might get killed.

When Benny got to Las Vegas, it was a town of 18,000 people. Bugsy Siegal had a party at the swimming pool of the Flamingo and invited everyone to bring their families and kids. Bugsy say a guy he didn't like that had badmouthed the Flamingo. He chased him around the swimming pool, pistol whipping him in front of his wife and kids. None of this was in the Las Vegas newspapers.

Benny had taken his family to see the U.S. Mint and all the money. He saw all the crowds, and got the idea to 1. have a big match in public showing the money and 2. to display $1,0o00,000 in ten thousand dollar bills. I THINK, HEARD FROM CURLY, BUT AM NOT SURE, that the million was a challenge to the Mafia and anyone else to try to steal it.

Vegasskip, you are knowledgeable, but I will write about what I want to.

Ted Binion has said Benny lost $400,000 playing poker right after he first got to Las Vegas. I think the long ring game and match with the Greek was mostly for the money. He was backing Moss, Moss got off winner. Binion was a showman, and not secretive like nearly all other gamblers of the era. He liked fame in Dallas. At one of his dice joints in Ft. Worth, over a Mexican Food Restaurant, they had a pet burro, donkey. They'd take it to downtown Ft. Worth and let it out with a sign on its side, and it would walk home, like a homing pigeon. Benny was a huge dice fader in his twenties. When Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down, Benny hired an airplane to fly over Clyde's funeral and drop a large wreath of flowers. Clyde was most unpopular with the laws because he killed so many.


A survey showed that Nick the Greek was the top tourist attraction in Las Vegas, ahead of the Hoover Dam. The Greek would go from mob casino to mob casino shooting dice and drawing a crowd. He was broke and that was kept secret while the Mob sold the Greek and the fake stories of him to draw the tourists. Cy Rice, his biographer, says he borrowed all the money he could in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and his word and markers were never good again. The crunch year was 1949..the matches with first Moss and next, Ray Ryan. In the introduction to his authorized biography, on the dust cover, Cy Rice wrote,"From 1928 to 1949 Nicholas Dandolos feigned as the undisputed gambling monarch of the world.." Rice tape recorded the Greek for a month before he died. The parts about his last years in Vegas are the most accurate. The Greek didn't tell of his poker losses to Arnold Rothstein, in several books, or any poker losses, such as to Ray Ryan, well documented by trial transcrips, or to Johnny Moss.

Mickey Cohen, number two to Bugsy Siegel, portrayed in the movie by whom? came to Odessa since they did some business witt Paul Harvey. I guess laying off big football wagers, horse bets from oil men. The Texas Rangers called Harvey on the phone and told him to get Cohen out of Texas fast. Paul Harvey said, "Why? Is he some kind of outlaw?" Cohen drove to Wichita Falls where the Rangers grabbed him and put him on a plane.

Ctaig's statements that was no high stakes poker at that time is way false. He did NOT READ, Benny's oral history which he said wrongly didn't mention Johnny Moss, the Greek's eulogy which he says didn't mention Benny, or any of the Arnold Rothstein biographies, or the countless articles that refer to the Greek as "the Aristotle of the don't pass line." The Greek was a fader and therefore had a percentage advantage in the open shoot and fade dice games back east. He won and lost millions. However, being a fader in Las Vegas with boxcars barred, is a sucker bet.

Everyone wondered where the Greek got the, maybe, $5 million he arrived in Las Vegas with. He told Cy Rice that Dutch Shultz gave him a big suitcase with the money to hold. Then Shultz was killed. I think Benny had heard of the huge sums the Greek had lost at poker to Rothstein and others in New York. He thought Johnny Moss could beat him. I think he did it for the money and to relieve the boredom of a town of 18,000 people. Benny was a showman. He knew how to draw a crowd. NIck the Greek went broke in 1949 and never told about that.

..Thank you, thank you sba9630 for posting the Jack Binion interveiw (above). I totally accept Jack's version of events because they are logical. He says Benny sent for Moss, the ring game and heads up match lasted a few monthes, but it WAS NOT CONTINUOUS. They would break up and come back. Part of the poker game moved out to the Flamingo. There was one long last session. Both the Greek and Johnny Moss were known for long sleepless sessions. Since the Greek was beholden to the Mob, it is natural to have some of the poker game at the Flamingo. It was there that the Greek played Ray Ryan in late 1949.

