Archie Karas: The man who became a legend in Las Vegas casinos has died

The famous Anargyros Karabourniotis made history in the world of casinos and gambling in the 90s, when he started playing with fifty dollars and ended up winning 40,000,000 dollars. In the last years of his life he lived decently in a neighborhood of Las Vegas, in a typical house living, but with a sadness that never overcame.

Karas knew he could no longer do what built his legend as a top player "sin city", playing poker, craps or blackjack in one of its casinos. Where pensioners lose their pension overnight, where small and medium-sized employees, senior business executives and millionaires gamble according to their means or not.

The Greek who broke the bank has been in the "black book" of Nevada casinos for the past nine years after a series of allegations of illegalities and fraud, which he never admitted. He always believed that he was "set up", because he woncasinos and super players , while as he had emphasized, he never thought of "cheating". No matter how much he remonstrated, he was never able to pass the entrance of a casino again, and this ban on his entry deprived him of the possibility, once again, to "break" the bank of a casino.

For all who are serious about poker, Archie will always be the one who started one night playing with 50 dollars in his pocket and a loan, to end up in three years with a profit of 40,000,000 dollars!

It was something that had never been done before in the history of gambling, by one player, who busted among many other two world champions of poker in the same day!

That's why despite a lifetime ban from the casinos of the state of Nevada, he has always remained a legend that may have lost some of its luster, but as everyone who knew him says, his passage through Las Vegas will never be forgotten.

Leaving Kefalonia

In the 1950s, Antipata in Kefalonia was a small village, where poverty prevailed, bread was hard to come by and in one family, even small children were forced to work.

Anargyros Karabourniotis labored from a young age, when at the age of twelve, he followed his father who was a builder in the building from dawn.
The kid hated this job.

His hands were burned from the cement and he played billiards with his friends to earn two and a half drachmas, with which he could buy a loaf of bread.
He endured the mortar and trowel for three years, until the day he had a fierce fight with his father, when the latter threw a trowel at him that narrowly missed his head.

He returned home, packed his clothes and left in search of his fortune away from his family and Kefalonia, choosing to board the ships. Because of his age - a teenager - he worked as a waiter mostly, for sixty dollars a month and waited to catch the right port, so he could disembark and start a new life.

When in 1967 the steamer he was working on docked at Portland, the young Anargyros disembarked in search of work, initially traveling from city to city until he reached Los Angeles.

He found employment in a restaurant as a waiter while he spents his free time in a billiards and bowling alley, right across the street from the store where he was hired.He had such insight and skill that in a few months he became an expert at billiards and then begins to play bets, winning almost immediately. The owner of the restaurant where he worked loved this particular game and had no problem betting large sums since he was rich. Thus, Anargyros who in the meantime had become Archie, had no problem defeating him continuously, gradually obtaining large sums of money.

Except that very soon he became known, as a result of which the games with opponents became fewer, since no one wanted to mess with him. That's when poker came into his life, played in a room at the back of the store, which he entered without any special knowledge. But he had something else, a terrible sense of the game that came to him and boldness in taking risks, sometimes without calculating the price, two ingredients that in the following years began to build his legend.

"I'm not afraid when I play"

In 1970, Karas was only twenty years old and was playing $5,000-a-player hands against much more experienced opponents.
Within a decade he won and lost millions of dollars playing in the greater Los Angeles area and as a friend of his used to say he could make $1,000,000 one day and be broke the next and start all over again.

The fact that he was not afraid to play with the best players and with the highest stakes, had its explanation, through the mouth of Archie: "I never paid much attention to money. The things I want, health, freedom, love and happiness, money can't buy. I feel no fear and I play as if I have no fear of losing the money I bet."

In December 1992 Karas lost $2,000,000 in a high-stakes game of poker and was left with literally $50 in his pocket when he arrived in Las Vegas.

He would stop at the entrance to Binion's Horseshoe Casino where a tournament of big games and rich winnings was starting, only there was a problem. To take part he would need to have $10,000, which a poker player who knew him well from Los Angeles and saw him at the casino took care of, lending him the amount.

For the next three years Archie "The Greek" Karas as he became known, swept everything in his path from Las Vegas playing pool, craps and of course poker. He never revealed the identity of a millionaire with whom he played nine-ball pool for days, with bets starting at $5,000 a game and going up to $40,000!

His winnings from the showdown with “Mr. X" as he called him reached $1,200,000 and soon after they agreed to play poker. Within a month Karas had won $4,000,000 from Mr X, while waiting for him he couldn't stand not playing at all so he rolled the dice for two to three hours every day, which made him $1,800,000 richer.
The bet that went down in gambling history as "The Run" had just begun.

Crushing the champions

Too many cards fanatics remember the day Karas sat down at a poker table with $5,000,000 worth of chips, waiting for an opponent, who soon appeared.

It was Stu Ungar, a two-time world champion who sat opposite the Greek and when he got up he was $500,000 poorer.
The next day the unthinkable happened.

Initially added to Archie's list was the then-world's best poker player, the legendary Chip Reese, who left after eight hours having made Anargyros from Antipata, Kefalonia, 500,000 dollars richer.

Ungar came back again, wanting to get revenge and lost another 700,000 to Karas, while the news made the rounds of Las Vegas and beyond, in a matter of hours.

It was the first time anyone had won two world poker championships in one day, taking home $1,200,000 while a few months before his death Reese said in an interview: "The most money I've ever lost was $2,022,000 dollars overnight. Archi Karas took them from me."

He wasn't the only one. Over a dozen formidable players have been swayed by the intelligence and what many consider to be incredible playing of Archie, who by the end of "The Run" has amassed $40,000,000 in profits in three years playing poker and craps.

The $2,500,000 meal

The gambler with tremendous instincts, who experts say is the greatest poker player of all time, who played with forty of the world's best players and champions, winning incredible money and fame, had only one problem.

In his forties, he had to store all this money in bank or casino safe deposit boxes, which were sought after and cost him the most expensive meal of his life.
There was a day when he decided not to play in the casino, but just to eat Chinese, but the bad thing was that in the safes of Binion's Horseshoe he had several million dollars kept, so after eating he couldn't resist and went to play dice.

“That food ended up costing me $2,500,000. I lost so much at the dice" he said laughing years later to a friend of his, who convinced him to talk about his incredible experiences.

He was the one who nearly bankrupted a casino—Binion's favorite Horseshoe—that kept pushing the limits on his dice, winning millions. Finally he went bankrupt making basic mistakes as he said years after the legendary three years 1992-1995, when he was the undisputed king in the Mecca of gambling.

The first was that he didn't stop playing at some point to rest and take the necessary breather, while the second was that he did not put an amount aside, not to invest it, but to use it when poker "bloomed" and even went on television.

His other big mistake? He kept large sums in the casino all the time, so his hands were itching and he didn't want to miss a day without playing.
But the $40,000,000 he lost did not embitter this guy who wrote his own unique story in the annals of gambling, since he never cared for money.

What really cost him was that he could no longer feel the felt of the poker table or roll the dice inside a casino because of the ban imposed on him.

He thrived doing things, which even today seem impossible for normal people, but not for Archie from Kefalonia who a few days ago cast his last die, in a life that could easily become a movie.