$47m loss a drop in bucket

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - The revelation this week that Kerry Packer took a $US20 million ($47 million) bath in a Las Vegas casino only adds to the legend of Australia's richest man. Packer's losses were accumulated in just three days of baccarat at the Bellagio hotel, which had accepted the billionaire at its tables after he was banned by a less fortunate rival.

Packer, worth $A8.2 billion ($10.9 billion) through his holdings in media, financial services, telecommunications and IT, is one of a relative handful of "whales," the 200 or so fabulously rich high-rollers courted by casinos around the world with all-expenses-paid visits, multimillion-dollar credit lines and house rebates.

But Packer is in a league almost of his own, reputedly matched only by the Sultan of Brunei and Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, and is believed to have closed the doors of one of London's most exclusive casinos with a killer winning streak.

He has shrugged off the theft of several millions dollars worth of bullion from a company safe, barely winced when other international high-rollers creamed millions of dollars from his recently acquired Crown Casino in Melbourne, and hired Elton John to sing Can You Feel The Love Tonight at the wedding of son and heir James to model Jodie Meares.

With his wealth growing by $A1.8 billion last year - equal to his total worth 10 years ago - the discovery this year of a fortune in rubies on his property in the Hunter Valley was just another drop in the bucket.

Even so, the marathon card session at the Bellagio was a vast loss, equivalent to 4 per cent of combined baccarat earnings of about $US500 million of all Las Vegas casinos last year.

According to Dave Bern, a reporter with the Las Vegas Review Journal, Packer's usual hit-and-run tactic of playing for several hours, collecting his winnings and leaving failed badly. "He likes to gamble as much as $US100,000 to $US150,000 a hand on games, and sometimes he may have two hands going at once." The play-win-run attack also collapsed disastrously in London late last year, when Packer reportedly lost £11 million ($37.5 million) at Crockford's casino - the biggest single loss in British gambling history.

But losses that would cripple a decent-sized company have never fazed Packer. Biographer Paul Barry noted: "As one of his executives puts it, he gambles when he's bored and he gambles often because he's often bored."

As far back as the late 1960s Packer was one of Sydney's biggest race-betters, gambling $A10,000 or so on a single race at the Harold Park trots.

His bankers were cautioned in the mid-1970s against extending an overdraft because of $A360,000 he owed to bookmakers, and he once transferred $A1 million in cash to an office safe to pay off gambling debts.

According to Barry, when Packer was confronted by an accountant worried by the effect on the company of his gambling losses and furious at the latest losing streak in London, the billionaire replied: "You shouldn't have left me in London over the weekend."

Packer's losses over the years have been enormous, including up to $A4 million to a single Sydney bookie in 1980-81, $A7 million on the day of the 1987 Golden Slipper at Rosehill, $A3 million two days later at Randwick, $A9 million at the London Ritz later the same year, and $US20 million at two sessions in Las Vegas in 1987 and 1991.

But his wins have also been prodigious. He picked up $US7 million when he stopped over at the Las Vegas Hilton with his polo team in 1991, won $US10 million after catching a Barbra Streisand concert in the Nevada gambling capital in 1995, and collected more than $A3 million on Might and Power in the 1997 Melbourne Cup. "Take my worst day as a bookmaker and multiply it by two and the Cup was worse," one bookmaker said after Packer's Melbourne win.

In London, he broke the bank at the exclusive Aspinall's club, forcing it to close. And in 1995, he won a record $US20 million at the Las Vegas MGM Grand's Monte Carlo casino by playing baccarat above house limits, betting more than $US260,000 a hand on six hands at once in a formidable hit-and-run attack.

Former MGM chairman Larry Woolf flew to England to tell Packer the casino wanted to reassess the terms on which he gambled there - a polite way of saying he was no longer welcome at MGM or associated casinos.

One Las Vegas casino boss told the Los Angeles Times: "If you let him dictate the terms you're gambling like any other sucker, but for millions invested by your stockholders against a billionaire's pocket money."

However, Packer has remained larger than life, handing croupiers tips of $US25,000 in chips after winning streaks, and once clearing a waitress' mortgage with a tip of $US125,000.

In a much-retold anecdote, Packer was once accosted by a Texas oilman boasting of his wealth. "Are you really worth $US150 million?" he asked. "Tell you what, I'll toss you for it."