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CALLING SIGNALS |
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GAMBLIN' MAN |
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Breitling gambled on an
aging casino...and won!
of TheColumnists.com
A guy has $25 million in Las Vegas.
Wanna bet he’ll lay a wager?
Tom Breitling sure did. He took the whole wad and put it on the Golden Nugget.
As he and his team of investors bought the casino that was (1) old and (2) far from the Strip, they gambled they could beat a house full of loaded poker and craps players.
That’s called a serious roll of the dice. Yet Breitling is a winner. Upon selling the Nugget, he cashed in his chips for more than $50 million--as did his buddy and partner Tim Poster.
That’s when Breitling turned to Cal Fussman to write all about it. The payoff: The new book “Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All To Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos" (HarperCollins, $24.95), the coolest Vegas production this side of Vinnie Favorito’s standup.
No wonder Breitling dealt Fussman the assignment.
Cal’s been coming up aces since our days at the University
of Missouri--especially with his “What I’ve Learned”
features for Esquire, first-person accounts from Dustin
Hoffman, Christie Brinkley, Joe Frazier, you name it.
“Double or Nothing” has that “What I’ve Learned”
touch, with Breitling sharing sense and humor. For 243 pages
the pair flips through Vegas’ megamoney deck.
Here’s Breitling’s voice through Fussman’s script:
* No gambler outlives the test of time. Time is always on the side of The House.
* Mr. Royalty walked over to the cage to collect. He’d come into the casino with cash wrapped in plastic directly from the U.S. mint. And he wanted to leave with money wrapped by the U.S. mint.
* Booking games came as natural to Tim as making ketchup to a Heinz. My family watched football games on Sunday and rooted for the Vikings. Tim’s family reached for the Doritos and screamed for the point spread.
* You’ve never gone to Georgetown. . . . But you believe Georgetown is going to win its next game, so you place a large bet on Georgetown. Welcome back, school spirit!
* Nobody wanted to go out on the town looking like the Imperial Palace. If it were a suit, it would’ve been ready for the trash bin.
* I was going to plow through it with the same due diligence whether I was dealing with Tim, Barry Diller or Phyllis Diller.
* I kept reminding him that when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. When you’ve got $100 million, you’ve got $100 million to lose.
* (The Golden Nugget) was old, but it was old the way the Waldorf was old. You don’t think of the Waldorf as old. You think of it as classic.
* “Don’t worry about the money,” Andre (Agassi, a fellow investor) said. “Just make the bet. I know them. And I’m throwing it down on them.”
* By the time (State Gaming Control officials are) through, they know everything about you and the guy who washes your car.
* Make sure it’s a joy ride, (Steve Wynn) told us. Downtown needed people who could hit the gas . . . people willing to make mistakes because you don’t have successes unless you’re learning from your failures.
* There’s a huge perception that The House has every single player under constant surveillance. . . . That’s simply not true. . . . The surveillance room couldn’t possibly keep up.
* Tim lured in the biggest players--the whales--by bringing in some of the best hosts. . . . Marsha Hartman was a screenplay waiting to be written--call it “Princess of Whales.”
And you could call this book on the Breitling/Poster jackpot “The Odds Couple.” Oh, Fussman already used that for Chapter 16.
The funniest line comes after Breitling breaks up with Playboy babe Jaime Pressly. He wonders “if I could possibly be lucky enough to find a woman that I loved and who loved me.”
Uh, let’s do the math: Breitling + $50 million + handsome = get anyone he wants.
Does he? Read the ending.
©2008 by Bucky Fox. The book cover illustration is courtesy of HarperCollins. This column first posted March 10, 2008.
You can visit Bucky Fox's
website at www.BuckyFox.com
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