Tulsa Man Rolls The Dice On A High Stakes Gamble In Las Vegas

By Terry Hood, The News On 6

LAS VEGAS, NV  -- He may be the most famous Tulsan you've never heard of.

His influence stretches down the Las Vegas strip, and his business deals exceed the budgets of some small countries.

News On 6 Anchor Terry Hood and Photojournalist Michael Woods found him in Sin City, taking the biggest roll of the dice yet.

Even for Las Vegas, the new CityCenter is big.

It was an $8.5 billion project. With seven buildings sprawled over 67 acres, it's the largest private construction project in the history of the United States.

"This is the most edgy thing I've ever done," Bobby Baldwin, CityCenter CEO, said.

And at the center of it all is a Tulsan who made his mark in the world as a professional gambler.

"I think somewhere in my early life there was a trigger that drew me to a deck of 52 cards," Baldwin said.

Bobby Baldwin graduated from Memorial High School in 1968. But he got his real education in the back of a Tulsa pool hall, playing poker.

"I was about 14 at the time, and I think the youngest guy in the game was about 65, so it was pretty interesting," he said.

It was here that Baldwin mastered a skill he would become famous for in the world of professional gambling.

He knows how to read people.

"It's just the way they look. The way they look at you, or don't look at you. Or the way they behave," Baldwin said. "And business is the same way. The same people that are at the card tables are in the board rooms."

In 1978, Baldwin walked into the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas. He walked out the youngest man ever to win the world series of poker.

"It just gave me an entirely different outlook on life and what was possible," he said.

The Golden Nugget also launched Baldwin on a new career. Steve Wynn hired him as the poker room manager. Within two years he was president.

When Wynn went on to develop the Mirage, Baldwin was again at his side.

Then came the Bellagio, and Bobby Baldwin was at the forefront of a wave that reshaped the city of Las Vegas.

He became the chief executive officer of the most expensive hotel ever built.

The News On 6 first met him 10 years ago, at the high stakes poker room in the Bellagio that bears his name.

The staggering sums of money won and lost in a single poker game are beyond the comprehension of most of us.  But as a businessman, Bobby Baldwin's stakes are even higher.

"Aside from being the CEO of CityCenter, I'm also the chief design and construction officer for MGM Mirage," he said.  "So I handle all the design and construction for the entire company."

That stretches his reach all the way from Mandalay Bay on the south end of the strip, to New York New York, the MGM, the Monte Carlo, CityCenter, the Bellagio, and beyond. 

That's more than 40,000 hotel rooms, just in Las Vegas.

But it's at CityCenter that all his work is on the line.  The project was conceived five years ago, when credit was easy and Vegas was booming.  But what was a risk then looks more like a gamble now. 

As the towers went up, the economy tanked, sending Vegas into a tailspin. CityCenter almost went bankrupt last spring and it's still on the brink.

Baldwin appears undaunted. To find the edge, he says, sometimes you have to push.

"You can't drive your life or business or anything else looking in the rear view mirror," he said.  "You have to forecast in your mind where everything is going."

And where Bobby Baldwin intends to go is always one step ahead of the pack.

Terry Hood, The News On 6: "Do you think you were a born risk taker?"

Bobby Baldwin: "I think so, yeah."

There's no way to play it safe in life anyway.

That edge Bobby Baldwin walks is becoming even more precarious.  MGM Mirage released its earnings report for the first quarter this week.  It shows the occupancy rate for aria was only 63% and the hotel lost $66 million.

Baldwin says he expects to break even this quarter.