# of players in his 4 bracelet events. After graduating from MIT at the age of 29, Loveman began teaching at Harvard Business School, where he was a professor for nine years.35 While at Harvard, Loveman taught Service Management and developed an interest in the service industry and customer service.35 He also launched a side career as a speaker and consultant after a 1994. At 28, Bobby Baldwin won the 1978 World Series of Poker Championship (Las Vegas Review Journal file) The unfinished Drew Las Vegas resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip on Thursday, Oct. Baldwin also continues his work at The Mirage. In 2003, the Poker Hall of Fame inducted Bobby “The Owl” Baldwin. He can still be found playing live cash games and is known for his super-aggressive poker style. To date, Bobby “The Owl” Baldwin has won more than $400,000 in World Series of Poker events.

// Gossip, Industry, Misc, News

Among the late-week news-dump items comes the interesting and not-insignificant nugget that 1978 WSOP Main Event champion and Poker Hall of Famer Bobby Baldwin, long a high-ranking executive in the MGM Resorts International casino empire, will be departing his roles at that corporation later this year.

News of Baldwin’s coming departure leaked on late Thursday via Vegas-themed social-media gossip site Vital Vegas, and soon enough, MGM Resorts confirmed Baldwin’s upcoming exodus. What was odd to many onlookers, however, was the brevity of the disclosure in the MGM Resorts announcement. It was all of this:

Bobby Baldwin Professional Poker Player

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 4, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) (“MGM Resorts”) today announced that Robert Baldwin, Chief Customer Development Officer of MGM Resorts and CEO and President of CityCenter, will be leaving his positions at both companies later this year. Few have played a more central role in the growth and transformation of the gaming industry than Bobby, and his contributions over more than three decades are immeasurable.

MGM Resorts thanks Bobby for all he has done for the company and all he has meant to this industry and wishes him the best for the future.

Such a brief and generic departure announcement fairly begs for further explanation, and Vital Vegas fanned the flames with a follow-up Tweet:

Two words you won’t see in our local papers’ glowing stories about Bobby Baldwin and his MGM Resorts departure: Forced out.

— Vital Vegas (@VitalVegas) October 5, 2018

In a third Tweet regarding Baldwin, Vital Vegas simply responded “Yes” to an online affiliate site’s question and feature as to whether Baldwin was indeed being forced from his prominent roles with the company, and yet another rumor is that the high-stakes “Bobby’s Room” parlor in the rear of the Bellagio’s poker room will quickly be renamed to something else. That room was named after Baldwin, though in recent years Baldwin took his occasional nosebleed-games action over to the Aria.

It’s a curious end for Baldwin’s unusual power run on the corporate side of the Vegas gambling world, which stretched all the way back to 1982, when he was hired by the Golden Nugget as a consultant. (Rumors also suggest he might quickly resurface at DraftKings.) Two years later he was that downtown Las Vegas casino’s president, kicking off a run of over three decades as one of Nevada’s most prominent casino executives. And, unlike most of his industry contemporaries, he did it while still continuing the “professional gambler” thing himself. Baldwin owns four WSOP bracelets, though in later years he’s been more frequently seen in those high-stakes cash games; his rare tourney appearances have been in super high-roller events, a hint to the personal fortune Baldwin has likely amassed over the years.

Yet, there have always been hints and suggestions regarding off-the-narrow Bobby Baldwin behavior. Vital Vegas’s social-media Tweets are littered with accusations that Baldwin has been something of a Steve Wynn-style womanizer, rumors that this site has no information regarding. More salient, perhaps, are ongoing questions about his gambling and related activities. It’s worth noting that when the 2017 flap between Leon Tsoukernik and “Aussie Matt” Kirk went both public and into the Nevada court system, those offhand loans between the two took place at the table, in the Aria’s poker room.

Questions were raised at the time about whether the Aria had committed a gaming violation by allowing such loans to be mde at the table, since they would have necessarily included the shifting of stacks of chips from one player to another… which allegedly happened several times in more than one game. One Vegas casino exec smiled at me that summer and referred to it as a “Bobby Baldwin Special,” a hint that Baldwin’s love of and accommodation for the gamble might have led to some casino rules-bending from time to time.

It’s also just striking to look back at his old association with another larger-than-life Vegas figure, Archie Karas. Karas, who went on the famed (and now suspect) $30 million “The Run” at Las Vegas’s craps tables, also told stories about his toting around many tens of thousands of dollars in the trunk of his car to gamble at pool against a billiards champion who also liked to gamble it up.

Yes, that billiards champ was almost certainly Baldwin, as I’ve been told by a couple of people with direct knowledge, though you won’t find Baldwin mentioned by name in Archie’s tales. What a striking dichotomy the whole thing is, though, decades after the fact. Karas went on to get caught cheating at cards in numerous California and Nevada casinos and is now one of the most famous residents of Nevada’s infamous black book of banned gamblers. And Baldwin left those pool-hustler games to climb to the very top of the Vegas casino world.

Strange stories indeed.

