Lem Banker talks life, love and betting sports

Steve Marcus

Professional gambler and exercise buff Lem Banker, 82, said, “I did a little boxing in the Army. I used to go to all the fights. Now I watch them on pay-per-view.”

By Jeff Haney

Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Lem Banker

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On their first date, the gambler and the beauty queen went to the races at Monmouth Park on the Jersey shore.

Delores Vicario, who went by Debbie, was a model in New York’s Garment District and a showgirl at the Riviera hotel in Havana.

Lester Banker, who went by Lem, was still a small-timer, though he would go on to become the most celebrated professional sports bettor in Las Vegas.

“My whole bankroll was about fifteen hundred bucks,” Banker says. “But I gave her a hundred-dollar bill to take up to the window. We probably broke even or lost a couple of bucks at the track, then we had a nice Chinese dinner.

“She was beautiful, of course. There were plenty of guys chasing her. But she liked the excitement I could provide because I had a convertible, and, oh, those whitewall tires were a big deal.”

Banker, who has made a handsome living analyzing betting propositions, felt like an underdog, especially as a Jewish guy trying to win over a young woman from an old-fashioned Roman Catholic family.

“After a while, a friend of mine said to watch for Saturday night,” Banker says. “If she goes with you on a date on Saturday night, that means she really likes you.”

On the Saturday in question, Banker got into a fight outside a tavern. He had to crack a guy’s jaw, a bully who looked like Richard Widmark, the film noir villain. Debbie heard about the fight.

“I wasn’t worried, though,” Banker says, laughing about the incident more than half a century later. “I thought it just might turn her on.”

•••

The idea was to visit Lem Banker on the eve of his 53rd football season in Las Vegas. Talk about some old times. Hear tales about the bettors, boxers, wiseguys and wannabes Banker has known. Ask Banker for his take on current issues as well: the imminent expansion of legal sports betting beyond Nevada, the two big prizefights coming up in Las Vegas, the decimated economy in his beloved adopted home city.

Banker, a longtime fitness enthusiast who works out regularly at age 82, was amenable. He likes to lift weights, hit the heavy bag, then sit around solving the world’s problems, or at least a couple of them.

It was clear Banker had something else on his mind this time, though.

Almost as soon as a visitor arrives at his home, Banker produces an album containing photos of Debbie, looking graceful and elegant as a young fashion model.

“Let me show you these,” Banker says. “This is the girl I married.”

This has been a tumultuous year, Banker says. Debbie Banker died in May, one month after the Bankers’ 50th wedding anniversary.

They were married in Las Vegas on April 11, 1959.

He got the girl.

“It’s tough without her, very tough,” Banker says. “She was a wonderful, wonderful girl, and a good cook also. Me, I’m lost in the kitchen.”

•••

For Lem Banker, sports betting and other facets of life in Las Vegas are naturally intertwined.

He finishes a story about how he brought the form of baseball betting known as the “run line” to Las Vegas. (Betting the run line allows gamblers to lay 1 1/2 runs with the favored team or take 1 1/2 runs with the underdog at adjusted odds.)

“Charles McNeil from Chicago invented it, but I made it famous in town here,” Banker says.

In virtually the next breath, Banker says he not only brought the run line to town, but he also was instrumental in smashing racial barriers in Las Vegas.

Before he was married, Banker boasts, he enjoyed going out on the town socially with Eartha Kitt, who performed at the old El Rancho in the 1950s. They met at a health club Banker ran on the Strip.

“I used to teach her exercise,” Banker says. “She took a real liking to me. One day she asked me to take her to see ‘Li’l Abner’ at the Riviera. I had ‘Big Julie’ Weintraub with me, and I told him, ‘We’ll go to the show with Eartha.’ ”

Because Las Vegas was still largely segregated, the city’s establishment didn’t quite know what to make of it, Banker said.

“It was reported that Eartha Kitt was seen at the Riviera, at the ‘Li’l Abner’ show, with two big white bodyguards,” Banker says, laughing.

It wasn’t just Kitt’s “great figure,” as Banker puts it in an understatement, that he found attractive. He also respected Kitt for her outspoken support of civil rights.

“That’s the way I am,” Banker says. “I always give the underdog a shot.”

•••

“My father loved boxing,” Banker says, explaining his lifelong fascination with the sport. “He wanted me to become a fighter. I did a little boxing in the Army. I used to go to all the fights. Now I watch them on pay-per-view.”

