How does a billionaire governor win $1.4 million playing blackjack in Las Vegas?
“I was incredibly lucky,” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois said on Thursday, responding to questions from reporters about his 2024 tax returns, in which he reported that massive sum in gambling earnings. Mr. Pritzker said it all came from a single trip to Las Vegas last year with his wife, MK Pritzker, and some friends.
Mr. Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, did not say if he was playing at a special table for high rollers, how much he had wagered per hand, or if he won the money in a single run or over the course of several days. But he said he had “fun doing it.”
“Anybody who’s played cards in a casino knows that you often play for too long, and lose whatever it is that you won,” he said. “I was fortunate enough to have to leave before that happened.”
A campaign spokesman, Alex Gough, said that Mr. Pritzker, a Democrat, would donate the money to charity.
The disclosure came as Mr. Pritzker has emerged as a potential presidential candidate and an increasingly prominent face of the opposition to President Trump’s aggressive federal immigration enforcement efforts in Chicago and other cities across the country. Confronted by Mr. Trump’s threats to jail him, Mr. Pritzker has struck a defiant stance, denouncing what he calls Mr. Trump’s attempts to stoke fear, militarize American cities and erode democratic institutions.
He was denouncing Mr. Trump’s efforts to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area when the focus of his news conference on Thursday briefly turned to his blackjack winnings.
Mr. Pritzker noted that he liked to play cards and helped to start a charitable poker tournament that raised money for the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. And Mr. Pritzker, who has supported legislation to expand gambling in Illinois, urged people to come and place their bets in his state. Illinois is home to 17 casinos, according to the state’s Gaming Board.
“We have some really lovely places to go,” Mr. Pritzker said on Thursday.
Richard W. Munchkin, a professional gambler and a host of the podcast “Gambling With an Edge,” said he was not surprised that Mr. Pritzker had won such a large sum playing blackjack.
While many big casinos on the Las Vegas Strip allow players to bet up to $25,000 per hand, he said, high-rollers can arrange for private tables where they can wager $100,000 or more on a single hand. Playing with that much money, he said, it’s not hard to win $1.4 million.
“There are many high-rollers in Las Vegas that have wins and losses much higher than that,” Mr. Munchkin said, adding that he was impressed that the governor had reported his winnings to the Internal Revenue Service.
“My immediate reaction was, ‘Oh my God, someone actually declared their gambling winnings,’” Mr. Munchkin said. “So many people just leave them off their returns entirely. They figure, ‘Yeah, I lost more than I won. Why bother?’”
On his 2024 tax returns, which Mr. Pritzker’s campaign released on Wednensday, Mr. Pritzker, who is seeking a third term as governor, and his wife reported $10.7 million in adjusted gross income.
Mr. Pritzker does not accept a salary as governor. His campaign said his income came from certain trusts that make distributions each year, and the taxable income associated with those distributions changes from year to year based on the performance of the trusts’ assets. Mr. Pritzker and his wife made $3.3 million in personal charitable donations last year, the campaign said.
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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