COMMENTS

At a time when Las Vegas is all abuzz about the implications of Steve Wynn’s fall from grace, I am reminded both of his rise as a visionary who brought a glitzy casino into the Wild West downtown section of Las Vegas and his homerun in recruiting World Series of Poker Champion, Bobby Baldwin, as an executive. Wynn took Baldwin up the corporate ladder to the positi9n of president of the Golden Nugget.

Well schooled in accounting matters and people reading skills, Baldwin went on to become president of Mirage Resorts, Wynn’s first property on the famous Las Vegas Strip. He then moved onward and upward to Wynn’s next crown jewel, Bellagio, before joining the C-Suite of the behemoth MGM Company, where Wynn’s arch rival, Terry Lani, was the CEO.

When MGM, took aim at the Wynn properties and acquired them– lock, stock, and barrel, Baldwin remained a winner, convincing Lanni to send him up a higher corporate ladder in the MGM infrastructure.

Wynn was forced into a sale, taking a pretty penny and a non-compete agreement that put him off the casino- building grid for years. But once freed from his non compete shackles, Wynn was back in the saddle. he built a new spectacular resort and recognized, once again as an incredibly effective casino visionary–with plenty of political clout.

And then came an all too familiar jolt of late– a powerful man in the crosshairs of allegations of sexual misconduct in the workplace. Last week, Steve Wynn resigned his position of Chair of the National Republican Committee and then as Chairman of the Wynn Hotel and Casino. acknowledging, only, that the accusations lodged against him, had caused a public relations disaster for himself and the properties that bear his name.

For Baldwin — a storied history continues. The late Terri Lanni called Baldwin’s decision strategies “artfully refined over the years,” undoubtedly perfected by paying careful attention at poker tables–where he is still a threat to younger poker wizards.

As a woman who has worked and played in male dominated worlds, including casinos from Las Vegas to Macau, I have learned that even in the last bastions of rugged male chauvinism there are good role models as well as bad ones to be found.

Bobby Baldwin Poker Net Worth

I have known Steve Wynn casually for more than 30 years-well enough to share a few group meals and work together on a couple of charity dinners in Las Vegas; not well enough to have any personal clue about his alleged sexual improprieties with the Company’s massage therapists–some of whom worked on my ever -aching feet. I have had a bit more personal experience with Bobby Baldwin–enough to know that I was very fortunate to make his acquaintance.

By the looks of the first poker table I visited (in downtown Las Vegas), I suspected that it would be “slim pickins'” to find a few good men! Baldwin turned out to be one of many poker pros who has taught me crucial negotiating skills through the power of keen observation.

My early on poker friend, “Suds,” a successful businessman and an elite poker player, introduced me to Bobby Baldwin. I instantly took the measure of the man as smart, well-mannered, focused, skeptical, determined, and– a skilled “people reader. He exuded inner confidence.

I don’t know Bobby Baldwin well, but I certainly have experienced his winning ways. At the Grand Prix of Poker–way back in 1985, we were both invited to play in the “Super Bowl of Poker Charity Invitational. Bobby crippled me –early in the proceedings. He played a pair of sevens as if they were Aces–because he knew I would fold to his big raise! And then he toughened me up by warning me to hunker down and study how best to play each hand. Bobby Baldwin’s sage words have proven applicable, everywhere!

Baldwin has the world on a string!

While I held on long enough to reach the final table, my hours there were short and less than sweet. Bobby eventually knocked me out in fifth place, taking advantage of another moment of inexcusable distraction on my part. I tracked Bobby down to thank him for the thrashing and promised to take his words to heart.

The high profile C-Suite executive of MGM and former winner of the World Series of Poker Championship had already begun his rapid trajectory to the top of the corporate ladder, before I met him, noting, “The only difference between the poker room and the boardroom is the shape of the table.”

Weeks after our Grand Prix encounters, we met up at a formal charity event in Las Vegas. He complimented my gown and then kidded me, about being distracted at the final table of the Grand Prix, whispering, “It pays to watch hands when you are not in them.”

Bobby Baldwin Poker

Following Bobby’s suggestion, I began to approach card tables and conference tables with more focus, determined to prove I was not one of those people with the attention span of a gnat!

I created exercises to improve overall sensory perception, and learned the high value of awareness of people’s speech and silence–both at the poker table and in business meetings. As I developed these skills, I made more confident analyses of risk -reward ratios, and I found myself in fewer jams–everywhere.

Bobby Baldwin Poker With Girlfriend

Master dealmakers are distinguishable t by their people-reading expertise and negotiating savvy. Bobby’s advice resonated deeply with me. I learned, slowly and methodically how to improve my attentiveness. If I had to guess how Bobby Baldwin came to hold the world on a string, I would make a ladylike wager that his secret “sauce” is his power of concentration and attention to facts and behavior that others miss regularly. He also holds his cards very close to the vest.

Bobby Baldwin Poker. Age

Decades after Steve Wynn’s Grand Prix Poker Charity Tournament, I was visiting the late Terri Lanni, former Chairman of MGM. By this time, Bobby Baldwin had become president of MGM. He popped into Terri’s office and joined us for a casual chat. I reminded him of the long ago poker confrontations, while attempting to convince him I was no easy target anymore. He smiled agreeably, but gave no hint as to his own conclusion.