I interviewed Jack Binion, many years ago. Really nice guy. Some tidbits from the Gary Wise interview on tape. He considers his best friend, Doyle, as the best poker player of all time. He had differences with Amarillo Slim, and shows disrespect. He has not reconciled with his sister, Becky Behen??

Two Plus Two is wonderful for a writer. You correct me, and research. Correct my tone. Shouldn't have used the word evidence. sba9630 found a tape essential to this argument that I didn't know existed. I will use this in any thing I write later because it is right on the money! He also posted a link to a great article in Sports Illustrated by Bud Shrake about Moss and the bigger poker game. The excreable Jon Bradshaw in Fast Company plagiarizes this article and one Shrake wrote about Titanic Thompson, sometimes almost word for word.

Johnny....Craig never said Moss was not mentioned nor that no high stakes games were played. All he says is that Benny never mentions the game with Moss and the Greek. Both are mentioned in the report just not the "legendary" game.

Benny's poker losses when first in Vegas were why Mrs Binion would not allow a poker room for many years.

Since Paul Harvey was from west Texas what else do you know about him. Heard any good stories or did you witness any? When did he pass on? As far as Ft Worth there was a great book by a Texas historian named Ann(?) which was published by UT Press. It was the history of gambling and casinos on the Jacksboro Hwy from the 30's to 70's. Never read it but hope to soon. Since you rode with Curly for years how about some stories on him.

I didn't ride with Curly for years. Once, I went with him to East Texas, and only once. We went to poker games, horse races, dice games, and an Elk's Stag in Longview, Texas. He had a piece of Johnny Moss in a big razz game where Johnny dueled with Sarge Ferris, another Hall of Famer. With five hundred and thousand dollar bills in the game, it was hard to keep up. Curly and Pat Renfro also played in the game, but the big stacks and the trash talkers were Moss and Sarge. I sat in a shoeshine stand and watched. I was not told and did not ask how much they won, if any. It was a miracle of a night because there were five dice tables downstairs and they were all running to the shooter, it seemed. The traveling gamblers were getting broke and coming to Curly for a stake. I played in a five-dollar limit seven-stud game.Curly watched as they cheated me and didn't tell me until later. An overhand stack, rather primitive. There was a gambling joint out in the woods with a dice game, open shoot and fade, and the dice were not exactly square. There was a big seven-five lowball game that was on the square because of the gamblers there. Hackshaw Hackinaw would stack the deck some and Curly would not false cut or help him. He said it was a square poker game.

Curly was a world-class cheater, on the road an incredibly long 60 years! In his old age, he lived in motels and moved on to the next golf tournament or stag or big standing poker game. He was never broke. I wrote Doyle and Crandell Addington asking about Curly. Doyle said he was the "consumate" gambler with no leaks. He said he, Red Harris, and Curly shot their way out of a motel in San Angelo when the robbers were trying to get them. Crandell said he was kind of a mystery. He'd just show up, get the money, and be back on the road. Curly taught me what to watch out for. He had a closet full of cheating devices, etc in his house: marked cards, strippers..rounded cards, loaded dice, shaved dice, a hold out machine which he didn't like or need, funny sunglasses that would read the backs of pre-marked cards. I never ever cheated because I ran poker games and mostly, I would be afraid to cheat for fear of death. Cheating in the bigger games was rare because everyone was watching every move and knew what to look for. The same guys who would cheat on the road would play on the square in their home town or area. At a convention or Elk's Stag, the rule was get the money before it walks.

In 1952, Curly was arrested at the State Democratic Convention in Oklahoma running a big dice game. He had a delegate's badge. This made national news with a picture. They caught him with gaffed dice and marked cards. This was before my time. After that, he and Red would put a big bowl of dice on the table at their high game in Lubbock and let the shooters get them, and the house wouldn't touch them.

People better be careful criticizing Johnny. He will end up challenging you to a heads up match.

