LAS VEGAS — Some of Brian Zembic’s recent gambling associates have been clueless that he still sports the surgical enhancements from a long-ago bet, one of the world’s wildest wagers.
Zembic often wears oversize shirts and baggy jackets, though, and certain compression-support spandex bras help keep his 38C breast implants undetectable and nondescript.
He says, “If you don’t know . . .”
In late 1996, he accepted a friend’s $100,000 bet. The money was wired to a Swiss account. Get and keep implants for 365 days, the contract stipulated, and he’d win the money. Day 366, Zembic collected.
They remain inside the 60-year-old Vegas resident.
“They’ll fall apart, sooner or later, or they might last,” Zembic tells me. “At my age, I don’t care. I got my kid. I do what I want to do. I’ve got my few friends. I used to do magic, stuff to impress the world.
“Now it means the world to me if I impress one or two friends.”
‘AN ANIMAL’
As writer Michael Konik explored the Vegas poker-tournament scene for a magazine piece, he heard about “some psychopath . . . who would do anything to win a bet,” he wrote in a gambling book published by Huntington Press in 1999.
“The guy’s an animal,” poker players told Konik. “You gotta meet him.”
Zembic’s bizarre bet became the title of Konik’s tome, “The Man with the $100,000 Breasts and Other Gambling Stories.” Zembic is the entire first chapter.
It describes him as average in height and looks. He tells me, “I’m an ugly guy.” However, a fearless, outgoing manner and magic tricks make him comfortable anywhere, with anyone.
The Daily Mail, the Mirror and other British tabloids feasted on the Winnipeg native’s tale with alluring photos of him with an ex-wife.
Konik first met Zembic six days into a $15,000 bet: living in a bathroom for a month. A week later, Zembic accepted his buddies’ $7,000 buyout.
The big wager materialized at the Ace Point Backgammon Club in New York City, where Zembic, pal JoBo and others battled for high stakes.
They discussed a mutual friend, a woman with substantial implants. Seems happy, Zembic said. JoBo responded, “How’d you like to walk around with those all day?”
The rest is history. Zembic even played a plastic surgeon for $5,000 in backgammon. If he won, the two-hour procedure and subsequent removal would be gratis. He won.
GLOBAL CITIZEN
To say Zembic resides in Las Vegas might be a stretch. He bought a modest one-story home in Rancho Bel Air, an exclusive area just west of downtown, in February 2001.
However, he spends considerable time gambling in Montreal, Monte Carlo and New York, anywhere he can fashion a bet in which he owns an edge.
After mastering table tennis in his youth, he spent a year in Sweden teaching world-renowned magician Sven Lennart Green the game in exchange for prestidigitation lessons.
Zembic once hustled notorious hustler Bobby Riggs at Ping-Pong. A Montreal nightclub owner hired him to perform magic and beat him often at backgammon for his weekly check, so he devoured backgammon books.
“Eventually, I got better and he made mistakes,” Zembic says. “Then I really started gambling. I’d play bartenders and doormen till 3, 4, 5 a.m., every day, in streets or clubs.”
Via “shuffle tracking,” a complex method of following cards through their mixing process, he has made big blackjack scores in Europe. Counting cards, especially among eagle-eyed Vegas pit bosses, isn’t worth its narrow edge.
Zembic has performed magic for former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and family, and he has tutored star magician David Blaine on backgammon.
On movie sets, he’d crush old-time producer Roger Vadim, who’d worry more about the backgammon than the filming schedule.
Last year, Zembic played another high-roller for $5,000 a point in Monaco. Famous photographer Helmut Newton once paid him $5,000 to shoot him topless in a grand Monte Carlo suite.
“It’s nice to not have to work,” Zembic says. “I don’t have to clock in anywhere at 8 a.m. I’m just not a morning person.”
$350,000 AND COUNTING
Zembic allowed my barrister-pal Tomas, a Rancho Bel Air neighbor, to give me his cell number. During a 45-minute chat, Zembic keeps his location mum, not wanting certain people to know his whereabouts.
About 10 years ago, Tomas attended a piano recital at Zembic’s Wimbledon Drive home by young daughter Mika, now in her early 20s, followed by concert pianist George Winston.
Zembic grabbed his phone. “He called Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Germany, all over the world,” Tomas says. “He had bet people that she would one day open for George Winston in Vegas.”
Says Zembic: “I bet them $25,000 apiece. Now she and Winston are best friends, and I won the money.”
He says his brothers laugh about the funky bet. His father, Albert, a district fire-department chief in Winnipeg, told him he’d do it, too, if someone dangled six figures.
That Zembic gets $10,000 annually (presumably from JoBo) for every year he retains the implants did not make the book. I found that nugget elsewhere, which he confirms. That single wager has returned $350,000.
“The best thing is having that piano bet with my daughter,” Zembic says. “That’s forever. Right now, I’m on a free roll in life.”
His plans?
“Well, I can’t really talk about that because people will know what I’m doing.”
