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The World Series of Poker was founded in this building. If you collect playing cards, there is no more fitting object to own than a deck from the casino that invented the game's world championship.
On 8 May 1970 Jack Binion invited seven players to the Horseshoe and had them elect a world champion by secret ballot. Johnny Moss won. The 1971 event introduced the freezeout format every poker tournament on earth still uses, and 1972 set the $10,000 buy-in still charged today.
The man behind it had one of the most openly criminal records in Las Vegas. Benny Binion pleaded guilty to murder in Dallas in 1931 and drew a two-year suspended sentence. A second killing was ruled self-defence. He fled to Las Vegas in 1946, opened the Horseshoe at 128 Fremont Street on 14 August 1951, pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion in 1953 and served 42 months in Leavenworth. Nevada barred him from holding a gaming licence for the rest of his life.
He ran the casino anyway, as "Director of Public Relations", until he died on Christmas Day 1989. The Kefauver Committee had named him alongside Bugsy Siegel in 1950.
WHAT 1983 MEANT AT THIS CASINO
1983 sits in the middle of all of it - the World Series long established, Benny still running the floor of a casino he was legally barred from holding a licence for, and the family still in possession.
Three years earlier, in 1980, a gambler walked into this casino with $777,000 in a suitcase and put all of it on one roll of the dice. He won.
THE RECORD
* Benny Binion pleaded guilty to murder in 1931; two-year suspended sentence.
* Binion pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion in 1953; 42 months at Leavenworth.
* Nevada barred Benny Binion for life; he ran the casino anyway.
* The Kefauver Committee named Binion alongside Bugsy Siegel, 1950.
* The World Series of Poker was founded here on 8 May 1970.
* A gambler bet $777,000 on one craps roll here in 1980 - and won.
The property still trades on Fremont Street as Binion's Gambling Hall. The Binion family sold out in 2004, and the Horseshoe name itself was later moved to a different Las Vegas casino entirely. Nothing with this name on it is being printed.
ABOUT THE DECK
Manufacturer: The United States Playing Card Company, Cincinnati - the maker that supplied most of the Las Vegas houses through this period.
Year: 1983, and that is not an estimate. USPCC stamped a production code on the Ace of Spades. Read against this casino's logo variant and the design of its box seal, that code resolves to a single year. Two independent methods, one answer. Almost every other vintage casino deck you will find is sold as "1970s" or "vintage" because the seller never checked.
Please see the photographs. They show the actual deck you will receive.
THE INFORMATION PANELS
Two of the images in this listing are research panels I produced for this casino: its history and the people who ran it, and the full ownership chain with the federal and regulatory record beside it. They are readable at full size. Everything on them is sourced; where a claim is reported rather than proven, it is worded that way.
WHY THERE WILL NEVER BE MORE
Nobody is printing 1983 stock for this house. The presses that made these stopped, the men who ordered them are dead, and the era that produced them was taken apart by the federal government. Every one of these decks that got played with, thrown out or lost is gone for good. What is left is all there is.
Packed and shipped so that damage is not possible.
I have other casinos and other years from this same era listed - worth a look if you are building a set rather than buying a single deck.
Questions welcome. If you want to know something specific about the history of this property, ask. The research behind these listings goes a good deal deeper than one page.