It’s not surprising Banker plans to bet the underdog in the two major fights to take place in Las Vegas before the end of the year. He likes Juan Manuel Marquez against Floyd Mayweather Jr. next month, and Miguel Cotto against Manny Pacquiao in November.

Banker still bets sports daily, but he makes much smaller wagers than he did in his heyday. “I’m not playing to win, I’m playing not to lose,” he cracks.

Some of the biggest bets in Banker’s career — winners as well as losers — have been on championship boxing matches. Banker avoids discussing specific dollar amounts, but does allow that when Gabe Kaplan saw the figure on his betting ticket on Larry Holmes against Muhammad Ali in 1980, Kaplan’s eyes bulged out of his head.

“Kaplan was right in back of me in line at Caesars Palace,” Banker says. “He said, ‘You like Holmes that much?’ I told him it was the best bet in the last 10 years.”

Banker was sitting ringside before the Holmes-Ali fight when Kentucky Gov. John Y. Brown, attending with his wife, Phyllis George, asked Banker which fighter he liked.

“I say I love Holmes. And all of a sudden I notice a beautiful girl with a nice outfit on giving me a dirty look. It’s Veronica, Ali’s wife. Real quickly I say to her, ‘Oh, I mean Ali. I love Ali!’ ”

Holmes won handily, but Banker couldn’t stop thinking about his pre-fight faux pas.

“I knew them all,” Banker says. “Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston.”

Banker recalls going to Harlem with Joe Louis to watch Nipsey Russell perform and seeing Louis mobbed by fans who wanted to shake his hand and buy him drinks.

“He was the biggest hero you could imagine,” Banker said. “When I was a kid I used to listen to his fights on the radio with my father. My father would have loved to have known I became friends with him later on.”

•••

On Monday, Banker made a wager on the Miami Dolphins laying 3 points in their NFL preseason game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Miami won 12-9, so the bet was a “push.”

That result, Banker says, helps illustrate how sports betting has become tougher to beat. Years ago there were more regional differences in the point spread. The line on a game might be 2 points in Philadelphia, 3 points in Las Vegas and 4 points in Chicago, for instance.

A sophisticated bettor like Banker, plugged into a national network of gamblers, could take advantage of those variations in the spread to generate profits in the course of a season.

“If I had to start this all over again, I don’t think I would be as successful,” Banker says. “Getting the right price is so important. I used to have runners (betting contacts) all over the country, in New York, Florida, Chicago, California, so I could always get the best line. In that Miami game, I would have found a 2 1/2 somewhere. Now everybody’s looking at the same number.”

Bleeding every last drop of value from the betting line has been a key to Banker’s success from the earliest stages of his gambling career.

“My father (Benjamin) was a very smart man,” Banker says. “He wasn’t a big gambler. He was a candy store bookmaker in Union City, N.J. He was a World War I veteran who lived through the Depression. He used to tell me, ‘You’ll always be a bum,’ because I was girl-crazy and so forth.

“But he told me about the basics of handicapping. If a horse is a beaten favorite or has bad racing luck, watch him the next time out. One, he’ll be running with cheaper horses. Two, he’s not going to carry as much weight, maybe 108 pounds instead of 112. Three, most important, the public will overlook him so you’ll get a better price, maybe 8-1 instead of 3-1. Those are the kind of things I’ve always looked for. Prices and value.”

•••

Banker, who blames corporate “greed” and overexpansion for at least part of the economic mess in Las Vegas, remains bullish on the city’s long-term prospects.

He approves of Delaware’s decision to adopt legal sports betting and would like to see other states follow.

“People are going to find bookmakers regardless,” he says. “I’d rather see them bet at a place where you get a (betting) ticket and you’re assured of getting paid.”

In which of his accomplishments, Banker is asked, does he take the most pride: The well-appointed home in an exclusive neighborhood? The small fleet of fine automobiles?

“No, no,” Banker says. “I’ve made so many good friends. I came out here broke and I ended up with a wonderful girl. She quit her job and everything. She believed in me.”

•••

It’s time to go, but leaving takes a little while as Banker shows off a series of framed photographs.

There’s Smarty Jones. Johnny Tocco. Checkers, Banker’s late dog. Jack Dempsey.

They all have stories behind them, and Banker is glad to share them with a visitor.

He comes across another one of Debbie.

“My wife’s a beauty,” Banker says, but more to himself this time.