Today Las Vegas pumps out an incredible $62 billion annually in tourist revenue, and while the gambling and brothel reputations of Sin City were earned way back during the California and Nevada gold and silver rushes of 1849 and 1850, it was not until the Mafia arrived from the East Coast that Vegas began to fully blossom into the gambling mecca it is today.

But if President Herbert Hoover had not approved the go-ahead for the building of the Boulder Dam, later renamed the Hoover Dam under the Truman administration, the Las Vegas we know and love today may not even exist in its present form. Construction of the dam began in 1931, and the population exploded from 5,000 to 25,000 in Las Vegas. The instant influx of the largely male workforce with no entertainment immediately drew the attention of both Mafia crime lords and Mormon financiers and businessmen.

Mob-controlled Las Vegas showgirls and casinos descended upon the hard-working Hoover Dam construction workers that had plenty of cash and plenty of time to spend. Intelligent Las Vegas, Nevada officials wisely legalized gambling in 1931, and Fremont Street began the cornerstone foundation of the world’s premier gambling destination with casinos like the Las Vegas Club and the Apache Hotel. The Wild West atmosphere was still so pervasive that it wasn’t until 1931 that Fremont Street was actually paved, becoming home to Las Vegas’s first traffic light.

That traffic light must have been the green light signal for the East Coast mob to move into the city, and by the time Southern Nevada Power first delivered electric power from the Hoover Dam, with the brilliantly lit Las Vegas as its first customer, organized crime became the foundation of many casinos in the city.

And while it was openly known that mobsters and gangsters controlled and secretly owned many Las Vegas businesses and gambling dens, the East Coast bosses were happy to keep a low profile. That all changed in 1946 when known Jewish gangster Bugsy Siegel, with help from fellow mob boss Meyer Lansky and respectable Mormon bank backing, built The Flamingo in 1946.

20 years later, an eccentric billionaire germaphobe stayed at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. The noted American financier and aviation industry king Howard Hughes was so concerned about germs that when faced with leaving his room, he instead purchased the entire hotel. With a fat bankroll, he quickly bought out organized crime in many venues, and single-handedly began the metamorphosis of the city’s reputation from crime-based to corporate respectability.

This was the beginning of the end for Mafia and mob casino ownership in Las Vegas, and the start of big business conglomerates owning and running the city’s casinos, resorts, and hotels. Baby boomer entrepreneurs began the Megaresort Las Vegas era that we experience today back in the 1980s, and the current Las Vegas now offers a more family-oriented entertainment and casino gambling experience as the world’s most popular gambling hotspot that include some of the most luxurious vacation spots at 5 star Las Vegas Hotels and Resorts.

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In just over two years, Karas had gambled, wagered, and prognosticated that baby bankroll into an incredible $40 million fortune. Not bad for an uneducated former waiter who used to shoot marbles as a starving kid just to earn enough money so he could eat.

Arriving in Las Vegas with only his dilapidated vehicle and $50 in his wallet, Karas exploited Las Vegas’ legal gambling to the tune of $17 million in only six months playing pool and poker. He moved to the famous Binion’s Horseshoe as a base of operations and started playing games of pool for $10,000 to $40,000 a pop.

The self-taught Karas also beat Hall of Fame poker players like Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, and the three-time World Series of Poker champion Stu Ungar consistently during The Run. While Karas is the pinnacle of Las Vegas gambling royalty, there are countless others who over the years have forced the house edge in Las Vegas to surrender.

Their desire to risk it all for spectacular wealth paid off, and their stories linger in the back of our minds every time we head to Sin City. On March 21, 2003, a soft-spoken 25-year-old Los Angeles software developer decided to vacation in Las Vegas. Smart move.

A bold $100 Megabucks slot machine spin delivered the largest single-person jackpot in Las Vegas history when the Excalibur slot machine he was playing paid off a 16.7 million to one bet for a staggering $39,710,826.36 (that’s $39 million folks). On January 26, 2000, a 37-year-old hard-working Las Vegas cocktail waitress and slots player named Cynthia Jay-Brennan won $34.9 million on a similar Megabucks machine at the Desert Inn.