I find it funny that with all the people who watched it seems only Jimmy The Greek Snyder claims to have been there. So Johnny does not claim I am saying one thing when I mean another, I am talking about the spectators and not the participants or anyone affiliated with the organizer.

And again, Benny Binion is a showman who likes publicity, but there are no accounts of the game between Nick the Greek and Moss published at the time it happened?

Strange.

There were no stories about poker anywhere until the World Series around 1970. In the Jack Binion interview provided by sba9630..above..he tells of the early press. Johnny Moss was an outlaw. He did his first interviews after 1970. That was the first time anyone talked about the big match, because that was the first time anybody talked.

The Greek was world famous and would not talk of his losses. Moss was not famous and no one would seek him out for an interview until 1970. You do not seem to be able to understand that there is no record of Moss talking about the match before 1970 because there is no record of Johnny Moss talking about poker or any thing else until he gained a little fame. Duh!! Poker was real secret. Doyle may have let Amarillo Slim win when he did because Doyle did not want publicity. Slim was on the Tomight Show five times and he got poker much of its early publicity, all after 1970. The Greek said he did his first interview in Collier's in 1954. No newspaper in Las Vegas would ever write about folks's losses or anything bad about the casinos.

When Arnold Rothstein was killed, the newspaper stories about the big poker game ran in newspapers across the country. Titantic Thompson gained fame and said like, "Publicity is bad for my business."

.

Food for thought. The SI article is great as I read it years ago. But the author is simply reporting what Johnny Moss told him, so we cannot use that article as proof of the "legendary 5 month heads up battle". The same goes for Bradshaw who was simply reporting what Moss told him during the interviews. Kind of like the 50 year old tale TI told about busting his father in Oil City. Come to find out it was not true.

Even Jack B. seems to have changed the details about the game from the early versions. Remember he was a young teen at the time and was not in the casino working 24/7. A lot of his recollections of the game were the tales his dad and Moss told. Plus the Horseshoe generated tons of publicity from accounts of this game in later years. What can Jack say....that the game really never happened, we simply allowed the story to spread.

More like translation.

Ty lied. Johnny Moss exaggerated as does Slim. Benny did not. Jack does not.

For anyone to believe that Moss, Jack Binion, Benny Binion, and Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder would make up this whole story about the most famous gambler in the world makes no sense. It has been written by Cy Rice that the Greek went broke in 1949. Herb Marynell, Ray Ryan's biographer, writes about Ryan winning $550,000 from the Greek in 1949. Trial transcripts when Marshall Caifano went on trial for attempting to put the snatch on Ray Ryan put the Ryan/Greek match and cheating in late 1949. The Greek went broke that year and it all adds up.

I already pointed out to JH twice that he was wrong about Craig saying Binion never mentioned poker in his oral histories, even showed him the excerpt he misreads, yet he keeps saying it. No response or acknowledgement. Guess it didn't match his research.

Johnny: you need to pick one. Either Binion, Moss and Dandalos were publicity-averse and didn't want word of the game and its wins/losses spreading to the media and IRS; or Binion would only allow the game if it were in public view, to be watched by thousands, featuring the most famous gambler in the world, and that it caused such a huge stir he remembered it two decades later (in a not-exactly event-free life).

There probably was a pretty big game involving those players, and probably others, around that time. Probably not much different from a lot of big games, except that Johnny Moss started telling stories about it. And somebody telling stories in 1970 about how he broke the most famous gambler in the world 20 years earlier, especially when that famous gambler died in 1966, makes a lot of sense. And nobody but you sees what Ray Ryan or Marshall Caifano have to do with Johnny Moss, other than some connection to Nick the Greek.

I've spent too much time on this topic. I should hold off until Johnny starts a new thread about the topic next week.

I didn't know that Rothstein wasn't killed until sometime after 1970. If the first statement of yours I bolded is true, that's the only way the second statement of yours I bolded is true.

Regarding the statement I underlined, I guess Greek didn't talk about poker in his 1954 Collier's interview? That's the only way your first bolded statement can remain true.

Here is a timeline of key years.



