If you Google around for the history of the WSOP you'll almost certainly see this oft-copied opener:

"In the summer of 1949, as the story goes, inveterate gambler Nicholas 'Nick the Greek' Dandolos approached Benny Binion with an unusual request - to challenge the best in a high-stakes poker marathon. Binion agreed to set up a match between Dandolos and the legendary Johnny Moss, with the stipulation that the game would be played in public view. During the course of the marathon, which lasted five months with breaks only for sleep, the two men played every form of poker imaginable. Moss ultimately won 'the biggest game in town' and an estimated $2 million. When the Greek lost his last pot, he arose from his chair, bowed slightly, and uttered the now-famous words, 'Mr. Moss, I have to let you go.' Dandolos then went upstairs to bed."

It's a great beginning to the story but the truth is that it's only indirectly related to the WSOP. Almost everything about today's event is radically different from this folksy beginning, but there is one connecting thread: Benny Binion was there at the beginning and if it wasn't for him, the WSOP probably wouldn't exist today, or Vegas as we know it for that matter.

Born in Grayson County, Texas, in 1904, Benny Binion received no formal education but before he left his home state for good he'd be a horse trader, a boot-legger, a "dice man", run a private numbers racket and would shoot at least two men dead over "business" disagreements (both cases were ruled "self defense"; he served no time).

By 1946 things in Texas had gone sour for Benny. His old gambling operations had been disrupted by gang wars in the late '30s and then permanently suspended by the outbreak of WW2. In '46 there was a change in government in Texas and the old leniency toward "victimless" crime was suddenly out of fashion. With a bankroll he'd built up as a horse trader for the Army during the war he followed a buddy to Nevada and acquired part-ownership of the Las Vegas Club. A couple years later he built the Westerner, and in 1951 bought the Eldorado Club which he quickly renamed "The Horseshoe" and began making Vegas history.

Where other gambling houses in Vegas had the traditional dirt or sawdust floors, Benny had wall-to-wall carpets installed. He was the first to have limousines pick up customers at the airport and first to offer free drinks to slot machine players. Up to that time the customers were generally considered "suckers" for whom the betting limits were tightly controlled so that the house basically operated a "no surprises" money maker. So Benny bumped up the betting limits, sometimes by ten times or more of the current standard. At one point The Horseshoe even accepted a $1 million bet at the craps table, totally unheard of in Vegas, which for all its wild media face was a pretty conservative place where most of the operators where focused on the bottom line regardless of what the players wanted.

Benny's driving idea was, "If you want to get rich, make little people feel like big people," and in doing so he forced everyone in Vegas to do the same. Not everyone liked it, some even threatened to kill him for going ahead with moves like the first $10,000 Keno game, but sooner or later they were doing it too, at least if they wanted to stay in business.

Whatever else Benny was, he was obviously not above watching and learning from his customers. When he hosted that original challenge game between 'The Greek' and Johnny Moss he didn't fail to notice the crowds that gathered to watch the action. Big crowds. Night after night. That must have really stuck in Benny's head because even though it took him over 20 years to do much about it — he was variously busy serving a hitch in prison for tax evasion and fighting to regain control of his casino after selling a percentage of it to cover his legal bills — do it he did. As usual with Benny, and by the 1970’s his sons who were working in the Horseshoe too, it was one part inspiration, one part luck and pocket full of cash that got the ball rolling.