He would turn up at any hour of the day or night and bet big, often with several hands of blackjack going at once. In Las Vegas, where the touchdown of KP’s converted DC-8 three or four times a year would instantly set the jungle drums a-humming, Packer was known as a ‘hit and run’ player. Most of the Big Fella’s best casino splurges occurred overseas. Neither Packer nor his people maintained P & L statements on his multi-million dollar binges, and if the casinos did - those that could handle him, anyway - they weren’t saying. The scale and rate at which he operated made him difficult to keep up with. Gambling was play for Kerry Packer, so the normal rules of business evidently did not apply. Kerry said, “If you really want to gamble, I’ll flip you for it” … The Texan quietly went back to his game.’ In Texas parlance, they call that “all hat and no cattle”. According to Baldwin: ‘The said, “I’m a big player too. He didn’t take too kindly to the Australian’s rejection. Packer was playing at one table and a loudmouthed Texan, playing at the next table, wanted to join in. Mirage Resorts boss Bobby Baldwin confirmed the story to casino roundsman Norm Clarke in the Las Vegas Review-Journal in the days after Packer’s death. He then turned to the manager: ‘Now rehire this woman immediately.’ The most celebrated story has Kerry Packer playing cards at a table in the Bellagio, which opened in 1998 as the flagship property of casino king Steve Wynn’s Mirage Resorts group. When the manager complied, Packer handed her the chips. Packer called the manager and insisted that he fire her on the spot, on the threat of taking his business elsewhere. The croupier blushed and explained that she couldn’t accept it all tips had to be pooled and shared among the staff. Garry Linnell reported yet another mortgage-magic act in Vegas, where Packer pushed US$80,000 worth of chips towards a deserving croupier.īOOKS: Real story behind Leyland BrothersĬrown Casino croupier Neroli Burke at Blackjack table watches as boss Lloyd Williams give businessman and casino's major shareholder Kerry Packer a form to join Crown Senior Citizens Club in 1997. And it seems Kerry Packer was as determined in his generosity as he was in everything else. Packer asked for her name and address and saw to it that her US$130,000 mortgage was immediately mopped up. It was for US$150,000.’ A similar story told in Whale Hunting in the Desert: Secrets of a Las Vegas Superhost has Packer accidentally bumping a cocktail waitress, causing her to spill her drinks tray. She said yes, and he said, “Bring it in tomorrow and I’ll pay it off for you”. ‘He liked the service the girl was providing. Packer’s tipping of casino staff became so well-known that, as one insider put it, ‘There was no-one sicker than a croupier genuinely taken sick when Packer was in town.’ In the Las Vegas Review Journal in 2005 Mirage Resorts president Bobby Baldwin confirmed a well-known story, about an extremely generous tip given to a lucky cocktail waitress at the MGM Grand. He lost and won big money.’ From those shifty wagers with backstreet bookies and illegal casinos, Packer’s gambling career would blossom well beyond Australia. ‘Kerry moved within it, and then he moved above it. ‘Sydney was a tough town, it was run largely by gangsters, through all these backstreet meetings and dens of iniquity. Dad used to have a whisky between each race, so coming up to race nine, the penny took a while to drop.‘He inhabited that town when Sydney wasn’t all sparkling like it is today,’ Linnell says. 'Bruce … I said I wanted a bet in Sydney what about it.' So I quickly had a brainwave that my father was betting on Sydney, so I dispatched a clerk over to Dad and put down a bid in the ledger of $1.1 million to $800,000 on the horse. To that, I replied, 'I can't help you Kerry I only bet interstate'. "At the end of one carnival, I think I'd won $1.4 million over the four days and was quite proud of myself and after the last race, Kerry came over and said, 'Bruce I want to back the last favourite in Sydney'. You know there were two Kerry Packers, the one before he sold Channel Nine would limit himself to back a horse to win $500,000 but the Kerry Packer after he sold the network, it seemed the sky was the limit," McHugh recalled. McHugh agreed, but little did the Sydney bookmaker know that for the next five years, the pair would duel in figures not seen on racecourses.
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