1883..Nick the Greek born. McManus, others, WRONG by, ten years. Two books.
1904..Benny Binion born.
1907..Johnny Moss born.
1926..Binion opens first no-limit craps game, Dallas.
1931..Binion kills man, get two-year suspended sentence.
1934..Binion hired an airplane to drop a floral wreath at the funeral of Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde.
1936..Binion kills man, charges dismissed.
1943..Nick the Greek draws crowds in Las Vegas. Dates Ava Gardner. Breaks leg at Las Vegas Club.
1946..B.Binion arrives Las Vegas in December.
1947..B.Binion loses $600,000 playing poker.
1947. The Greek loses $120,000 to Gus Greenbaum shooting dice at the Flamingo. Greenbaum later killed by Mafia enforcer, Marshall Caifano, the Greek's pal.
1949..Binion controls the Las Vegas Club, the only place in Las Vegas for high rollers, because of the highest limits. Ray Ryan, Nick the Greek. others.
1949..Binion sends for his child-hood friend, Johnny Moss. Moss, Nick the Greek, and others play in a NON-CONTINUOUS poker game off and on, with some heads up sessions. They played at the Las Vegas Club and the Flamingo. The Greek had drawn crowds for twenty years before he met Binion and Moss.
1949..The Greek loses $550,000 to Ray Ryan at the Thunderbird and Flamingo and is told Ryan cheated. This becomes documented in several trials later. Nick the Greek's biographer, Cy Rice, said the Greek was broke after this.
1951..The Horseshoe, NOT Binion's Horseshoe, opens. Benny is listed as the restaurant manager in license hearing, newspaper. Dr. Monte Bernstein was the gambling license holder.
1953..J. Edgar Hoover personally instructed the F.B.I. to do surveillance, trail, and jail B. Binion. They followed him, bugged him, send informants to proposition him the rest of his life.
1960..The Black Book of persons barred from Nevada casinos begins and Marshall Caifano is in it, which he ignores. McManus wrote that Frank Sinatra was in it.
1963..The Greek had appealed to Mafia boss, Tony Accardo, to get the money back. Marshall Caifano tried several times, and then Nick the Greek, Caifano, and one other attempted to kidnap Ryan. The Greek's indictment was dropped when he testified, as did Ryan, against Caifano.
1966..The Greek died at 84, broke. Benny was a pall bearer, and the only one present mentioned in Hank Greenspun's eulogy and newspaper article.
1972..Marshall Caifano released from prison.
1977..Ray Ryan killed by massive car bomb at Caifano's behest.

When James McManus wrote his delightful best seller, Positively Fifth Street, in 2003, he began setting records for inaccuracy. He wrote that Oscar Goodman, later Las Vegas mayor, and the lawyer of dope dealer Jimmy Chagra, set in booth one at the restaurant of Binion's Horseshoe with Benny Binion, Jack Binion, and Ted Binion. On page 44, McManus wrote, "The upstart of that meeting was a $50,000 contract for Charles Harralson to assassinate U.S. District Judge John Wood.."

Since the three Binions were worth a couple of hundred million or so between them, the story was basically silly. Most of what McManus writes about B. Binion is distorted. Oscar Goodman sued and won and alleged $50,000 plus a full-page ad apologizing in the New York Times plus taking the child-like, stupid, false statement out of all future editions. Does your copy have that?

I am not sure if the Greek discussed poker in the 1954 article. I wrote a thread about the killing of Arnold Rothstein and all the press it got not long ago. Between 1949 and 1970, Benny Binion, Johnny Moss, did no interviews.

The Greek did the 1954 interview when he was broke, hitting everyone up for loans, had markers all over Vegas and Los Angeles. Sid Wyman was quoted. It was one big ad for shooting the back line at dice.

In an artile in the Las Vegas newspaper, right before the Greek died, Hank Greenspun mentioned the Greek winning $500,000 in a poker game long ago. They did not ever tell of the Ray Ryan poker loss, documented by trials, Nick the Greek being indicted, and testifing against Marshall Caifano of what is solidly known about the Greek going broke in 1949. As always the article in the Las Vegas Newspaper and Collier's said the Greek bet the back side, the don't pass line. In every written account except James McManus, the Greek was called "the Aristotle of the Don't Pass Line."

