Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos

Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos | Tom Breitling, Cal Fussman | Fun reading about great guys

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Double or Nothing:...

	Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos Tom Breitling, Cal Fussman Collins Business, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Building on success

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.

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Fun reading about great guys

Tom and Tim made millions not once but twice in different ventures and they are still under 40! This book talks about the risks and rewards they have experienced in their business partnership and the challenges they have overcome. I can't wait to read about their next venture because I'm sure they have not slowed down after the Nugget!

More Than Meets the Eye

Make no mistake about it. Double or Nothing is more than another book about Las Vegas. Yes, Sin City plays a dominate backscreen, but this is a story about people; specifically, two friends who become partners, who after beginning one of the first Internet Travel Sites, which is sold eventually to Expedia, and the proceeds go to the biggest gamble of all: the purchase of the Golden Nugget in Downtown Las Vegas.

What will surprise you the most is the honesty of Tom and Tim and genuine love and respect they have for each other. The ups and downs and the wheeling and dealing it took to not only make the purchase, but to turn Downtown Las Vegas back to its heyday is extremely well-written and you'll find you can't put the book down.

It's an easy read that's fun, educational, interesting, and most of all, cathartic. I highly recommend this to anyone who loves Las Vegas.

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It's a Winner

Imagine watching a guy play craps in your casino, costing you millions of your mlass="textlinks">oney 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.

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Gamblers' Luck

Double or Nothing is Tom Breitling's side of an incredible story of how he and longtime friend, Tim Poster, created an internet travel business from scratch and sold it in just a few years for a $100 million profit. Even more incredibly, they used much of that mlass="textlinks">oney to help finance their purchase of the Golden Nugget casino and made another $100 million only one year later when they, in turn, sold that business to a Texas restaurant king who badly wanted into the gambling business.

Breitling's account is one in which he describes himself as the conservative one in his friendship and business partnership with Tim Poster, an old school friend of his who carried an image as an extreme risk taker even in high school. Ever the gambler, it was Poster who invited Breitling to join him in the fledgling travel business that ultimately financed the pair's entry into the Las Vegas casino scene as young owners of the legendary Golden Nugget casino. Breitling's role in both businesses was usually to be the one to "put on the brakes" in order to slow down some of Poster's more rash and overambitious ideas. The partners were well-matched, and the combination of their individual personalities and deep respect for each other created a highly successful business team.

Breitling tells his story in a conversational style that makes for easy reading but he focuses so much on his relationship with Tim Poster, and how much they have meant to each other over the years, that the more interesting aspects of the story are disregarded. Readers expecting to find behind-the-scenes details on the operations of a major Las Vegas gambling casino will be disappointed to find little of that in the book. There is considerable detail on the sale of the casino, including bits of gossip about the new owner and his family, but not much is revealed about the nature of the gambling industry itself.

One of the book's most interesting characters is the unnamed "Mr. Royalty," a big time gambler who went on a roll lasting almost a year and who caused Breitling and Poser great anxiety as they watched him take their new casino for some $8 million, finally forcing them to lower their betting limits in self-protection. Readers like me who realize that the gambling industry is based on one gigantic scam perpetrated on a gullible public will likely find themselves rooting for Mr. Royalty in what becomes his very personal competition with the Golden Nugget owners. The book begins and ends with a description of that epic battle.

Double or Nothing is an interesting book, especially if read as a business book, but the story is not as impressive as I imagined it would be. Breitling and Poser are brash risk takers for sure but the book exposes enough of their childishness to leave the impression that they are also two of the luckiest businessmen on the planet.

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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