Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos by Tom Breitling, Cal Fussman
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Book Reviews of Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos
Book Review: Building on success
Summary: 5 Stars
Engaging book about friends who stay grounded while orchestrating dramatic success in a town full of characters and stories. And Tom Breiling and Tim Poster's story - creating an innovative and successful travel company (Travelscape), re-invigorating a jewel of downtown Las Vegas (the Golden Nugget), and proving the worth of their efforts by making dramatically successful deals, all while respecting and learning from those who came before them - adds to the city's rich history of unique tales. Themes of regularly proving to yourself that you have the right chops, building on previous successes, and trusting your partner enough to go with your gut and live with the consequences keep the story moving. Chapter 10 is a rush, as Breitling details the thrills and dangers of running the Golden Nugget while guests and employees test the new owners' resolve.Book Review: It's a Winner
Summary: 4 Stars
Imagine watching a guy play craps in your casino, costing you millions of your money as he rolls and wins, over and over. I can't, but young financial daredevils Tom Breitling and his partner Tim Poster lived this adventure. Double or Nothing is the story of these self-made men who met in college and began with an idea, a desk and a phone to create 2 business ventures making over $100 million each.
Luck, hard work, knowledge and daring are the elements Tom and Tim used to make their fortune. Tim, the idea man, began the hotel room booking business that became Travelscape which Expedia bought for over $100 million. Tom was the more conservative partner who shared the risk and expanded the vision to make it happen. The second million (actually $115 million) came from the purchase and sale, in less than a year, of the Golden Nugget Casino in downtown Las Vegas. That's 226% in one year on their $50 million investment.
Tom takes us through the ups and downs of these ventures, sharing Las Vegas anecdotes and history, bold moves and bluffs made over drinks and dinners and the staggering tension and anxiety underlying the risk making it all possible. Double or Nothing is a roller coaster ride through Vegas with lots of dialogue and no filler or fluff. It's a winner.
Book Review: Bizarre but decent
Summary: 3 Stars
As a person who dreams of owning a casino and loves Las Vegas, I was looking forward to reading this book. Additionally, I had followed a portion of the author's saga via the reality TV show, The Casino (mentioned briefly in the book). I suppose I was hoping the book would be more meaty regarding the business aspect and the reality show debacle that tried to chronicle it all. The book touches on enough of this to keep it interesting, but it really needs less of the author's breathless (and borderline obsessive) sentences about his business partner. It comes off as a bit uncomfortable.
Regardless, it was a quick easy read.
Book Review: Inside ride to the top
Summary: 4 Stars
Though Cal Fussman undoubtedly strung together most of the nouns and verbs, this is very much Tom Breitling's book, so it rises or falls on his life story.
And Breitling certainly has a story to tell. He surfed the dot com wave along with (business) partner Tim Poster, developing a pioneering Internet travel site and cashing it, it seems, at just the right time. Then the pair bought the storied Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas (and Laughlin-people always seem to forget about that one) and had a brief, well-publicized, and, in the end, extremely lucrative career as casino owners.
As we learn, it's not easy being young, rich, and famous. Regulators, obnoxious high rollers, and the petty details of running a casino strain but don't shatter Breitling and Poster's friendship. In the end, they're still close, and there are even a few hints that they're not done in the casino world just yet.
It's a good read; Fussman's obviously planed off most of the extraneous stuff and left us with a narrative with a real dramatic arc. As the book opens, we learn just how awful it feels to be on the receiving end of a run of good (for the player) luck. Seems like it's watching gravity reverse itself without being able to stop it or understanding what's happening: P&B know that the house advantage should lead to their winning back some money from "Mr. Royalty," but they just watch the whale win, and win, and win. It's a great entry point into the story.
Then we go back to Breitling's early years and pick up the story from the start. He goes to school, meets Poster, teams with him on a start-up Vegas reservation service that blossoms into one of the first real online travel sites, and is on a roll. We get a peek into the office culture of the dot-com bubble. It might be a little too frat-house for some tastes: nearly every everyone's got a nickname (one executive is called "The Sniffer"), and hijinks, practical jokes, and bonhomie are abundant. But hey, they're not trying to cure cancer: they're guys into their 20s working hard and getting paid very, very, well.
From here, we see the haggling as P&B sell their business and, flush with cash, start kicking a few casino tires. They end up with the Golden Nugget, and the best part of the book is right here: seeing the insides of the deal. Then there's some good material on the challenges of ownership: hardly a how-to book, but enough to give you a sense of what it's like. They even talk about the poorly-received reality TV show, The Casino.
Throughout the book, Breitling comes across as earnest and even serious. Even though his career seems like a joyride, he's not doing anything on a lark here. And with the money and fame comes responsibility. There's even a downside to dating a well-known Hollywood actress-model, as we learn.
One of Fussman's strengths is that he's a talented enough writer to keep the reader rooting for Tom all the way through. For better or worse, success stories usually breed resentment, and it's easy to see how Breitling could have come off as smug and self-satisfied in the hands of a less capable co-author. But you never feel that Breitling's lording it over you-even when he's talking about dating a girl most guys know from magazine covers. There's more a vibe of, "Hey bro, this is something really cool that happened to me, and I thought you might want to hear about it." Well, some people might want to go light on the wunderkind for a while after reading this, but it is what it is: this is the story of two very successful young men, not a philosophical tome by an elder statesman.
So I recommend Double or Nothing. You'll definitely get a new perspective on fame, fortune, high rollers, and casino ownership.
Book Review: Great story of friendship and perseverance!
Summary: 5 Stars
Tom spins a great story about his roots, his partnership/friendship with Tim, as well as giving great advice about how to make a partnership work among some serious trials and tribulations.
The book reads like a pleasant conversation with the author, and you can tell that this is genuinely how he is. The book is a quick read, and the pacing is perfect for a 1-2 day sit down session. Being a Las Vegas native, I have to agree with the observations about our little town, and I think that Tom paints a clear and honest picture of what life can be like here.
Brief synopsis: Friends meet. Friends start travel website. Friends sell aforementioned website for 9 figures. Friends decide to buy an aging Las Vegas classic, rejuvinating downtown Las Vegas in the process. Friends sell casino for another 9 figure profit. Through it all, deals are made and broken, a woman comes and goes, the house wins and loses, patience is tested, but the friends remain friends. A story of true friendship amongst serious odds, with lots of interesting characters and situations along the way!
All in all, a riveting story, an old Vegas feel, and a few genuine characters add up to a great book!