In the world of gambling Kerry Packer is a veritable legend, an eccentric and flamboyant personality who thought nothing of gambling away literally millions of dollars on a single bet. It was a style that earned Packer the impressive moniker of “world’s greatest gambler.” The powerful Packer family owned a controlling interest in both the Nine Network and the publishing company Australian Consolidated Press. At the time of his death in 2005, he was one of the richest and most influential men in Australia, worth an estimated $6 billion. Gambling was Packer's passion in the way that other men of great means develop big-budget obsessions with yacht racing or art collecting. Although he had enough money to demand anything he wanted, Packer never forgot about the little guy. On one occasion he tipped his golf caddies $75,000 each, and rather than just leaving them to it, saw to it that they were all issued checks from a casino he visited so they wouldn’t have to pay any tax. One of the caddies was able to buy a house with the tax-free money. On New Year’s Eve in the mid-1990s, Packer was in Las Vegas, betting $150,000 per hand at the Las Vegas Hilton. He accidentally bumped into a waitress, knocking over a tray of drinks she was carrying. Rather than getting angry about it, like you would expect a temperamental billionaire to be, Packer asked the waitress is she had a mortgage. When she said she did, he asked how much she owed. He got her contact information and the next day paid off her $100,000 mortgage. When he was asked why he engaged in such lavish spending, Packer responded, “This is not someone else’s money. This is my money and I’m entitled to spend it in any way.”