A mere 14 months earlier, a retired 67-year-old flight attendant from Las Vegas decided to spend $100 on a slot machine at the Palace Station. As so many gamblers do, she got hooked and went way over her $100 budget. It is a good thing she did because when she was considering quitting after gambling $300, the wheels rolled around on yet again another jackpot-paying Megabucks machine that rewarded her tenacity with $27.5 million. The anonymous flight attendant also hit a $680,000 jackpot on a Wheel of Fortune slot machine at the Palace Station.

For all you high-rollers out there, William Lee Bergstrom proves that gambling at extremely high levels requires ice water in your veins. Bergstrom once walked into Binion’s in the 1980s with a suitcase loaded with $770,000 in cash and bet it all on the Don’t Pass craps line. An agonizing three rolls later the shooter crapped out, Bergstrom doubled his money to $1,540,000 and hit the door.

And any discussion of incredible Las Vegas gambling successes has to include the amazing Stanley Fujitake. On May 28, 1989, the regular at the California Hotel and Casino in downtown Las Vegas bellied up to the craps table and picked up the dice. For an unbelievable but documented 3 hours and 6 minutes encompassing 118 straight winning rolls, Fujitake helped himself and his fellow craps players to more than $1 million of the hotel’s money.

From amateurs to seasoned veterans, Las Vegas provides a siren’s song that is hard for gamblers to resist, but these amazing Las Vegas gambling winners prove sometimes riches are just one decision away.

The post “The Run” From $50 to $40 Million, Biggest Winners in Vegas Gambling History first appeared on Vegas Gambling Online.

Add the fact that in and around Las Vegas, Nevada has multiple physical poker tournaments offered daily, weekly and monthly, and poker tournament lovers have got to be as happy as a kid in a candy store in the Silver State.

The two state-sponsored websites, run by Ultimate Poker and WSOP, have been pretty much equally supported in online traffic for tournaments, cash games, and sit-n-goes. Just having wrapped up the physical World Series of Poker, WSOP kicked off their most recent weekend with $3,000 and $1,000 Friday and Saturday Rebuy and Add-On tournaments running each of those two days.

On Sunday WSOP offered a $15,000 Weekly Sunday Guarantee which has been very popular in the early goings at that website. All in all the past week, WSOP offered seven events with guaranteed money of $1,000 or more, with a total of 592 players competing for 102 prizes. With odds of better than one in six winning a prize, a total of $29,918 was paid out in those tournaments.

At the Ultimate Poker website, there were nine Las Vegas poker tournaments on the virtual felt with a guaranteed $1,000 purse or larger. 504 Internet poker players joined in the competition, fighting for 74 payouts which delivered $27,640 in winnings. That website’s Guaranteed Sunday $10,000 tournament was won by “MikeRoLoVe”, who took home the first prize of $2,668.

At UP, the Vegas-based virtual tournament offerings also saw “Rick2007” take down two first places and a second to bring home $2,851. Las Vegas poker tournaments also found online include legitimate offshore operators like Bovada Poker, which has been delivering legally licensed Internet poker to Las Vegas, Nevada, and US residents for years.

Bovada’s most attended tournament is the weekly $100,000 guaranteed tourney the company calls The Big Deal, which pays at least $20,000 to first place and allows you to qualify for as little as $1. On Sunday Bovada is definitely the place to be online if you live in Nevada, or anywhere in the United States for that matter.

The respected company delivers guaranteed Sunday prize pools of over $275,000 in its poker tournaments and obviously can offer such large guarantees as opposed to WSOP and UP because of its years in the business, having already developed a reputation as one of the top US Internet poker providers.

As far as brick-and-mortar Las Vegas poker tournaments go, the many casinos running in that city deliver daily, weekly, and monthly sit-down tournament offerings. Just recently the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic kicked off at the Bellagio, consisting of a series of eleven events with buy-ins from $1,080 to $100,000. A prize pool of more than $4.3 million has been generated for the main event, from 449 entrants.

The high-dollar Vegas poker tournament runs from December 6 to December 11. Whether playing online at a rich and reliable offshore Internet poker provider like Bovada, at one of the new online poker offerings delivered by the state-sponsored WSOP and UP sites, or traveling to a land-based casino, Las Vegas poker tournaments continue to be plentiful and rewarding as we wrap up 2013.

The post A Look At Brick and Mortar and Online Las Vegas Poker Tournaments first appeared on Vegas Gambling Online.