ShareSome players are well-known for their gambling beyond the green felt of the poker table, some with disastrous results and some with great success, but not even Phil Ivey can compete with the biggest gambler the world has ever seen – Australian business magnate Kerry Packer.
While Ivey once offered a masseuse a $5k tip - on behalf of a momentarily cashless Nick Schulman’s surprise behalf it should be said! – even that pales into insignificance compared to tales of Packer dishing out a $1million tip to the casino’s Blackjack dealers.
That particular story came from his 1997 visit to the MGM Grand that saw Packer winning $20million playing 8 hands at a time for $250k a pop.
Other stories of paying off six-figure mortgages of dealers and staff for good service even saw him ask for a dealer to be fired – simply so he could persuade her to take an $80,000 tip – after which he made the pit boss rehire her!
Packer’s legendary willingness to gamble led to some of the most incredible casino stories ever heard, and include an epic put down of a multi-millionaire Texan oil baron.
Bored by the Texas man’s boorish behaviour at the blackjack tables, Packer called the braggart out over his claimed $100million worth.
“I’ll flip you for it,” was Packer’s brutal offer, the Texan suddenly lost for words at the idea of his fortune resting on the toss of a coin. For Packer, a many-times self-made millionaire, it was just another day at his ‘other’ office.
Baccarat, that favourite of Phil Ivey and the battleground for his recent edge-sorting legal cases, was also a favourite of the Australian businessman/gambler.
Ivey’s double $10million wins from Atlantic City’s Borgata and London’s Crockfords across many sessions again look limited when faced with Packer’s single session $13million win.
However, Packer would also lose big – and big for Packer was upwards of $5million in a session, Crockfords taking him for $7million one evening! That’s what made the casinos hope for, and fearful of, whenever Packer was in town.
Often accompanied by the likes of golf coach Butch Harmon and actor Anthony Perkins, the Aussie could easily go from $500 bets to 1000 times that per hand if the mood took him.
No-one ever beats the house of course, and it is said that Packer lost more than $25million to casinos in the last decade of his life, but along the way he scared the hell out of most of them. He also made life a lot easier for a lot of those on the lower rungs of the casino ladder!
When Packer died in 2005 he left a multi-billion dollar legacy behind, which led to years of legal feuds among his family, but that’s perhaps a story for a different rainy day!
