Longtime Vegas Bookie Jimmy Vaccaro Talks Exclusively to Gambling 911 About Retirement
After more than 50 years as a legal bookmaker in Las Vegas, legend Jimmy Vaccaro recently retired.
Perhaps the most famous bookie in the country, the native Pennsylvanian, who revolutionized sports betting, will turn 80 next month.
Gambling 911 last week caught up with the Vegas icon and sat down for a wide-ranging exclusive interview about his life, his career and how he’s enjoying retirement.
Here is a transcript of that interview:
Gambling 911: How do you like retirement so far?
Jimmy Vaccaro: It’s been great. I moved away from Las Vegas, where I have lived for most of the last 50 years, and returned to my hometown, Trafford, Pennsylvania, which is about 20 miles outside Pittsburgh.
G9: Why did you move back to Trafford?
JV: This is where I grew up. This is where my friends and family are. This is home. This is where I wanted to retire.
G9: After living in Las Vegas, one of the most exciting cities in the world, has it been an adjustment relocating to Trafford, a tiny borough of about 3,300 people?
JV: I don’t have a house. I don’t have a car. I’ve been staying with my cousin. I don’t know how to buy a house. I’ve never bought one. I don’t know how to buy a car. I’ve never bought one. So I have a lot to learn at age 80.
G9: Let’s review your illustrious career. How did you get started in the gambling industry?
JV: I wanted to be a blackjack dealer, so I moved to Las Vegas in 1975, when I was in my 20s. Nevada was the only place in the U.S. that had casinos then.
G9: So you were actually a blackjack dealer before you were a bookmaker?
JV: Yes. My second week in town, I went over to the Royal Inn, a casino just off the Strip. I went in to see the owner, Michael Gaughan, who I didn’t know and had never met or spoken to, and told him I wanted to be a blackjack dealer.
G9: And just like that, he hired you?
JV: No. He told me I had to go to dealers school first, to learn how to deal blackjack. He said dealers school would take a few weeks and cost $250. I told him I didn’t have $250.
G9: So what did you do?
JV: He liked me, so he said he would cover the cost for me and I could pay him back after I started working for him as a dealer, which I did.
G9: How did you transition from dealing blackjack to booking sports bets?
JV: After working as a blackjack dealer at the Royal Inn for a few years, Mr. Gaughan decided to open a sportsbook there. Sportsbooks were relatively rare in Las Vegas then, only a few casinos had them. He asked me if I knew anything about running a sportsbook. I said no. He said he didn’t either. He then asked me if I would like to give it a try, and I said sure.
G9: And ever since then, you have never looked back, right?
JV: Right. After running the Royal Inn sportsbook for a few years, Mr. Gaughan opened a sportsbook at another one of his properties, the Barbary Coast casino, on the Strip. He asked me to run it and I did for a few years.
G9: Where else have you worked?
JV: In Vegas, I went on to run sportsbooks at the MGM Grand, the Golden Nugget, the Mirage, Leroy’s, William Hill and South Point. I also spent time running sportsbooks at the Rivers casino in Pittsburgh and the Atlantis casino in the Bahamas.
G9: You invented the concept of wagering on whether a team will go over or under its projected number of wins for a season. How did that come about?
JV: The year was 1989. Steve Wynn had hired me to run the sportsbook at his new hotel casino, the Mirage. It was Jimmy Johnson‘s first year coaching the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones’ first year owning the team. The team had gone 3-13 the previous season, leading to longtime coach Tom Landry being fired and replaced by Johnson.
G9: So what happened?
JV: Shortly before the start of the NFL season, a heavy bettor who I knew came in and asked me how many games I thought the Dallas Cowboys would win that season, because he wanted to bet on it. We had never set lines on anything like that before. Nobody had. So I thought about it for a moment and said 5 and a half games would be the total, you can bet over that or under that. The bettor thought the Cowboys were going to rebound big under Johnson and win at least six games, so he bet $40,000 on the over. And we all know what happened. The Cowboys went 1-15 their first season under Johnson.
G9: What was the legacy of that bet?
JV: We started setting win totals for every team in every sport and so did every other sportsbook in town. It really revolutionized sports betting. You could make one bet at the start of the season and it was like having a bet every time your team played.
G9: A year later, in 1990, you were involved in another memorable incident in sports betting history. Can you tell us about that?
JV: Yes. That was the year Mike Tyson, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, fought Buster Douglas in Tokyo, Japan. I was still at the Mirage. The fight was seen as such a mismatch that no sportsbook in town dared set a betting line on it. No sportsbook except the Mirage, that is. I set Douglas’ odds of winning the fight at 45 to 1.
G9: And what happened?
JV: A bettor came in and wagered $450,000 to win $10,000 on Tyson. He thought it was a sure thing. It wasn’t. Tyson lost the fight in one of the biggest upsets in sports history. The next day Steve Wynn called me into his office and said, I don’t know what you’re doing at the sportsbook, but keep it up.
G9: That wasn’t the end of it, though, was it?
JV: No. A few years later, ESPN did a “30 for 30” documentary about the fight and they interviewed me.
G9: You were involved with another large wager, in 1995. What happened then?
JV: The San Francisco 49ers were playing the San Diego Chargers in Super Bowl XXI. The Niners were 19-point favorites. On the moneyline, the Chargers were 8 to 1 longshots. I was at the Mirage. Multibillionaire Carl Icahn came in with a suitcase full of cash and bet San Francisco to win the game on the moneyline. He bet $2.4 million to win $300,000. The Niners won the game 49-26.
G9: How does that work, a big bet like that? Does someone just show up with a huge amount of cash and you just take the bet?
JV: Not exactly. Carl called me the day before and asked what the betting line was on the Super Bowl. I told him. He then said he wanted to bet $2.4 million on the Niners on the moneyline. I told him he’d have to come down to the sportsbook with the amount in cash. He came down with this little suitcase stuffed with $100 bills and made the bet. At the time it was one of the largest sports bets ever made in the history of Las Vegas.
G9: You had another brush with TV fame. Can you tell us about that?
JV: Yes. I was once asked to be in an episode of “The Simpsons.” They had me setting odds for a fictional election. I was paid a few thousand dollars and then I got a $600 residual check every time they reran the show.
G9: Now that you are retired, do you plan to attend a lot of Pittsburgh Steelers games?
JV: No. I have only attended one Steelers game in my life, years ago, and I left at halftime.
By Tom Somach
Gambling 911 Chief Correspondent
