Kerry Packer by Michael Stahl (i read books .txt) 📕

net worth, international gamblers who regularly won and lost in seven figures.

The scraps left in the wake of such frenzies were neither to be scoffed at. 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 liked the service the girl was providing. He asked her if she had a mortgage. She said yes, and he said, “Bring it in tomorrow and I’ll pay it off for you”. 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. Packer asked for her name and address and saw to it that her US$130,000 mortgage was immediately mopped up.

And it seems Kerry Packer was as determined in his generosity as he was in everything else. Garry Linnell reported yet another mortgage-magic act in Vegas, where Packer pushed US$80,000 worth of chips towards a deserving croupier. The croupier blushed and explained that she couldn’t accept it; all tips had to be pooled and shared among the staff.

Packer called the manager and insisted that he fire her on the spot, on the threat of taking his business elsewhere. When the manager complied, Packer handed her the chips. 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. 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.

Packer was playing at one table and a loud-mouthed Texan, playing at the next table, wanted to join in. He didn’t take too kindly to the Australian’s rejection.

According to Baldwin: ‘The [Texan] said, “I’m a big player too. I’m worth $100 million”. 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”.

Gambling was play for Kerry Packer, so the normal rules of business evidently did not apply. The scale and rate at which he operated made him difficult to keep up with. Neither Packer nor his people maintained P&L statements on his multimillion-dollar binges, and if the casinos did—those that could handle him, anyway—they weren’t saying.

Most of the Big Fella’s best casino splurges occurred overseas. 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. He would turn up at any hour of the day or night and bet big, often with several hands of blackjack going at once. If the winning was good, after a couple of hours he might disappear into the night.

Casinos consider that poor etiquette. Still, they lured Packer and his fellow whales by reimbursing their travel expenses (said to be up to $100,000 for Packer and his entourage) and offering ‘rebates’ on their losses. Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal, on whom Robert DeNiro’s character in Casino was based, confirmed to The Australian newspaper in August, 2000 that Packer received a 10 per cent rebate.

The Vegas trips were usually short and sharp: three or four days of hitting the big-dollar blackjack and baccarat tables along the Strip. According to casino host Steve Cyr, subject of the book Whale Hunt in the Desert, Packer was ‘a pretty good blackjack player’ who had had some tutoring. Less courageous casinos became wary of booking his blackjack bets.

Cyr said this was in part because Packer was known to be more placid when playing baccarat. ‘He didn’t go off on temper tantrums as much at baccarat … Because decision-making comes into play at the blackjack table, he was a lot more volatile when playing 21.’

In London, Packer seemed to be in less of a hurry, sometimes idly spreading a splurge over a few days. But the size of the wins and losses were no less impressive. Indeed, Packer supposedly claimed a variety of dubious honours—the first eight-figure loss in one sitting, the biggest loss in British casino history, and being barred from or even bankrupting casinos by winning too much—pretty well equally across both continents.

Apparently celebrating his sale of Nine to Alan Bond, Packer had a flutter at the private blackjack tables at London’s Ritz. Reportedly played two tables at £10,000 per hand, he could have bought a lot of cake and candles with the £8 million dump he took.

London was the scene of another landmark a little over a year later. The London casino Aspinall’s went broke in May 1990, and London’s Today newspaper blamed Packer.

November 1991 had Packer in Las Vegas, scooping $7 million on blackjack. Gossip columnist Nigel Dempster reported him handing out $50,000 tips to the croupiers on that occasion. But in the same year—possibly the same visit—Vegas casino host Steve Cyr reported Packer copping a $10 million hit at the Las Vegas Hilton. It was the biggest single-session loss in the hotel’s history.

It’s not a feat you’d be keen to repeat, but Packer supposedly lost a further $10 million to the same hotel in 1992. By which time, thanks to his previous loss, they’d been prompted to upgrade their cage computer to accept eight-figure hauls.

These must have been extraordinary stand-offs: Packer and the casinos both knew that he could, single-handedly, either bankrupt or buy them.

As it was, Packer’s plays were significant enough that a casino company’s earnings could be clobbered, and its market capitalisation nudged by whole percentage points. And it could swing either