SIX GAMBLING BUSINESSES NAMED TO FORBES' LIST OF 400

William Boyd, president of Boyd Gaming Corp., headquartered in Las Vegas, has been named to the "Forbes Four Hundred."

Boyd is one of six gambling magnates among The Four Hundred, selected annually by Forbes Magazine.

"In America's post-industrial age, gambling is a growth business," writes Frank Wolfe for the Oct. 17 Forbes Magazine. "Today there are 90 publicly traded gambling companies. Five years ago there were only 30."

Nevada's fiscal 1994 hold (what the house keeps from the total amount gambled or handled) was up 10.4 percent, to $6.7 billion, out of a total handle of $87 billion.

Vegas expects total visitors to be up 25 percent this year.

Gambling, says Forbes Magazine, has gone mainstream in America and has become a kind of entertainment that respectable people purchase.

"Not much surprise that there are now six gambling magnates among the Fortune Four Hundred," Wolfe wrote. "That's a gain of two over the past year."

But, there was one dropout, John Connelly, head of President Riverboat, and operator of the Admiral on the St. Louis riverfront.

Meanwhile, Boyd, who is also looking at possible riverboat operations in Missouri -- Kansas City and Cape Girardeau -- is a newcomer to Forbes The Four Hundred.

He is taking a flier on a riverboat out of Tunica, Miss., but nothing that could put a drain on his Las Vegas operations.

He has the Fremont and the California in downtown Vegas; the Stardust on the Strip; Sam's Town on the Boulder Strip, which serves residents on Vegas' East Side and Arizona tourists; and the Eldorado and Jokers Wild in Henderson, just south of Vegas.

Boyd Gaming went public last October at 80 times earnings. It sold 4.6 million shares at $17, hit a high of $26 three days later, then tanked to a recent $13.

Even at the current prices, Boyd, 62, still has stock worth $325 million. Meanwhile, he isn't banking on Tunica, but on the Fremont Street Experience, a $63 million metal mesh canopy over Fremont Street in downtown Vegas due to be completed next year.

The canopy will create, in essence, one giant casino, featuring a misting system to cool visitors in summer, 32 kiosks, a light show and retail shops. Under the canopy will be one of Boyd's two downtown casinos.

Boyd figured that the game isn't over. He told Forbes that "only about 20 percent of Americans have been in a casino."

Boyd has 1,800 slots and 70 table games, four restaurants and a 1.400-seat theater at his dockside Tunica casino. But, Vegas is his mainstay.

Gambling is almost literally in the Boyd blood.

Boyd's paternal great-grandfather was in with Jesse James.

Sam Boyd, Bill's father, was orphaned at 8 and quit high school to work on the gambling ships anchored off the coast of California in the early 1930s.

Sam Boyd arrived in Las Vegas in 1941. Las Vegas legalized gambling in 1931.

He had $30 in his pocket. He found a town of 10,000.

Sam, his sister and his wife worked at the Jackpot, then owned by Nate Mack. Sam invented a penny roulette game and his sister helped him run it.

In 1947, after mobster Bugsy Siegel was gunned down, Sanford Adler and Charles Resnik, two old-time Vegas hands, bought 50 percent of Bugsy's Flamingo Hotel and hired Sam Boyd to represent their interests.

Mobster Meyer Lansky owned the other 50 percent of the operation.

Bill Boyd told Forbes his father personally steered clear of the mob.

"He did his job and didn't have a problem," Bill Boyd said. "You had to live with the mob, but you kept them at arm's length."

In 1974, Bill Boyd, a lawyer, made gaming a full-time career when he and his father sold their interest in another casino, and with a $4 million loan built their own California Hotel.

Security Pacific Bank was wary of lending money to a casino -- most banks were -- but Sam's clean reputation and the fact that Bill was a director of the Nevada State Bank, made a difference.

The California is a niche player, catering to people from Hawaii and attracting them in droves with cheap airfare and tour packages.

Now the Boyds are adding 146 rooms to the 635-room hotel and will reopen the nearby Main Street Station about the time the Fremont Street Experience opens next year, Forbes said.

Banks have learned to love casinos, in part thanks to their early experience with the Boyds.

In early 1984, the Nevada Gaming Control Board Recommended them to operate the Stardust on the Strip, a property formerly tainted by Teamsters loans and other mob connections, Forbes said.

With a $185 million bank loan, Boyd Gaming bought the Stardust and the Fremont Hotel from an associate of ex-Cleveland mobster and Vegas hand Moe Dalitz.

Sam Boyd died in 1993, but Bill Boyd carries on.