He eventually was sentenced to a year and served several months in the Richmond Correctional Institution in North Carolina, but it was only a small bump in the road to his success.Ī criminal record isn’t a detriment to a career as a professional gambler.

Baxter faced a slew of charges, so he and his new wife Julie made a bee line for Nevada to wait out the appeals somewhere Baxter could ply his trade legally. “Sonny Jurgenson, a famous football player, was holding the dice in his hand when the doors come down,” Baxter told me, referring to Washington’s Hall of Fame starting quarterback. His club was raided by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation during the 1973 Masters, when it was filled to the brim with high rollers in town for the tournament. He spun that little club into gold, running table games and making book on sports until he had amassed a sizable bankroll for himself.īut being a bookmaker and casino kingpin in Georgia, while lucrative, was not without risk. He once ran his own underground casino in Augusta, Georgia, a club he won in a gin game from the previous owner. He was already, at the age of 35, a veteran high stakes gambler.

Baxter, an experienced gambler, was no stranger to this place. Billy Baxter arrived in Las Vegas in 1975 looking for a game.

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