In the Sports Illustrated article, 1971 Bud Shrake said Moss was summoned to Vegas by Binion to play against the Greek. However, he said "Old gamblers tell the story..." and later that Moss would not talk about his first three years in Las Vegas except to say he lost all the money back shooting craps. Moss said he would not talk about it because of fear of the I.R.S. The mention of he and the Greek was a very short part of the article. Shrake, an incredibly ethical and honest writer, got the story from others and confirmed it talking to Poker Hall of Famers, Sid Wyman, Joe Bernstein, and Sarge Ferris as well as Eighty Dollar Natie and Tommy Abdo who were around the Dunes, the biggest cash poker game of all time according to Sports Illustated, Shrake, and Crandell Addington. Shrake specifically said that Johnny Moss did not tell him about the game against Nick the Greek, except that he lost the money back shooting dice.

He quoted Johnny Moss a lot on other matters including his ownership of a million dollars worth of income producing apartment houses in Odessa, which his family owned long after his death.

[ ] Evidence.

Thanks to all the contributors to this thread...fascinating reading!

They're stories and good reads...who cares.

Where did you get that Binion and Moss were childhood friends? Binion was born and raised just outside Sherman Tx, and Moss was born in Marshall Tx, and raised in Dallas. Can you please cite your source for this claim? As Binion was raised a country boy and Moss a city boy, I find this "childhood friend" claim to be highly unlikely. Do you have any reliable source that you can cite that says they had ever met each other before Binion was running a gambling establishment in Dallas?

1910 and the 1920 Texas census records clearly show Binion was living with his parents (L.L. and Willie Binion) in Grayson county Texas. And it's been reported that Binion left home at 17 for El Paso Tx. We know by census he was still at home at 16 years of age.

Just checked census records for John Moss, at time of 1920 census he was 12 and living with his father (also named John Moss) in Dallas Tx.

They met on he Dallas streets where both were hustlers, paper boys. Benny said he became a hustler at 9. Another of their friends from early teenage years was Chill Wills, the actor. Both have said they were friends early. It has been written several times. I have an extensive gambling library. I look these things up. I have google books. The census doesn't mean a 16 year old Benny was home. We do not know by the census that he was at home. It amazes me James McManus does NOT KNOW HOW TO DO RESEARCH OF SIMPLE FACT CHECKING. He prints the most outrageous, stupid, and obviously false things in his books. I am a far, far more accurate poker historian than he is. I think I have every book mentioned in this thread, and the articles bookmarked. I have read in a library the three-part Collier's article about Nick the Greek, but I do not have a copy of it.

In the autograhed biography I have of Johnny Moss, he tells of walking to Dallas at 9 to sell papers. It says he "met two people during this time that would become life-long friends, Chill Wills, who would become an actor, and Benny Binion, a slightly older boy..."

Johnny Moss became a partner of Pat Renfro, a friend of mine, when he was 21.

Moss moved here to Lubbock in 1938, and played his big golf match with Titantic Thompson when he was 34. Then he partnered with and traveled with Titanic which probably, nearly 100 per cent, means that they cheated.
Titanic traveled in California with Nick the Greek in the early 40s, and they cheated.

If you go to google books and enter Benny Binion/Johnny Moss/childhood friends, you find four books right off. There are many others that do not use the exact words childhood.

Benny Binion left his home in Grayson county at age 9 to become a street hustler in Dallas? LOL The census reports on who is living in the home, and it clearly lists L. Ben Binion (as an individual) living in Grayson county with his parents in 1910 and 1920. It is well known that Binion's father (L.L. Binion) was a horse trader out of Grayson county and that Binion tagged along with his father. Cite a specific reliable source that says Binion was on the streets of Dallas as a child. The census is a specific reliable source, and would be accepted by most that had any common sense.

You made the claim they were childhood friends, I didn't. Why is it up to me, or someone else to find your source? A good historian can cite their sources. Can they not?

Omapa,

Do not confuse the issue with facts. Johnny has got the evidence.